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cincycinner · 2 years

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CHAPTER 21 (A BIG ONE)

Electro-magnetized blizzard bliss.

It was just a flicker.

But a flicker stretched out across more than one moment.

Or maybe no moment at all, maybe this always was.

From what felt like an burgeoning immensity of mass constricted within the volumetric size of a marble spinning on its axis in the middle of a lighting storm that was telekinetically completely calm and sending off unilaterally unstoppable, infinitely energized waves of propagated space time across the known and unknown spectrums of the observable universe Albert Einstein awoke, although, slightly unsure of what he had awoken from, and even more unsure of what he had awoken into.

He looked around a room he did not recollect, confused by what his senses were now telling him. What Einstein was experiencing was actually the normal reaction one has to any amazing night of sleep full of deep, immersive dreaming.

Albert Einstein actually remembered everything. He remembered his birth in Germany, his life in Europe and America, his family and friends, his correspondences with other physics giants of the time like Bohr and Schrodinger, his work on Relativity and Field Theory, his eventual death in Princeton, and so much more.

Einstein knew he was not alive in the 1940s. Those days had come and gone, and were never to come back to him. Although he had no idea what time period he had actually awoken into, the time certainly felt different to him. Einstein laughed and thought to himself, “Time has a feel. How queer to have missed it and all the things it allows to manifest.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled. The deep breathing seemed to bring him some relief. His body was warm, and upon looking at himself in the mirror, he found himself to be quite young and rather handsome. He took off his white cotton shirt to unveil the muscles he had come to miss in old age. He flexed his arms and gave an approving nod in the mirror.

Einstein smiled at himself. “Whoever used whatever modern technology now exists to bring me back into existence has done a ship shape job,” he thought, “but this beard certainly has to go.” Einstein used his hands to feel and rub his overgrown beard. His hands had not been willed to touch anything in a long, long time. In the back of his mind Einstein remembered having no hands, and having no problem with the dismemberment.

Einstein heard the birds singing outside and recognized the song as that of the American Robin. The song sounded nice as it emanated through the air from the little bird perched on whatever branch it had deemed acceptable at the time. Einstein thought of Darwin’s birds, and then the one currently perched in song. “Is it your song that gives you the evolutionary advantage?” asked Einstein to the bird, “or something else, unquantifiable, that does so?

Having been an ornithologist in his past life, Einstein was please to realize their were still identifiable bird calls to be had here in whatever time he currently found himself. “Oh America,” thought Einstein, “land of the free and home of the brave.” Unfortunately, Einstein had yet to learn that most of the world had grown to resent America and her ‘exceptionalism’ as its rebranded neo-colonialism turned capitalism continued to ‘brand’ the world.

He felt the air coming in from an open window. Looking out he saw the greens of the trees and the blues of the billowing sky. At the tree line there was a gathering of deer. A mother, 2 babe fawns, and a gallant buck keeping its distance some 20 feet to the side. The sounds and smells of the morning peace emanated and permeated the space that Einstein’s brain now vibrantly filled. He was awake; he was alive.

Einstein sat up and looked at an electronic device that apparently told him the time, 11:00 in the morning, and the date, September 13th, 2077. Einstein laughed. Either this was an elaborate joke being played on him, or he truly had awoken encapsulated in his corpse. “I’ve been encorpsulated,” joking thought Einstein, in a surprisingly good mood for a genius who had just been jolted back into human reality.

Einstein thought deeply for a few moments with his eyes closed intent on taking in the Descartesian reality he was undeniably experiencing. He had been dreaming for a long time now both about his past life and what he realized now was going to be his future life. Einstein then wondered whether he knew he was dreaming the whole time, or was rather an oblivious dreamer unaware of the non-temporal, illusory nature of his dream propagated ‘reality’. The former, he hoped.

He now knew exactly when he was but still had no clue as to where he was except for somewhere in America, unless the American robin had accidentally been introduced somewhere in Europe. Although Einstein did not know ‘why’ he was, he felt a peculiar easiness and assuredness that even that too would soon make itself quite evident. He felt like a well traveled man in a well slept man’s body. He was a man who had ascended and descended a figurative mountain the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Everest combined and yet sat ready to do it all again, and more, with renewed pinache and vigor.

A knock on the door startled Einstein.

“You may enter,” spoke Einstein with a voice that had not been used in over one hundred years.

On the opposite side of the door Medenov had stood next to Alford smiling a fake smile. He felt like an undertaker ready to put to the stake all of Alford’s scientific hopes, dreams, and achievements.

He had lost all hope that Einstein would actually awake, so when he heard the rustling of Einstein in the room and his warm laughter, his smile became authentic. “By some miracle, maybe our work worked!,” thought Medenov excitedly to himself.

“Here we go,” said Alford quietly to Medenov as he waved his hand over the door’s entrance mechanism. The laboratory door of Einstein’s room opened and in walked Medenov and Alford. Einstein stood up and brushed himself off as his sleeping body had apparently collected a slight coating of dust.

“Good morning Albert,” said Alford, “it is an unbelievable pleasure of mine to meet you.

With those words at his ears Einstein turned around to greet his fellow men. “Good morning, and with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with on this fine morning?” asked Einstein.

“My name is Dr. Mitchell Alford. I am a particle physicist among other scientific realms endeavors, and this is my colleague, friend, and renowned Neurologist and Neuro-surgeon Dr. Alexander Medenov.”

“It is a pleasure to be acquainted with both of you. Mitchell you remind me greatly of my good friend Gustav,” responded Einstein quite amiably, “you aren’t, by chance, of Slavic descent?”

“You remember?” asked Medenov furtively, “That is, you remember who you were, I mean, who you are?” Medenov was clearly quite surprised Einstein had come back with all of his faculties in tact.

“Also, to answer your last question, no,” said Medenov, “I am American, but my parents were Russian refugees.”

“Unfortunately,” said Einstein seriously, “I am all too familiar with what being a refugee entails. Luckily, quantum mechanics tells us that everything happens due to chance and is inherently unpredictable. This inherently means eventually the world might get better!”

Einstein laughed and with his laughter the tension in the room dissipated. “As for remembering my life and everything I was blessed to experience while living it of course I remember it, of course I do. I remember everything so vividly. My youth, my education at the Polytechnic, my family, my patent office, my work, and everything else has all been flashing in my mind for what seems like months of eternity. I literally felt as if I was an ongoing eternal thought experiment on myself.”

“That is incredible news,” blurted Medenov, “and absolutely fascinating that you’ve been able to conceptualize so much, so quickly.”

“May I presume that you two are responsible for this undertaking of bringing me back to life? Only you two? Surely there are many others who helped you,” spoke Einstein.

“Yes, Albert, we are the scientists who brought you back. It was only the two of us who labored to bring you back to life Dr. Einstein; we could trust no one else.”

The room grew silent for a moment and offered up a tense air of unsure footing.

“Alexander and I are so ecstatic to have you here with us,” said Alford to break the awkward silence, “you were a visionary and since you’re groundbreaking work and research much progress has been made. Yet even in the midst of this progress we are still stuck looking at the achievements of your greatness. We have brought you back with the hopes that you may graciously lead us forward even more. Humanity needs you more than ever Albert. You will be surprised to find that many of the questions and discussions you and your quantum physics peers were having back in the 20th century are still being had today.”

“In a world as changed as much as it has how can I change things? Why didn’t you leave me to rot? God damn you to hell for bringing me back to life and making a monstrosity of who I was. I should kill myself in the back, dear boy, hand me a rope for a noose,” were the words that Medenov expected to hear from Einstein in response to Alford’s inquiring introduction.

“Yes, yes it does Mitchell,” replied Einstein, surprising both Medenov and Alford with his geniality, “the world needs us all. That being said I hope both of you would understand that all of this new existence has left me quite taken aback and somewhat bewildered. It has been a pleasure meeting you both and I thank you for what I’m sure has been painstaking work to bring me here. I look forward to our continued existence amongst one another, but I would appreciate some time to rest and ponder by myself.”

“Of course Albert,” replied Alford, “please don’t hesitate to communicate to either Medenov or myself if you need anything, we are here to help.”

“Actually, yes, there is one thing. I am extremely thirsty. Do you think you could fetch me a glass of water? Oh, and today’s paper would be lovely,” said Einstein. Einstein had yet to learn that newspapers, in their literal, physical paper manifestation, no longer existed on earth.

“Of course Albert, I’ll be right back with them,” replied Alford.

