Try, fail and try again. Trial and error is the basis of evolution. But is the concept limited to biological workings? I want to divulge my own perspective on evolution and its siblings, who as a family relentlessly brings the world into states of greater complexity.

To do this, I reuse the term evolution and let this new evolution have two characteristics

1. For each version of evolution, there is a group of subjects that manifest and disappear (live and die).
2. Transcending those lives, is a concept which is made more complex by this process.

The eternal evolution

Take stars, for instance. Brown dwarves live long lives, blue giants short lives. They all explode eventually and spread dense matter that ends up in other solar systems. That is their interaction. The concept that evolves, is the distribution of elements. Our solar system is of the third generation, which means the elements we are made out of, have been involved with two stars before. Otherwise, there’d only be hydrogen and helium. This evolution of matter made life possible.

On our own planet, then, you eventually got the biological evolution, the prime example. It started out as evolution of structures: inevitably, only the stable ones remained. Then, when life was truly starting to form, producing bodies and movement, competition took over. The changes that evolution made on its subjects, varied greatly as the complexity rose. At first, you would see genes multiplying, forming two body parts where there used to be one. In time, the genetic “programming language” was extended, and changes could happen in more ways. More interestingly, they could surface as preferences, desires, feelings, things that were previously unknown and irrelevant for early evolution.

Entering ideas

A lot later, with the introduction of communication, evolution could work on ideas.  Human beings introduced complex language, and soon, the new lives  of evolution were governments, empires, religions, and art. Ideas have been growing and multiplying beside us humans ever since we started having them. At some point, they started acting on their own and having great impact on our short lives. Our ideas have long since outgrown us.

Sure, we designed them and we keep them alive; but the systems, functions and institutions of our society move us around like puppets at times. Evolution can only work so fast to change them, and the momentum of these titans is undeniable. We enter into these abstract organisms and take on roles that are different from our own nature, working for their cause because they, in turn, give us the food we need to survive. Sadly, with no central consciousness, it is hard to let these lives be subject to the ethics we ourselves live by, as they seem to exist in a more brutal environment than the one they have provided us with: our safe, wealthy society distant from nature. In time, the evolution of ideas might change this.

Other ideas stay in the abstract realm and give birth to small, curious lives. Science is one of these; like ants on an anthill, we swarm over it and add our little correcting bits, planting new seeds, resulting in all kinds of technology and knowledge.

The idea of art

The ideas I find most interesting, are those of art. It is the most broad and varied, the most changing and the most impacting of all our ideas. All art borrows subconsciously from other art, configuring it in new ways and adding as much new as the artist can manage. In effect, most art is greater than any one human being. It is the best parts of many. But more importantly, it survives them and it survives the artwork, waiting for the next artist to pledge his alliegiance to the cause of artistic evolution.

Still, what art does and has ever done, is to show us what we are. So it should have an upper limit of evolution. We like to deconstruct, and we love to rediscover old and “lost” art. The later years have seen a change in art and its expressions that is due to science’s evolution, and not art’s own. Furthermore, whereas the evolution of science brings us far beyond humanity, and into the depth of things we can never fully understand, the evolution of art would have to converge. Its evolution is to give gradually better insights, lessons and explanations of ourselves and the things we know.

But no two days are we the same. In a changing world, what we are changes as well, as we become ourselves through interaction with the surroundings. Thus, art is given more to express. Possibly, one day the evolution of other ideas will have given art the power to keep up with that change. What would that mean for us?

A whole darn lot, I daresay.

“Only the present exists.” Believing it is one of the best ways to move on after a painful memory. It is true, but from a certain perspective. All the truths about life cannot be seen in a single perspective. The full picture is arranged like in a kaleidoscope. That’s because we are arranged like kaleidoscopes. So I’m not saying you ought to pick out the pieces you like best and stitch them together into a patchwork of the world you’d like to see. No truths change, but some are true only to parts of you.

There may be universal truths as well, I suppose, but they don’t tell us what we need to live. Perhaps we’re all based on the principles of science, both those we have and those haven’t figured out yet. I don’t think so, but even if we are, we are simultaneously unable to process those truths into something with the insight and humanity of simple common sense. And even in the most concrete science, complex phenomenons need their own explanations different from the basics. Everything has its scope. That is why the apparent ambiguity of truths about life never troubles me. We are glued together by so many different complex workings, their scopes will not overlap, and they cannot understand eachother. But we can understand all of them and act on each of them where it is valid.

