Week 2 Assignment: Quantum Mechanics

My Reflections on Uncertainty:

The Universe is very uncertain, in my opinion. Uncertainty is all around us. People place certainty on things that aren't certain, and seem to be very uncomfortable when there is an element of doubt. Perhaps one of the most daunting examples of uncertainty lies in the question, when are we going to die? There is the certainty that we will die but we don't know when, nor do we know what it will be like when we die. Will we cease to exist entirely or will we continue on? This makes most people very uncomfortable to think about. How many people do you know, really, who sit around and discuss thier own death? What is it that people feel so uncomfortable about? I think it's the idea of uncertainty. Uncertainty seems to create a lot of fear. So in an attempt to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty we try to control things around us. We can take control of certain things, for example, setting a positive intention for the day, or taking care of ourselves in the way that we eat and handle stress. But outside of few things, I would argue that, we don't really have all that much control. I think people like to believe that they have much more control than they actually do. They assume that once a decision is made or a goal set, it will happen because they will it to, or because they work very hard. There is little room for the assumption that sometimes life has a different plan for us than the one we are trying to control into being. What would happen if many of us just took a step back and allowed for uncertainty in our day, in our life? Would there be more opportunity available to us? Would we be more in the "free flow" of the universe if we relinquished some of our fear around the idea of uncertainty? What would our world look like if we all operated under the belief that everything is uncertain. Would mad chaos result or blissful exsitence? In keeping in line with the ideas of balance i think we need to honor both the approach of setting long term goals as well as being open to universal influence along the way.

Causality:

Relating to cause and effect, from a linear viewpoint, first one has the cause and then the effect, first the past, then the present, then the future. But this doesn't explain everything. For example, the quantum particle appears just by observing it. This is difficult to understand. Our socail constructs don't leave room for effects to happen before the cause. That's just something one might see on an episode of The Twilight Zone. I did happen to read the article in the New York Times, Leaving the Wild, and Rather Liking the Change. Apparently the Nukak-Maku from Columbia do not have an understanding of the concept of future. When asked whether or not they were concerned about the future the response was, "What's the future?" It must be entirely different to live life without the social construct of "future." How things would change for us, living only in the present, which is all we really have anyway, each moment, one moment at a time. Maybe cause and effect happen simultaneously, and not just how we think of it, cause and then effect. If we allow for other perceptions to exist in our reality we will naturally become more aware, more confused maybe, but our consciousness will expand.

Is the Universe weird?

No, I wouldn't say the universe is weird, perplexing yes, but not weird. Weird is defined as bizarre, queer, mysterious, or suggestive of ghosts. Interesting array of words used to describe weird. I would have to say that I do feel as though the universe is rather mysterious at times, but I don't feel comfortable using the word weird, bizarre, or queer for that matter. There are things that happen in our daily lives that we don't understand on a conscious level. I find that I am constantly redefining what the universe means to me. Saying that it's weird feels as though I would be shutting out the possibility of understanding more. It feels closed, shut down, not open and accepting. Many things happen to me that I don't understand or can't explain, but does that make those experiences less-real, undesirable, or weird. I don't think so. I allow for things to be undefined or unexlpainable in life. It makes things much more interesting that way.