Medenov and Alford departed the room leaving Einstein alone looking out across the landscape. The clouds rolled above in the sky as if they were taking a midday saunter, slowly bathing in the late summer sun. Feeling the warmth of the radiant sun on his skin Einstein breathed heavily and relished the mix of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and various trace gases that slowly entered and exited his lungs, extracting oxygen with each boundless breath.

Although it seemed like only a moment ago that Alford and Medenov had left, Einstein found himself listening to knocks again on the door.

“Yes, come in,” said Einstein.

Alford opened the door and brought in the desired affects Einstein had asked for. Alford had created a personalized newspaper full of all things that had happened in 2077 so far. Alford wanted to make sure there were still some comforts, however temporary, from the 20th century world Einstein came from. Setting the paper down and then the water on top of it Alford looked up at Einstein and smiled.

“Albert do you know who I am?” asked Alford.

“But of course, you just introduced yourself Mitchell. I don’t forget a name, and I certainly don’t forget a face,” replied Einstein.

“More than that though, I am your Student Albert. I have studied and delved into your relativities, philosophies, and thought experiments. I have looked at what you were able to do with atomic and quantum mechanics and it astounds me at how far reaching and leaping your achievements truly were. Generations and generations have passed and only a handful of minds have come along that are as stalwart as yours,” said Alford.

“And you are one of those minds Mitchell?” asked Einstein.

“Yes Albert,” replied Alford, “I am one of those minds.”

With those words silence drew in on the room, a moment of empty discourse.

“Well,” said Alford, “ I will leave you to peruse the journal as you please.”

Turning around to leave and open the door Alford was startled by Einstein’s emerging voice.

“Thank you Mitchell,” said Einstein.

“You’re welcome Albert, but for what?” asked Alford, turning back around to face the room.

“You have changed the world by bringing me back to life. You have changed it in ways I’m not sure you can even imagine,” said Einstein.

“Thank you,” replied Alford, “but I assure you I can imagine anything.”

“I believe, Mitchell, that you mean to say that you can imagine anything except anything,” replied Einstein.

“I beg your pardon?” asked Alford.

“The term ‘anything’ requires specification. Until that thing is identified there is an imaginitative void by which nothing is actually imagined yet,” replied Einstein.

Again silence entered the discourse, and then, the two minds laughed heartily.

“It is becoming quite obvious to me that I have truly met a soul who’s intellect rivals and likely outdistances even my own,” said Alford.

“I believe our relationship will be truly mutualistic my friend. Here’s to a long and arduous discourse,” said Einstein as he picked up his glass of water.

The two men smiled across the room at one another. Everything felt right.

“Well, I will let you be Albert. I’ll be in my lab, just use the intercom on the wall here to the left of me by the door if you need to reach me,” said Alford.

“Where is Dr. Medenov?” asked Einstein

“Ah, Alexander had a lunch meeting to attend to for his company,” said Alford, “he will be back around to the laboratory complex in a couple of days.”

“Good, good,” said Einstein, because I have a great deal of things I would like to discuss with him as well.”

“I’m sure you do Albert, Alexander was instrumental in the work undertaken so that we could have this conversation we are having here today,” said Alford.

With that, Alford finally left Einstein alone in his room. He took a drink of his water and took in the sensation of quenching one of life’s most essential thirsts, other essential thirsts being knowledge, freedom, and meaning.

Einstein picked up the paper and read the headline, “Princeton Students injured during war protests.” The picture adjacent to the title showed a young, sunglass wearing man holding a sign that read “the Middle East deserves peace.”

Flipping through he then saw an Op-Ed piece on whether Israel really had the right to be a nation.

“Life is time traveling,” thought Einstein, “and yet much of the world seems to have remained on the same old tracks.”

He continued reading and soon knew the president of the United States at that time, Martin B. Marshall, was planning on running for reelection. The scandal of Roger Barber and his robotically enhanced shoulders had struck Major League Baseball and was continuing to send ripples through the sports world. In scientific news a lead researcher in trans-human bio-enhancement surgeries, Dr. Arthur Ratheneau had gone missing.

Some in Oregon were stealing and throwing away large amounts of lab raised meats, and the national initiative to subvert the building pressure of the caldera underneath Yellowstone National Park finally seemed to be working. Reading just the day’s news had Einstein realizing just how foreign this new world was, and with that, Einstein closed his eyes to rest his genius mind.

Einstein opened his eyes to the click of the intercom.

“Albert,” spurted the intercom, “if it pleases you, I’d like to give you a tour of the laboratory complex in about ten minutes if you’re done reading the paper. The intercom’s microphone is automatic and will immediately pick up whatever your response may be so you don’t have to worry about finding some button to give a response.”

Einstein smiled at how rigid Alford’s speech seemed to him. “You could be a robot,” thought Einstein.

“I’m ready now,” replied Einstein as he stood up and noticed the dark brown loafers that had been placed to the side of the door. He walked up to the shoes and looked down at his feet and frowned at the green and blue argyle socks that gripped his feet. He promptly took off the socks and threw them across the room.

Placing his naked feet into the loafers he bent down and began to tie them. The door opened to his room and in stepped Alford.

“Ah, I completely forgot,” blurted Alford, “you absolutely hate to wear socks with your shoes. Not to mention, I appreciate the durability of the shoe much more than the ragged, hole ridden existence that socks often inhabit.”

Einstein chuckled and momentarily paused from his shoe tying to push back the bushy dark brown hair from his eyes. “Indeed,” replied Einstein, “I never understood the point of putting on both shoes and socks to protect one’s feet from dirt and destruction.”

Alford chuckled in turn, “Oh the peculiarity of the human condition. Here you hate shoes with socks on and I thought my disdain for hats was odd.”

Einstein arose from his shoe tying and rushed his hands across his body to take out the wrinkles that had formed on the forest green v-neck t shirt he had awoken in. The dark blue American jeans combined to give Einstein quite the modern look. For the first time he looked himself up and down and felt awkward in his skin, a feeling that Alford quickly noticed Einstein was feeling.

“Eh,” stammered Alford, “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, it’s impossible to find any kind of sensible clothing from back in your day. All I could find was trendy clothing for 25 year olds today.”

Einstein had finally finished taking himself in, “Well, truth be told, it is rather comfortable.”

“Oh” said Alford somewhat surprised by Einstein’s satisfaction, “well okay then good. I guess we should go ahead and get started with the tour.”

Alford turned around to head out of the guest bedroom only to by stymied by Einstein’s reproach.

“Mitchell, before we go, I have a few question that need answered. Who all knows that I’m alive?”

“Only me and Dr. Medenov at the moment,” replied Alford, unsure of how Einstein would take this news.

“Good, good,” said Einstein, “I was worried this was a government run experiment and you had brought me back with a mission goal of enslaving me to work on a new type of sophisticated, world killing bomb.”

Alford laughed, “Good god, no. Although, I do have a good deal of enemies, those bombs already exist.”

“The other thing is,” said Einstein somewhat abashed, “why did you bring me back as a young man? Did you think about the oddities that would arise from bringing back a man who remembers his entire existence and last remembers being an old man into a body he had long ago written off as past its time?”

Alford had been expecting this question, and had a good response saved for it. “Well see, going along with only me and Dr. Medenov knowing about your existence, we decided that the Albert Einstein that most of the world would recognize is the old, wrinkled man who had become a public icon with a face that has been trademarked. In bringing you back to life at the age of 25, we knew very few people would recognize who you were and you would thus have much less trouble with a general public that still reveres and adores you.”

“Reveres and adores?” asked Einstein somewhat puzzled.

“Since your death Albert the world has not had a soul like yours. The world has grown to love you and the work you did. You’re a celebrity Albert. There is even a Sunday morning cartoon with you in it.”

“Like Mickey Mouse?” asked Einstein now wearing a large smile, “who’d of thunk I’d become such a star while I was dead! Well, I suppose you have answered my questions well enough for now. Show me this great laboratory you have erected.”

The two men left the laboratory annex and began walking around the complex itself. From the particle physics and vacuum labs to the biochemical and genetic labs the two great minds milled around the circular enterprise until they had arrived in the ‘Thinking Room’.

Alford waved his hand in front a sensor and the lights came on giving a yellow abeyance to the desk and other constituents of the room.

“And here is where I do much of my great thinking,” said Alford feeling content with the way Einstein had graciously taken in the many multifarious sections of Alford’s laboratory complex and the tours completion that now seemed to be upon them.

Einstein went up to a shelve full of books and pulled down one that seemed familiar to him.