So, only the present exists, but here’s another turn of the kaleidoscope that makes the next point clearer. This turn resonates deeply with other actors in the great scheme of my being, and it says: “only through the past do we exist.”

The point is about growth. I came into this world with some parts and a machinery ready. Then I grew and became what I am through interacting with my surroundings. I involved myself, dealt myself out; I spread my roots, and they brought back nutrition. On that, I grew, reshaped, created myself. I still do.

Inevitably, I became what I fostered on. I didn’t just take and exploit wherever I went; where my roots are, I am. This is how nature designed me on many levels. In the vast principles of nature, giving is taking, living is dying, and growing is shrinking. We are allotted no more than what is, and so is everyone else, before, during and after us.

I am what I am. But not all I’ve fostered on, is physically present. My roots go further than this world, because this world wasn’t the only one I grew in. Effectively, I’m not entirely of this world. My roots cannot be denied. If it wasn’t for the vitality and life that definitely courses through me, some parts of me would be just as real as the stories they were created in. This has provided me with a unique insider perspective.

Aren’t stories real as well? Their conflict with our science is irrelevant, for the value of a story lies in the emotions it brings. All that stories are, all the wonder we envisage through them, is concieved right here, in ourselves. So perhaps the only difference between wondrous stories and real life, is that real life happens to have chosen a seemingly boring configuration. We’re able to be so much else, we can life and feel in so many other ways. Without the stories, I might not have been able to know that. Knowing the stories, having the imagination, I life with the frustration of what is and what isn’t real. My own extended existence, incompatible with the confines of our concrete cave.

I despair because I’m a dreamer trapped among scientists and businessmen. But in moments of clarity, when I can break free, I realize that stories have seldom been so prominent, so numerous. I’m definitely not the only one existing around here. Many of us know what we are deep inside, and how much more that is than what we have been able to be in real life. That is the very reason we have stories in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9juntKKY0kY

I will always have one foot in other worlds. It’s what makes me, me. These worlds, and the past, is one and the same. For all the stories I have grown in, I found in the past, and the past is also but an imagination, now that it has gone. It might not exist physically any longer, but mentally, the past is a very real place, where we find many of the things that define us. Whatever we are.

(Follow-up to The Infancy of Science.)

Some people chase extraordinary meaning in the world around them, just to end up lost and come back disappointed. Meanwhile, those who consider themselves down-to-earth sit contently and preach about the lack of inherent value in the world. We simply need to acknowledge this lack, to stop looking and be happy with what is, and all will be better.

So what is? Who can tell us; what instance has the authority to set the standards for what we can allow ourselves to believe in? Well, if we have been let down by spirituality and religion, is seems only fit to turn to science as the supreme authority of answer-providing. I don’t know about you, but I have a problem with this solution. A big problem.

When running from a liar, is it more fitting to move in with a psychopath?

It took me many years to finally learn that scientism – believing that science has or will have all the necessary answers – is a fundamentalist attitude. Before that, I thought it to be true. Rather, I thought I had no choice in the matter, because science, after all, was running the world whether I liked it or not. That was before I realized that scientism denies the validity of our emotions, of anything that is different from true and false.

We may think that we ourselves are not misguided by the illusion of false worth, but indeed, we can never escape our own subjective attitudes to everything around us. We can never experience that fundamental part of the world that is without coloring, that is only true or false. And even if we could, we would no longer be human.

Because there is more to the world than the science that is common for us all. Our emotions are thoroughly real, and they make up the entire content of our lives. Whatever we do, whatever we say and however long we live; nothing of this has any meaning whatsoever without the emotion that gives it meaning. But to follow the ideal of “only what is”, you cannot have this meaning, because “meaning” has no place in science.

There is one limitation on our emotions: just as science works only in facts, emotions work only in other ways. That we have an emotion can be called a fact, but this is second-hand, and it is useless unless the one reading the fact knows the emotion. So if something has meaning, it can never be proven as fact, but that does not mean it is incorrect. It is neither, simply because it is an emotion. Being an emotion, it is as real as anything else.

We don’t build walls to keep them blank. Everything is what you make out of it, and it’s the whole point that you do. It might not be visible to everyone else, but as long as it’s there for you, it really is there.

In this entry and the next, I look at the relationship between science, magic… and what we think they are. First, I reveal the ignorance of science as it does not care about first-hand knowledge and emotional experience, but only theory and description. Are not our very emotions a result of these processes which we treat with such logical indifference?