“General Relativity,” said Alford, “by Albert Einstein. Quite the accomplishment in Quantum Physics no doubt. How he had the imagination and intelligence to come up with such an incredible mainframe of understanding, I do not know.”

Einstein’s smile vanished from his face, “A man must be judged for the entirety of his work, not simply his greatest. We are the sum of our parts Alford. The atomic bomb is a monster my generation will never live down, and since now we’re all dead, all except for me, I’m the only one left alive to carry that burden.”

“It won us a war,” replied Alford.

“And started how many more?” asked Einstein dimly, “killed how many thousands? Threatens to kill how many millions? War breeds with itself inside the hearts of men, and the innocent are the ones that normally are made to suffer.”

“Well enough of this talk, scientists should have no hand in the world of war,” interjected Alford, clearly trying not to ruffle too many feathers with the new to this world Einstein.

Alford, in fact, was amazed at how perfectly Einstein already seemed to fit in the picture. His living likeness stirred Alford to be his awake and alive, full facultied self. At least, that is what he thought, as he sat their, proud of himself for his ingenuity.

“Do you like music?” asked Alford with a wry, old smile as if he were about to impart a deep, dark secret.

Einstein put on his Cheshire cat smile, “I love that question almost as much as I love music. Yet, I presume much of the music today is more bleeps and nodular noises than actual melodic intricacy.”

“You are a diviner and closer to the truth than you could believe. Yet, some people find modern music to be quite incredible. I, however, find that what modern artists create certainly stretch the bounds of what can be deemed ‘music’.”

“How Jackson Pollock of them,” replied Einstein followed by a chuckle.

“Watch and be amazed Albert,” said Alford as he stood from his chair and arched out his chest as if about to burst out a few rich chords himself. Instead, Alford whistled a few notes and music began pouring from speakers placed in various corners of the room.

The smile again returned to Einstein’s face. Alford opened a drawer on his desk and withdrew two wooden pipes and a box. In opening the box, its contents, tobacco, were carefully smushed into the pack of the two pipes. Done packing, Alford handed Einstein one of the pipes. Einstein nodded, grabbed the pipe, and began to inspect the wood crafted pipe now primed in his hands.

About to sit back and smoke a pipe with Albert Einstein, Alford took pause and internally asked himself whether now was a good time to start talking science. He looked across the table and saw Einstein seeming to enjoy himself and decided against scaling any scientific walls for the time being.

Alford had failed to notice the pipe had been placed to Einstein’s lips for a few moments. “Excuse me Mitchell,” said Einstein from atop his perch, but do you have a light?”

Alford again pulled from the drawer an old, worn Zippo lighter. “My great-grand father’s passed down from generation to generation,” said Alford proudly.

“You don’t say?” replied Einstein inquisitively.

“Passed down with a tradition of heavy smoking,” said Alford as he sparked his silver lighter and lit the plant Einstein clearly wished to burn. Crackling of red embers led to a frothing of smoke from the pipe and Einstein’s nose. The smells of tobacco and cherry began to fill the ‘Thinking Room’ with a thickness that glinted the light into opaqueness.

The smoke stymied Alford’s great mind. A constant thinker with a motor that never turned off, for once Alford reveled in his mental silence.

“I knew you’d love a good smoke,” said Alford as the two men sat back in their chairs and dipped into the relaxation of the classical music motoring around them.

“Mozart’s Requiem in D minor?” asked Einstein, trying to determine the music being played by Alford’s speakers.

“You have an impeccable ear Albert, that is indeed the song.”

“Do you play an instrument Mitchell?” asked Einstein.

“Upright bass actually,” replied Alford, “although admittedly I am not very good.”

“I was never the greatest on my ‘Lina’ either.”

“Lina?” asked Alford rather confused.

“That’s what I used to call my violins back in the 20th century,” said Einstein amidst chuckles, “although thinking on it now that is a rather silly name for the instrument.”

“Talking about his past?” thought Alford as he continued to purge his pipe of its contents, “clearly Albert is quite comfortable with me.” Alford, for once, was actually happy.

“You don’t by chance have some instruments we could play do you?” asked Einstein.

“Actually, I do, but they are the parlor room of my house.”

“Oh,” said Einstein as he began to take another pass from his pipe, “and I suppose its too much an inconvenience to go all the way over to your house from here.”

Normally Alford’s response would’ve been a quick quip about his lack of practice, dishevelment of his house, and how uncomfortable he was playing music in front of others. Yet, internally, Alford was in a different place.

“Actually, I had my laboratory complex built and attached to my house. All we have to do is walk around to the opposite side of the annex and from there we’ll be able to get to the parlor rather easily. I must warn you though, I cannot guarantee much musical competency on my end. I stopped progressing after college.”

“No worries my friend,” said Einstein, with the use of the word ‘friend’ making Alford heart flutter, “I, like you, have made no musical advancements in my day. Nevertheless, I am excited to see what Mitchell Alford the musician has to offer.”

The two minds got up from the table and proceeded out of the laboratory complex and towards the door that entered into Alford’s home. Alford snaked from his pocket a chain of keys and nimbly found the one that unlocked the door. He sunk the key into the door, turned, and without a hitch swung the door open to reveal warn wooden floors and floral wall papered walls of the home once filled by Alford’s former family life.

“This is quite lovely,” quipped Einstein as the two men proceeded into the house and towards the parlor. The parlor had green walls, and a large bay window that looked out onto the street. From underneath an ornate, 18th century chair Alford knelt down and pulled out a small black, violin shaped case.

“Here, let me have a look,” said Einstein as he knelt next to Alford and opened the clasps of the case. Unearthing the violin from its tomb, light bounced off the violin and was at the same time disturbed by the millions of dust particles blown off the violin by Einstein’s blowing.

“She looks lovely,” said Einstein as he placed the violin under his left cheek, picked up the bow, fingered his way across the violin’s neck, found some familiar fingerings, and swayed his arm back and forth to the creation of a soothing C Major. The violin should’ve sounded amazing, it was one of Stradivari’s last pieces of work.

“Still works, good to know,” said Alford rather directly as he was still busy trying to wrench his upright bass from its case. Alford, having finally pulled the bass free, flipped it around and stood up to draw the bass to its feet.

Piano keys twinkled and Alford turned to see Einstein sitting at the Grand piano filling the back corner of the parlor. “Don’t feel like playing the violin?” asked Alford confused.\

“I always found the piano to be much more fascinating. All of the great composers who sat in front of this musical instrument…the genius that fell onto keys just like these,” Einstein said as his voice trailed off intermixed with the piano’s soft clamoring.

Bass notes began to filter through the room, and with that, the two men began the musical tango. Alford rung out deep, somber notes as Einstein rambled away from key to key of the ivory. The two scientists, in all of their endeavors, had found a common ground in the foreign territory of a musical ensemble.

It is of no surprise to any who knew Einstein that, reawoken, one of the first things he truly enjoyed doing was playing music. In contrast, Alford, though gifted on the upright bass and proficient at a few other instruments, rarely shared or showcased his talents.

Nevertheless, the two physicists applied their practical knowledge of their respective instruments to a quick tempo and strong, sustained rhythm. Alford looked around the empty room and remembered all of the family moments that came to pass within the space in front of him. The music somehow gave new life to that vision.

“I miss my daughter,” thought Alford to himself as he watched Einstein move back to the old violin.

“I wonder if anyone misses me?” as he continued to parlay across the bass frets in what he had determined was probably, most likely, the Key of C Major.

The music the two played gave a vibrant warmth to the parlor room and as the sunlight glimmered and glinted in through the windows one could imagine the photons slowing themselves down, if only metaphysically, to exist and persist in a room with matter as dense as the brains of the Einstein and Alford.

Einstein, readjusted, began to take the lead again and ferry about the fretless neck of the violin, dutifully if not beautifully. “Although, not perfect,” said Einstein over the music, “there is plenty of purity within imperfections when it comes to music. Yet, with science, this cannot be so.”

Alford was immediately jolted back to cosmic reality with that question.

“You are absolutely right, Albert. What is it about beauty that allows it to require re-definition when discussing science and music?” he said above the tune.

Einstein simply smiled and went back to playing the violin as if he hadn’t heard Alford at all. Maybe he hadn’t. Either way, Alford too simply left the discussion alone with the hopes that it was only one verse of many that were split between one, incredible chorus.

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denimbex1986 · 9 months

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'But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Gen 2:17).

High in the sky on August 9, 1945, two B29s circled above the southern part of Japan. One of them was getting ready to drop a plutonium bomb dubbed “the Fat Man.” But it had developed a malfunction with its fuel pump, so after cloud cover made the military target of Kokura impossible, it was becoming urgent to shed its payload. This is how the second nuclear weapon ever used was detonated right over the heart of the most Catholic area of Japan, Urakami, significantly north of Nagasaki city and the Mitsubishi plant that was meant to be targeted. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, painstakingly built by descendants of the persecuted Christians at the end of the nineteenth century on the very site where their forebears had been interrogated, was destroyed. The spiritual heirs to the twenty-six sixteenth-century martyrs of Nagasaki, along with their non-Christian compatriots, were vaporized, scorched, left homeless.

In Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Oppenheimer, someone states that the first bomb must be dropped in order to show the enemy what America was capable of. But the second bomb would demonstrate the will to keep dropping them, if necessary. For a Catholic, the question nags: where does Just War Theory get to raise its hand in all this? The nobler motives of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project had to do with ending war, not perpetuating it. “Is it big enough?” Niels Bohr asks the director of the project, Robert Oppenheimer. Meaning: will it make a sufficient impression to end the war, once and for all?

From its first reference to Prometheus, punished by the gods for stealing fire and giving it to man, Oppenheimer is punctuated by mythical and religious references (the book on which the film is based is entitled American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer). Perhaps the most disturbing of these are the words from the Bhagavad Gita, spoken by Vishnu to the warrior Arjuna, with which the father of the atomic bomb is said to have marked the successful detonation of the first nuclear test at Los Alamos in July 1945: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” An article on the Los Alamos website insists that Oppenheimer saw himself not as the god, but as the stricken hero, reluctant to go to war but obliged to do so. “To uphold dharma, the power which upholds the cosmos and society, Arjuna must do his duty, which is fight.”

In Nolan’s film, the human representative of Lord Vishnu—his high-priest, you might say—is Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, played with gruff conviction by Matt Damon. It is Groves who, after corralling the country’s most brilliant minds in a two-year effort to build a nuclear weapon before Nazi Germany could, gives Oppenheimer an immovable deadline. They had to have conclusive evidence of the atom bomb’s viability before the Yalta Conference in July 1945. By now Hitler had been defeated. So, what was the purpose of continuing with the project? The ends that justified the means were already being reconfigured.

Batter my heart, three person’d God. It is said (and the film references this) that Oppenheimer chose the code name “Trinity” for the first atomic test because of the John Donne poem that opens with these words. The unconscious depths from which the name arose in Oppenheimer’s mind are not available to us; but the poetry of Donne, with its tension between the sacred and the profane, was something that he shared with his former mistress, Jean Tatlock. At the time Oppenheimer dubbed the world-shattering event in the New Mexican desert with this most Christian of epithets, Jean had been dead for eighteen months. She had committed suicide. The hold of Tatlock on Oppenheimer’s psyche is something that Nolan takes pains to point up. The first time the viewer hears the famous words from the Bhagavad Gita is during their early sexual encounter.

What do you do with the snake you find, after you turn over the stone? This image is first raised by Neils Bohr in Cambridge, where the youthful Oppenheimer has apparently tried to kill his tutor with a poisoned apple. Whatever the truth behind this strange episode (it is apparently a story Oppenheimer told against himself), Nolan presents his Promethean protagonist as an obsessive visionary. Cillian Murphy’s intense and often disturbing performance drives this home. “Gravity gets to swallow everything,” as Oppenheimer says of the imploding stars that lead to black holes.

Later in the film, prompted by Bohr’s words about the serpent unleashed, Oppenheimer tries to rein in the consequences of the discovery he has helped to instrumentalize. This does not sit well with Cold War exigencies. Enter Lewis Strauss (a subtly psychopathic Robert Downey Junior), in whom wounded vanity combined with political ambition compel him to use Oppenheimer’s leftist history to destroy him. He succeeds, but is then hoisted on his own petard.

By the time we get to the end of the film, we have been drenched in every kind of power-play imaginable. While Cillian Murphy’s performance conveys the conscience-stricken horror gradually unfolding in Oppenheimer’s mind, Nolan draws his narrative arc to a close with the man, and only the man. Simultaneously on the cover of Time magazine, whilst being mocked by President Truman for speaking about having blood on his hands, the story ends in the corridors of power. As Strauss puts it: “Survival in Washington is about knowing how to get things done.”

*** Back on the ground, between the sixth and the ninth of August 1945, more than a hundred and twenty thousand Japanese civilians died immediately as the result of those two bombs, which we see leaving Los Alamos in their wooden packing cases. Hundreds of thousands died later of radiation poisoning, then cancer and other diseases resulting from the nuclear fallout. Then of course there were the victims of the atomic testing itself. Chris Nolan has referred to the geographical location of the Manhattan Project as “the desolation of where they built Los Alamos.” In fact, this was not a totally unpopulated area. The fallout from the first atomic test, not to mention the subsequent ones, affected the seemingly invisible inhabitants of the New Mexico desert. Hispanic farmers who kept sheep on the land, Navajo Indians whose territory it actually was (there is a fleeting reference to this in the film when a chastened, more circumspect Oppenheimer suggests giving the area “back to the Indians”). Not to mention wildlife. All these suffered the consequences of the atomic tests—and the rural communities went, for the most part, without compensation.

There is another film that I watched in the same week as I watched Oppenheimer, which has a somewhat different take on how the powerless suffer at the hands of worldly power. This is Alice Rohrwacher’s 2018 Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro). The film depicts another isolated and impoverished rural community, enslaved as unpaid tobacco growers by the local land-owner (chain-smoking is the one thing that runs through both films).

It is only when the landowner’s son pulls out a mobile phone that we realize these serf-like peasants are not living in some distant historical period. Finally, they are “liberated” by the carabinieri, who transport them to the city, where they are oppressed in a different way, forced to live in a disused oil tank near the railway tracks. In one scene, people seeking work are invited to bid for casual employment by reducing the hourly wage they are prepared to accept. The first one to be taken on offers to work for just one euro an hour.

What makes Lazzaro Felice special is a magical realist atmosphere that somehow shifts the burden of indignity away from the obvious victims. More than anything else, the mysterious central character of Lazzaro embodies the very thing that is so disturbing in the ethos depicted in Oppenheimer. A seemingly simple-minded young peasant who never aggresses against a single creature, Lazzaro evolves into a holy fool over whom death and time have lost their grip. When he falls down a steep hillside and by rights should be fatally injured, the local wolves refuse to harm him, just as the wolf of Gubbio refused to harm Saint Francis. The motif of the wolf is one that Rohrwacher brings in again at the end of the film, a witness to the vulpine mendacity of “civilized” society. It is not intended to be a Christian parable (the Church comes out as badly as anyone else), but yet it is. Lazzaro, who ceases to age whilst everyone else does, ends up bringing warmth and hope to those his life touches.

In Nagasaki, there was a real-life holy fool who bears comparison to this. His name is Takashi Nagai. He was a highly intelligent doctor specializing in radiology; he was also a Christian convert. Just as Lazzaro’s innocence exposes the corruption around him, the scandalous hermeneutic of Nagasaki’s bombing is put in relief by Nagai’s response. He exhorted his compatriots to forgive the atrocity done to them, and to rebuild with faith and trust. The Franciscan thread reappears here too, for the Franciscan monastery near Nagasaki, founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe in the 1930s, was spared destruction by the sheltered position its founder chose for it: on the other side of a mountain, allowing the friars to give invaluable help to the victims of the bombing.

For his part, throughout the six years that Nagai lived on after the bomb had incinerated his wife and given him severe radiation poisoning, Nagai lived in a makeshift hut and simply tried to be of service to others. With his hospital, not to mention his health, in ruins, he carried on practicing medicine. He wrote books and counseled those who lived in despair. He embraced the Hibakusha whose keloid scarring made them the social lepers of their time.

Not far from where Nagai lived, close to the Sanno Shinto shrine that was destroyed like the Cathedral, there stands a strange architectural remnant. The ceremonial gate to the original shrine, known as a Torii: one of its legs was obliterated in the atomic blast, and its twisted lintel is supported solely by the remaining leg. A ritual gateway smashed by the bid for a knowledge that brings death in its wake, it has been wrought into something resembling a Franciscan Tau, or cross. Like the saints who occasionally lighten the darkness of our world, the maimed structure should not still be standing. And yet it is.'