Different humans can have very different perspectives on things. In many conflicts, it’s never enough to just point out the facts and agree upon them. That’s not what those conflicts are about, and yet some people just won’t understand that. Why?

Well… fact, or information, is power. This has — naturally — given much power to information. And what is information all about? I’ll tell you. It’s about 0 and 1. Black and white. North and south. Jedi and Sith. All information is either valid or invalid. Information, the great power of our time, doesn’t care about anything else.

But we humans are different. No matter what science, the INFORMATIVE study of everything, says, no matter if we consist of particles and waves chock full of information itself, we do care. When we think something is sad, we do not mean that it is valid or invalid. No, it’s sad, and that’s that! And this is proof enough for me that the world really consists of far more than just information.

So perhaps the focus on information is a bad thing for us. Perhaps we should boo on all the governments and the institutions and the companies who made it and sustain it that way.

Or perhaps, to actually make a difference, we ought to realize that this imperfect system of ours isn’t anybody’s fault, but the result of thousands of years of battle — a battle between good and bad and ignorant intentions. And that the most important thing isn’t that society molds us into brainless dolls that do the right things without really getting it. It is that we understand it ourselves and do what is right IN SPITE OF any flaws in society.

Onwards to the point. We’re living in a modern world where science dictates the development of our lives. But as I have said, science is blind in its lack of emotion. This is a potential whoop-ass problem that’s only getting worse. We’re forgetting ourselves, ignoring the parts of us that science does not approve of.

So it’s clear that science isn’t enough here. But science is about the whole everything, and we are just a little part of that whole everything. So if science isn’t enough to define us, then it sure can’t be enough to define the whole world! It even makes me wonder: if the world can produce life, with all its quirks and emotions, can it produce equally magnificent things also elsewhere? And here’s the source of my ponderings, the reason for my subject: imagine all the things that neither we nor science can see.

I’m a physics student, and throughout my studies, I have gotten to know many strange things. Natural laws that we could never have guessed, connections we could never have foreseen… and these things are the tiny building blocks of insanely complex happenings out there. As complex as us humans? Perhaps.

In the middle of our complexity, we have a consciousness. We have feelings, and we appreciate art. And science just doesn’t get it. But it’s there alright. So I can’t help but wonder: how many other things like this are there, out in the vast cosmos, that science and information can never understand, never touch?

We have a lot of new discoveries ahead of us.

The modern opinion is cynical towards the world, expecting to recieve no compassion or meaning — because after all, the universe is a faceless machine, its gears the cold logic of physics and probability. I battle this opinion under its own terms, showing that emotions like love cannot merely be explained by their apparent purposes, but must have been present since the conception of this world.

Humanity. We live and we persist because it is inevitable. In this world of change and peril, only that which persists, lives.

Our highly developed consciousness, our imagination, made us persist. Our hope in better days, in great wonder, made us persist. Because of them, we still exist to this day.

And because they made us persist, these parts have persisted in us. That is the only reason we have them. If the world had challenged us in different ways, we would have developed different abilities. In another world, we might be unable to learn to swim, climb trees… or feel happy.

So how can we think that there is any meaning to our emotions? That is, beyond their effect upon our actions, and leading us to our survival. How can we ever claim that emotions are anything else than our naive imagination of the world, our colouring of what is truly neutral, a machine?

By questioning how they are even possible.

If emotions are in us alone, then they are part of us but not of the world. This would imply that emotions come through us from somewhere else than the world we know. Which, of course, is a rather uplifting thought.

If this seems unreasonable, then the other logical option is that emotions have got to be a part of this very world, inherent in it without the need of our presence, and made possible by the very laws that govern it.

Great, so our emotions exist. That’s fine and all. But how claim that the very emotions themselves are any more than gears and wheels, pulling our strings? Love is just there because we survived when we stayed together, right?

That doesn’t matter. If I want to put a nail into a wooden box, I get a hammer. But if I lived on a planet made out of jelly, it would be no use. Likewise, if we lived in a world without love, there would be nothing we could do to stay together and survive. Our emotions are seperate from what they do for us, as the hammer is seperate from the need to nail wood.

So evolution might have given us all we have, and that explains why we have it, but not why those things work. It couldn’t have been given, had it not been there to give. All of our abilities, all of our emotions, all our imagination; they are all tapping into the big picture of all things.

So…

What is music, really?