#Nagasaki #Oppenheimer #Leslie Groves #Niels Bohr #Fat Man #Christopher Nolan #American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer #The Manhattan Project #Bhagavad Gita #Better My Heart #John Donne #Trinity #Matt Damon #Lewis Strauss #Robert Downey Jr.#Lazzaro Felice #Alice Rohrwacher #Cillian Murphy #Jean Tatlock

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callistomeadowforge · 2 years

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Task 005: The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree

As the baby of the family, Konner grew up somewhat coddled. He was not exactly spoiled, but he received--and still does receive--a lot of attention from his parents and older sister. The Bohrs are quite a tight-knit family by District 13 standard; they spend as much time as they can together and are always watching over each other. In Konner’s case, the apple practically falls right at the foot of the tree. He looks up to his parents a lot and is in fact very similar to them, inheriting his mother’s candor and his father’s extraversion.

#ruleandtask #tadffftt #130

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micahammon · 3 years

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All the walls are crumbling because they were never real

I’m moving into belief. I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand the nature of life and identify the construction of right and wrong, truth and illusion. It’s a fascinating process and I know I’ll never be done with it, and that’s exciting and makes life interesting. But I feel like I’ve come to a point in my process of discovery something like scientists did when they discovered quantum physics.

In Newtonian physics everything has a cause and effect. There exists a linear relationship between action and consequence. That is true and will continue to be so forever. But Newtonian physics cannot describe everything that happens in the material world. When the scale of matter becomes really small, on the level of atoms, Newtonian physics no longer succeeds as a theory. Atoms are governed by different laws, and quantum theory, as bizarre and unintuitive as it is, continues to be proven true.

Physical reality is made up of two theories which have yet to be reconciled. Although they appear to be incompatible, compatible they must be. The physical world and everything we see with the naked eye is built on the foundation of the irrational and the impossible. The particles which we are made of can move within and without time, be in two places at the same time, and seemingly violate the universal speed limit--the speed of light. Particles can be physical matter which take up space in the physical world, and at the same time, be a wave--like a radio wave if you will. Somehow reality is built upon this impossibility.

"Reality is far fetched. The truth is always a long shot."

As modern humans, we are in a precarious place. A detached place. Our roots are no longer in the soil of the earth which gives us life. We are living in the world of biological theory, political theory, economic theory, etc.--which all function very well and have allowed us to advance incredibly once understood and applied. What is the logical conclusion from this process?

We learn natural laws that we might better understand spiritual laws.

I remember in the first computer science class I took at university, my teacher drew a picture on the board, something like the following...

And then he asked the question, “What’s missing?”. He answered his own question by saying “antimatter”. Then he filled in the “antimatter” absent from view, something like this...

Note: I’m a bad artist but I tried to draw the inverse of what was originally visible.

So what’s the logical conclusion of reality? Reality is a paradox. There’s always a catch.

Note: The teacher then went on to name laughter as an example of something behaving like antimatter. In this regard, we can theorize that antimatter comes in to play where we have inflection points. That’s useful to think about in the context of the choices we make, day by day.

Note 2: Antimatter, which cannot be seen, “refers to sub-atomic particles [that] have properties opposite those of normal matter.” It’s useful to note that this is in the quantum world, where perhaps, we could say that everything there is existing simultaneously.

I think the first paradox was in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth. They were also commanded not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The problem which may not be obvious depending on your brand of Christianity is that Adam and Eve apparently could not keep both commandments at the same time. They were in a state of innocence and could not procreate without first creating the fall through eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I’ve heard it said that what may appear to be contradictory to us is not to God, and that somehow He can balance two conditions in perfect harmony which appear mutually exclusive. I don’t know how God could do it in the example of the Garden of Eden, but I do think we should learn to try it in other areas.

I am nothing. I am everything.

Helaman 12:7 O how great is the nothingness of the children of men; yea, even they are less than the dust of the earth.

John 10:34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’?

Through the course of a day we may need to remind ourselves of either of these quotes. What’s important is that we have to choose to put the concept into use in order to humble or inspire ourselves as needed. We have to draw up the belief then let it guide.

All truth is paradox.

My brother once responded to the above statement by saying that the paradox of truth serves as the fuel for free agency. That is an extremely instructive comment, which makes me think of Einstein’s dissatisfaction with the then emerging theory of quantum physics. When Einstein analyzed and documented the workings of the universe, he did so from the perspective of trying to understand the mind of God. He disbelieved the theory of quantum mechanics presented by Niels Bohr; the same theory that today continues to be scientifically verifiable. What he objected to was that in this explanation of the universe, the natural world became a lot more random. It seemed to diminish the role of the Master Designer. Einstein’s famous quote was “God does not play dice (with the universe)”.

I sometimes think that quantum physics only appears mysterious and random to us because we cannot see the complete picture, we are only seeing the effects of things in the physical world and perhaps there are other counterparts like antimatter that we can’t see (but can detect) and even beyond that, other counterparts we can’t even detect with clever testing.

On the other hand, there is beauty in accepting the concept of an “uncreate Reality” that can represent the quantum state. We in the Newtonian state have become the created Reality which “shows forth in our beings the uncreate Reality.” That is to say, our physical world and our physical selves are manifestations of the uncreated reality.

Alma 30:44 ...all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator...

What we see here in this world is a manifestation of God and the uncreate Reality beyond. Said in different words we have the following:

“For the Source of All Life created the worlds by dividing Its Unmanifest Unity into the manifesting Duality, and we that are created show forth in our beings the uncreate Reality. Each living soul has its roots in the Unmanifest and draws thence its life, and by going back to the Unmanifest we find fulness of life.“

The uncreated reality represents a primordial place from which the physical world is drawn into being from. This place we could liken to the quantum state. I make this comparison because when we can understand a concept in the real world, it helps us to have the faith or belief to put it into practice for our own benefit.

To address Einstein’s concerns, quantum mechanics may actually be evidence of God’s will to give us more free agency by providing an uncreate Reality with which we can interact. For one, It provides some “randomness” whereby everything that happens is not simply a predestined linear result of cause and effect--thereby, we cannot blame every thing that happens as a direct consequence of God’s original first act of creation (whereby He would have known the exact consequences of every single thing to ever happen, and the only intrigue in all of it would be our discovery of the result). Secondly, and more importantly, the interconnection of the quantum and Newtonian world can become for us a primordial wellspring from which we too can create. I am suggesting that it is belief and faith which allows us to materialize things in the physical world. Even as God himself does.

Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God...

Lastly, the context of reality, or truth being a paradox further bolsters free agency because it provides choice, even as it did for our first parents. The choices you choose to make are based on what you first choose to believe. In the paradox, you are able to believe whichever aspect you choose to focus on because it also has basis in reality.

I don’t speak of the choice between good and evil, but rather the choice between beliefs. Belief is a tool you can use to do good or harmful things.

I think it’s important to iterate that prerogative is a part of free agency and choice.

Doctrine and Covenants 58:27 Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness.

We know we should do many good things of our own free will and choice but those choices will naturally be more oriented to our own dispositions. The challenge is not to confuse limiting beliefs about ourselves with what is our true nature and disposition. In fact, what I am getting at is that we should use faith and belief to overcome our limitings habits, beliefs and worldview.

I reckon that beliefs become powerful as they connect to internal desire. Since that is the case, it is instructive to follow the path of our own personal orientation and if there are lessons to be learned, we will learn them much, much faster if we are making the choice for ourselves rather than merely trying to follow someone else’s instruction. That’s because belief is the thing that supercharges our experience.

With belief in play we can properly channel the “why” to our actions and attendant effects in the real world. If we err, the “why” will be there to make clear the error of our ways. Notwithstanding, in the middle of all of this is God’s intervention to steer us from unneeded error if we stray off course, and which can be greatly aided by our responsiveness to His Spirit.

Let’s introduce something which is not a paradox but tends to be polemic.

Brigham Young said that “we live far beneath our privileges” because we fail to seek and receive the guidance the Lord wants to give us in our spiritual and temporal affairs.

This instruction is meant to help us lay claim to what might be ours but it can also paralyze us if we don’t engage with the belief that we will actually receive it. Successfully gaining access to guidance from the Lord is usually based on the belief and faith we put into it. The important thing is that we need to use belief to create the reality and then it follows that we will receive the guidance. However, we also have to put belief and faith into a great many other things of which we proceed with in lieu of guidance because...

Doctrine and Covenants 58:26 For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things...

We must build and develop our ability to seek and understand guidance from the Lord but most times His guidance works like a signpost as we navigate. It helps us stay on course but there are a million decisions we must make for ourselves along the way by “using [our] best judgement”.

In my experience the contrast between God having a personal prerogative and objective in the management of choices and not having a prerogative is plainly evident in the line between church affairs and private affairs. When it comes to the administration of callings and duties within the Church I have witnessed an extremely high level of involvement from the Lord. If you pay attention you can see that He is almost constantly involved and directing. The Lord really, really cares about His work.

As soon as you move away from the realm of the administration of His Church, guidance is much more sparse. It truly feels like our personal lives are meant to be a learning experience through trial and error--a sort of experimentation. It does help us develop our own capabilities bit by bit. When you think about it, that really makes more sense anyways. Perhaps it also allows us to make mistakes without the additional condemnation we might receive if we had access to more from beyond the veil.

On the other hand, as I consider what will happen in the future as the world is thrown into turmoil and we all begin the work of building Zion I reckon that the line between church affairs and private affairs will become almost indecipherable--and I know that there will be an abundance of guidance as such in order to complete God’s work. There is something to be said for living like that already, here and now.

Gospel of Thomas 22: When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female...

The world is separating from a longstanding known reality. Social systems are being dismantled with an intention to reengineer them. Truth and science have become weaponized. We are dependent on technology more and more. Algorithms and big data will rule our lives. Breakages will occur. Power grids will be threatened. IT infrastructure will be compromised. Natural resources will become scarce. There will be natural disasters. Financial systems will collapse. Some of these things will be unplanned, others intentional.

I’ve always thought it so peculiar the human creature existing on this planet. All the animals on the earth have been endowed with instincts which directly provision their survival. Many young animals are taught survival skills during infancy, that is true, but even if they lose their mother, their instincts will guide them the rest of the way.

Humans on the other hand are nearly helpless without the knowledge passed on from generation to generation. At this point we’ve already lost our connection to mother earth. In our quest to master nature we have also sought to remove ourselves from nature--mother nature and also what we might call human nature.

As the walls crumble around us and the very ground is swept from under our feet, our only choice is to evolve and learn to fly.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Faith and belief will enable many to do things which we previously knew to be impossible in the Newtonian world. To evolve means to move beyond the structures (spiritual and otherwise) we have upheld for sake of dogma. Those structures will be shaken. God’s work will not fail but we are to learn not to look beyond the mark. Ultimately, to evolve will result in having our natures changed into that resembling God as we learn to create/do through faith and belief.

For those whose trust remains in the shifting sands of the world’s social, economic, political and even scientific structures--they will be left without root and branch to stand on.

We’ll have to act for ourselves rather than be acted upon. We have to use faith and belief to power those actions or else it will be hollow inside and our hearts will ultimately fail us.

Luke 21:26 Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth...

Let’s go back to the world of very small particles...

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed...

Matthew 17:19-20 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

I’ve always thought it so curious that basically the whole point of our existence on this earth is to learn to exercise faith and belief. Before we can really do anything, the important first step is starting with a real belief that we can do the thing we set out to do. When we supercharge our actions with belief, the universe responds.

I posit that we on this earth are here to learn to become co-creators with God--creating through faith just as God does.

Sometimes we are able to energize belief through our belief in others, but it’s not always enough, as I believe was the case with the disciples of Jesus referenced in the example above and Oliver Cowdery desiring to participate in translating the Book of Mormon.

Doctrine and Covenants 9:11 Behold, it was expedient when you commenced; but you feared, and the time is past, and it is not expedient now;

Let it be noted that this was free agency in action, since it wasn’t in the original design of God that Oliver Cowdry participate in the translation, but it would have been permitted if he had faith enough.

Because God wanted Joseph to translate, He gave him extra strength to be able to do it.

Doctrine and Covenants 9:11 For, do you not behold that I have given unto my servant Joseph sufficient strength, whereby it is made up?

To aid with the translation of the Book of Mormon Joseph received special seer stones called the Urim and Thummim. What’s curious is that Joseph often used his own seer stone rather than strictly relying on the Urim and Thummim. Eventually Joseph had enough faith to do without seer stones altogether as he continued to receive revelations. I believe that the Urim and Thummim were there to build his belief and make up for his strength until he was able to fully energize belief in himself, his ability.

Believe that you have received it, and it will be yours

One thing that hurts belief is by having a narrow view based on the here and now. When we think of how things are supposed to happen in the Newtonian world we limit the power of the supernatural quantum, timeless uncreate Reality which is boundless. We have to allow for the uncreate Reality, unintuitive non-Newtonian world to intercede. We connect to this state though the particle of belief.

As long as I believe in myself I find I can do certain things. If I ceased to believe in myself, I think I should just crumble into dust, like an unwrapped mummy.

I have said all of this in order to say this, we need to use belief daily in order to shape our lives in the way that we truly wish them to be. Our lives have ended up the way they are precisely because of the beliefs we have engaged about ourselves, others and the nature of reality. If you say that you belief that life can be grand and beautiful but you spend your days dejected and depressed, then you aren’t engaging the grand and beautiful beliefs. Whether we like it or not, beliefs are constantly directing our lives.

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything either as a blessing or a curse.”

There are indeed blessings and curses in our lives but we cannot ascribe our current condition to merely a result of those two things. In addition, we need to enlarge the gratitude we feel for the blessings and overlook where possible the curses. Feeling gratitude will enlarge our beliefs and strengthen the conduit between us and the Divine.

When we engage in belief in order to shape and direct our lives we cannot merely state a belief and then forget about it. We have to return to the belief day after day.

I have been reading about 45 books a year for the last 5 years. I set a goal on a website which helps track my progress and keeps me motivated. The first year I started the reading challenge I set my goal as 100 books for the year. I didn’t have experience and I didn’t really know what that meant though. It was an idle, pie in the sky wish. I didn’t return to the goal frequently. I forgot about it most of the year and I finished with 33 books that year.

That reminds me of Oliver Cowdry’s wish to participate in the translation of the Book of Mormon. If he had more experience or at least consistent belief he could have succeeded. The same was true of me. Experience does help, in so far as it helps to reduce fear since we have better bearings on the task before us. Perhaps fear is like antimatter.

That’s the tricky thing with belief and faith. If we have enough faith we could actually move mountains. But most of us probably don’t have enough belief to make that happen. But we could and that promise is available for us, but perhaps we misunderstand something about belief.

Mark 11:23-24 (NIV) Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

The NIV translation makes more clear something which has caught on with new age spirituality, like in books such as The Secret, and others which profess the power of manifesting in our lives by using the so-called law of attraction.

New age spirituality has brought us the power of meditation and living mindfully, which have slowly come into mainstream Christianity and that includes the LDS church.

And indeed, meditation and mindfulness are key parts of nurturing belief as I am prescribing. The current problem we have with incubating belief is that, as mentioned above, we already have many beliefs which are like weeds choking out the good belief that we want to use to empower our lives. We live barely cognizant of the incessant, mind-numbing chatter going on about our heads. You can consider all the thoughts that jump into our minds as competing beliefs. It’s a battlefield for our minds and our empowering beliefs may fall casualty if we don’t learn to quiet the mind and focus. That enables us to act for ourselves rather than to be acted upon.

The first thing we need to do with the mind is wash it, clean it up, not only once or twice a day as we do for the body but in all our waking moments.

Similarly...

Doctrine & Covenants 121:45 let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly...

A way which helps me practice a chosen belief is to do an experiment of thought. What I mean is that on a given day I may tell myself that I am doing an experiment of thinking that day and that helps me to suspend disbelief as I am merely there to analyze and watch the results of what happens, rather than to prove veracity or to gauge the level of real belief. I did one experiment of imagining each person as I would my own self.

Mark 12:31 love thy neighbor as thyself

I really did feel something wonderful that day.

That’s one reason I say that...

life works best when undertaken as an experiment

Sometimes if we put too much pressure on the act itself, we enlarge the importance of a thing beyond what it truly is. We have to maintain calm levity and not worry about the result; to laugh instead of get caught up in an act’s undue significance. In this way we can shake off a thousand mistakes of ego and bad humor which sabotage us.

the fatal flaw is that average men take themselves too seriously

The balance has been described this way...

Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. [He regards] nothing as being more important than anything else. A man of knowledge [can thusly] choose any act, and act it out as if it matters to him.

So to apply all of this in a practical way let me tell you my plans. I am making and setting goals, big lofty goals. I am aiming for 5 years to enter more fully into the vision I see for my life. I will meditate and pray each day and return again and again to the beliefs--multiple times each day in fact--which I think are necessary to empower me to achieve my goals. I don’t know exactly how things will happen, but I do believe in the scriptures referenced, including the very words of Jesus Christ. I consider it already done because I have picked up the rod, which at the far end connects to the result. The point of access where I grip the rod is belief.

Update Apr 22, 2021: This video supports my view of free will and quantum mechanics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMb00lz-IfE

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themightyfoo · 3 years

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For almost a century, quantum physics has been dominated by the Copenhagen Interpretation. Developed by Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the CI is best understood as a way of interpreting how reality corresponds to quantum physics equations. The CI is not the only interpretation - there are several others - but it is so widely taught that it is basic to physics education.

According to the CI, at the microscopic level material objects like atoms, electrons and photons generally do not have definite properties like position and momentum before you measure them. Instead, they have a distribution of possible positions and momentums. If you take a measurement to determine exactly where the particle is, the probability collapses; there is no longer uncertainty as to its location. But in the course of measuring its location you changed other properties of the particle, and they are no longer the same as they were the moment before you measured it.

So in CI, the observer is all-important. CI implicitly places great emphasis on the idea that every individual has a conscious mind that is independent and entirely separate from every other mind. It's baked right into this interpretation of physical reality.

Enter quantum computing. An entirely new class of computers is emerging which uses quantum effects to power and run software. These new machines will leave older computer technology behind in the dust. But along the way this research is undermining the foundations of the CI with profound implications for human consciousness, even the question of life after death.

In a nutshell, the new research is calling into question the assumption that there can be any such thing as an independent observer. And if there can be no independent observers, then there can be no separate minds. This in turn means that your own conscious awareness cannot have originated from within your body; it can only originate from the Universe as a whole. So it's not matter that gives rise to consciousness, it's the other way around: consciousness gives rise to matter. This consciousness is of necessity universal and undivided, since independent observers cannot exist.

Your individual conscious awareness is only an illusion. The true seat of consciousness is the Universe itself.

It follows that "your" consciousness did not originate when your body was conceived, nor will it cease when your body dies. Your consciousness will survive the death of your body because it never came from your body in the first place. Your body is just an I/O device; it provides a mechanism for you to interact with the world, and it shapes your perception of the world in very powerful ways, but it isn't actually the seat of your consciousness. It's rather like your computer: you have a CPU and hard disk that handles computation and runs software, and you have peripherals like monitors and keyboards that handle input and output. But other than the software drivers that operate the peripherals, your I/O devices play no part in executing programs.

In some ways, death and rebirth is akin to swapping out your keyboard and monitor but keeping your CPU and hard disk (which gets backed up and wiped - sometimes imperfectly, leading to lingering past life memories in a few rare individuals.)

So where does your awareness come from, if it is only channeled by your body but does not arise from it? In CI, reality is determined by the random chance results of observations. If the CI fails, we must look for alternative interpretations. One of these, quantum superdeterminism, has been around as long as the CI but has never been popular among physicists because it has some psychologically disturbing implications. In superdeterminism it is not observation or random chance that collapses the quantum wave function. Instead, all of reality functions like an immense computer and has done so ever since it began.

In superdeterminism there is no free will anywhere in the Universe except for the choices made at the instant it began. The initial creation of the Universe used up all true freedom of choice, and ever since then there has been one and only one way that the Universe can unfold. Nothing, not even the Universal consciousness itself, can alter how reality unfolds once it begins. The Universe is irrevocably committed to executing its program. We conjecture that this program can never terminate, but we can never be certain of that since we are inside it - and a program can never self-determine whether it will end (this is the well-known Halting Problem.)

We appear to have free will only because our knowledge is localized. If we somehow possessed omniscience we would only render ourselves impotent since we would see through the parlor trick of individual free will; we would be trapped by our own complete knowledge of the program states and helpless to alter them in any way. Our existence would become static for all time.

The Multiverse can spawn new Universes, but each will be a child of its parent and must inherit the initial conditions of its parent. Child Universes have no true free will either, it was all used up in the selection of initial conditions for the Multiverse in some unimaginably remote, timeless past. The initial conditions of the Multiverse can never be known, even in principle. We are all participating in the same vast cosmic program, and are bound by its iron rules.

So the veil between life and death is of paramount importance. It is necessary to limit conscious awareness in both time and space to maintain the vital illusion of individual existence and free will, lest we become trapped in a static existence for the rest of time.

This is why death is an impenetrable veil whose secrets must forever be hidden from the living.

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sciencespies · 4 years

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Physicists just found a new quantum paradox that casts doubt on a pillar of reality

https://sciencespies.com/physics/physicists-just-found-a-new-quantum-paradox-that-casts-doubt-on-a-pillar-of-reality/

Physicists just found a new quantum paradox that casts doubt on a pillar of reality

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say.

And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion.

We have found a new paradox in quantum mechanics – one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein’s theory of relativity – that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality.

Quantum mechanics vs common sense

Take a look at these three statements:

When someone observes an event happening, it really happened.

It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices.

A choice made in one place can’t instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this “locality”.)

These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, published in Nature Physics, shows they cannot all be true – or quantum mechanics itself must break down at some level.

This is the strongest result yet in a long series of discoveries in quantum mechanics that have upended our ideas about reality. To understand why it’s so important, let’s look at this history.

The battle for reality

Quantum mechanics works extremely well to describe the behaviour of tiny objects, such as atoms or particles of light (photons). But that behaviour is … very odd.

In many cases, quantum theory doesn’t give definite answers to questions such as “where is this particle right now?” Instead, it only provides probabilities for where the particle might be found when it is observed.

For Niels Bohr, one of the founders of the theory a century ago, that’s not because we lack information, but because physical properties like “position” don’t actually exist until they are measured.

And what’s more, because some properties of a particle can’t be perfectly observed simultaneously – such as position and velocity – they can’t be real simultaneously.

No less a figure than Albert Einstein found this idea untenable. In a 1935 article with fellow theorists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he argued there must be more to reality than what quantum mechanics could describe.

The article considered a pair of distant particles in a special state now known as an “entangled” state. When the same property (say, position or velocity) is measured on both entangled particles, the result will be random – but there will be a correlation between the results from each particle.

For example, an observer measuring the position of the first particle could perfectly predict the result of measuring the position of the distant one, without even touching it. Or the observer could choose to predict the velocity instead. This had a natural explanation, they argued, if both properties existed before being measured, contrary to Bohr’s interpretation.

However, in 1964 Northern Irish physicist John Bell found Einstein’s argument broke down if you carried out a more complicated combination of different measurements on the two particles.

Bell showed that if the two observers randomly and independently choose between measuring one or another property of their particles, like position or velocity, the average results cannot be explained in any theory where both position and velocity were pre-existing local properties.

That sounds incredible, but experiments have now conclusively demonstrated Bell’s correlations do occur. For many physicists, this is evidence that Bohr was right: physical properties don’t exist until they are measured.

But that raises the crucial question: what is so special about a “measurement”?

The observer, observed

In 1961, the Hungarian-American theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner devised a thought experiment to show what’s so tricky about the idea of measurement.

He considered a situation in which his friend goes into a tightly sealed lab and performs a measurement on a quantum particle – its position, say.

However, Wigner noticed that if he applied the equations of quantum mechanics to describe this situation from the outside, the result was quite different. Instead of the friend’s measurement making the particle’s position real, from Wigner’s perspective the friend becomes entangled with the particle and infected with the uncertainty that surrounds it.

This is similar to Schrödinger’s famous cat, a thought experiment in which the fate of a cat in a box becomes entangled with a random quantum event.

For Wigner, this was an absurd conclusion. Instead, he believed that once the consciousness of an observer becomes involved, the entanglement would “collapse” to make the friend’s observation definite.

But what if Wigner was wrong?

Our experiment

In our research, we built on an extended version of the Wigner’s friend paradox, first proposed by Časlav Brukner of the University of Vienna. In this scenario, there are two physicists – call them Alice and Bob – each with their own friends (Charlie and Debbie) in two distant labs.

There’s another twist: Charlie and Debbie are now measuring a pair of entangled particles, like in the Bell experiments.

As in Wigner’s argument, the equations of quantum mechanics tell us Charlie and Debbie should become entangled with their observed particles. But because those particles were already entangled with each other, Charlie and Debbie themselves should become entangled – in theory.

But what does that imply experimentally?

Our experiment goes like this: the friends enter their labs and measure their particles. Some time later, Alice and Bob each flip a coin. If it’s heads, they open the door and ask their friend what they saw. If it’s tails, they perform a different measurement.

This different measurement always gives a positive outcome for Alice if Charlie is entangled with his observed particle in the way calculated by Wigner. Likewise for Bob and Debbie.

In any realisation of this measurement, however, any record of their friend’s observation inside the lab is blocked from reaching the external world. Charlie or Debbie will not remember having seen anything inside the lab, as if waking up from total anaesthesia.

But did it really happen, even if they don’t remember it?

If the three intuitive ideas at the beginning of this article are correct, each friend saw a real and unique outcome for their measurement inside the lab, independent of whether or not Alice or Bob later decided to open their door. Also, what Alice and Charlie see should not depend on how Bob’s distant coin lands, and vice versa.

We showed that if this were the case, there would be limits to the correlations Alice and Bob could expect to see between their results. We also showed that quantum mechanics predicts Alice and Bob will see correlations that go beyond those limits.

Next, we did an experiment to confirm the quantum mechanical predictions using pairs of entangled photons. The role of each friend’s measurement was played by one of two paths each photon may take in the setup, depending on a property of the photon called “polarisation”. That is, the path “measures” the polarisation.

Our experiment is only really a proof of principle, since the “friends” are very small and simple. But it opens the question whether the same results would hold with more complex observers.

We may never be able to do this experiment with real humans. But we argue that it may one day be possible to create a conclusive demonstration if the “friend” is a human-level artificial intelligence running in a massive quantum computer.

What does it all mean?

Although a conclusive test may be decades away, if the quantum mechanical predictions continue to hold, this has strong implications for our understanding of reality – even more so than the Bell correlations.

For one, the correlations we discovered cannot be explained just by saying that physical properties don’t exist until they are measured.

Now the absolute reality of measurement outcomes themselves is called into question.

Our results force physicists to deal with the measurement problem head on: either our experiment doesn’t scale up, and quantum mechanics gives way to a so-called “objective collapse theory“, or one of our three common-sense assumptions must be rejected.

There are theories, like de Broglie-Bohm, that postulate “action at a distance”, in which actions can have instantaneous effects elsewhere in the universe. However, this is in direct conflict with Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Some search for a theory that rejects freedom of choice, but they either require backwards causality, or a seemingly conspiratorial form of fatalism called “superdeterminism”.

Another way to resolve the conflict could be to make Einstein’s theory even more relative. For Einstein, different observers could disagree about when or where something happens – but what happens was an absolute fact.

However, in some interpretations, such as relational quantum mechanics, QBism, or the many-worlds interpretation, events themselves may occur only relative to one or more observers. A fallen tree observed by one may not be a fact for everyone else.

All of this does not imply that you can choose your own reality. Firstly, you can choose what questions you ask, but the answers are given by the world. And even in a relational world, when two observers communicate, their realities are entangled. In this way a shared reality can emerge.

Which means that if we both witness the same tree falling and you say you can’t hear it, you might just need a hearing aid.

Eric Cavalcanti, Associate Professor (ARC Future Fellow), Griffith University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Physics

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moore0625-blog · 4 years

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Multipurpose Education

It may be interesting to talk about the connection between structure and function between the origin of life and the origin of the universe. Not in a comparative meaning But in such a way that all systems in nature work The assumptions of the general model between life and the universe are not original. Pribram (1969), Bohm (1986) and Talbot (1991) propose a possible connection between the work of organic life. (Especially the brain) and the nature of the universe The Holographic theory that they support assumes that everything in the biological and cosmic domains is part of a singular whole - not a black hole, but a fractional part. Overall, everything responds to it and has structure and function. Intertwined

This idea is exciting and criticized - the latter is because it is a model, not only But it's hard to prove empirically But still difficult Vu Learning to create ideas For example, you may be asked What is "connective tissue" involved, and what is the wave function that turns a part into a part through a disturbance pattern? Although some studies and theories have raised the level of optimism about the existence of wave patterns (Pietsch 1981), there is no evidence for this idea.

Despite this kind of criticism, it is possible to make a claim. On the other hand, almost all theoretical physics is based on speculation. Newton, Einstein, Planck, and Heisenberg provide insights and evidence about "anything" in physics, but they can't give "why". That is specifically explained why. Gravity is different from other forces and why the universe is like that. Why become hot and isomorphic bodies? Why are subatomic particles able to avoid the classical laws of physics, requiring everything to be positioned specifically to move from point A to point B, which has both position and momentum. * Even the important principles of quantum mechanics Is that all phenomena consist of discrete energy and packet matter (Separate objects instead of full wave continuous envelopes) which cause conflicts because in some cases, of course The types of matter look like waves of particles in other bodies. The format used depends on whether observers measure these qualities or not.

Although quantum theorists (actually adherents, because their operations seem to be solid) believe that the work of waves and particles is both quantum phenomena, it seems that there are problems with waves because waves have Nature is continuous and can go in all directions, turns around without boundaries. How do you define something as a discrete data packet?

The nature of "quantitative" seems to require the position and momentum gained instead of a vague binary, a probable process. On the one hand, to the subatomic level, quantum interpretation can be said to be more consistent with locals than to non-locals. However, not only But will show that the interaction of the particles is not local But they can also interact with other particles that they first touched (Even beyond the speed of light) ... Einstein called them "

Einstein is one of the critics of the unlimited nature of quantum, which he believes is not really necessary to study physics. * Although his criticism is a critic of Neil Bohr, he is reasonable. For physical exaggeration If he stays longer, he may continue to criticize him, not just because of the existence of unproven theories. (Or can not prove) many such as very important theory, superstring theory, gravity theory, eddy holographic theory and theory (from string theory) and many other theories because no one observes atoms or electrons or photons at In fact, the terms "particles" and "atoms" are defined differently as groups of energy or matter. No one knows what they are.

This tells us that when people use all the Byzantine equations written on the blackboard to prove that certain theories "Matching math" is not the opposite, right ... Physicists are still trying to define elephants like blind people.

Anthropology ...

One of the most interesting problems in theoretical physics is based on human principles. If it's a metaphysical effort to explain why observational results will change the results, this is an interesting attempt. In particular, it seems that by measuring / observing the path and position of the particles, we have changed another This shows that we are forbidden to discover. Almost like the admonition of God to Adam and Eve, he did not want humans to eat from the tree of knowledge. But this distortion gives the most basic ingredient of nature the ability to curtail his most complex knowledge.

that

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thatsnotcanonpodcasts · 4 years

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Pokémon Crash, Beetles & Fox Movies

Hello and welcome to another illuminating episode of fun and frivolity with those goofballs from Nerds Amalgamated. First up we have a story about how Nintendo are crashing Roku devices. That’s right, Nintendo have an issue with Pokémon Sword and Shield that is causing Roku to crash and shut down. Now if you want to know more you will need to listen in and then you can tell us what you think in our Facebook group if you think Buck is being to grumpy.

Next up we have the start of Jurassic Park with a beetle trapped in amber. That’s right, a real beetle trapped in amber. This one in particular is historical due to a few important factors, such as the age of the beetle. Would you believe it was around almost 100 million years ago? That’s right and it played an important part in the local ecology. Want to know how the listen in for our second story and then tell us what was your favourite part of the Jurassic Park movies?

Last up we have those poor people at Disney having to vault movies to try and increase the value and increase the margins. That’s right, since Disney the evil organization seeing world domination have bought Fox media they have begun to reduce access to Fox movies to create a false scarcity. This is only one of the underhanded things that they are doing, if you want to know more you know what to do. Also let us know what you think about these dirty tricks by Disney in our group.

Pokémon Sword and Shield crashing Roku devices - https://www.cnet.com/how-to/pokemon-sword-and-shield-are-making-rokus-crash-nintendo-switch/

A beetle in amber - https://www.futurity.org/beetle-in-amber-first-flower-pollination-2208542-2/

Fox Movies being vaulted by Disney - https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/disney-is-quietly-placing-classic-fox-movies-into-its-vault.html

Games currently playing

Buck

– Spyro - https://store.steampowered.com/app/996580/Spyro_Reignited_Trilogy/

Rating – 4.5/5

Prof

– DNP

– Age of Empires Definitive Edition bundle - https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/11831/Age_of_Empires_Definitive_Edition_Bundle/

Rating – 4/5