Why this, why now, why? Common questions when we are faced with seemingly arbitrary facts. When circumstances seem particular yet not compelled by some organizing principle, we become wary that we don't understand all at play. At the deepest level we ask, “why am I?” We can't answer why we are exactly what we are, but we can simplify the problem. We will explore here how the world—“everything”—can appear to us in one particular configuration of circumstances yet still hold the amazing possibility we'd expect from a concept of “everything”. Our answer at essence is that everything, or all that is, is in fact all that can be, not just some arbitrary subset of it. Everything includes all that could ever be conceived. There are implications to this—understandings, freeing principles to this conception of reality. Recognizing all possibilities exist, we no longer wonder why only this one exists as this one includes within it all others. We lose our wariness, and we place new value on our conception while losing an unnecessary deference to seeming harsh facts restricting us. We gain an understanding and a source of meaning in the loss of the arbitrary.
We discussed briefly in
Being Free that whether we believe it to be true or not, life being born from distinction is effectively true. We argued that all that has a discernible impact on us is distinguished by us, and all that we distinguish necessarily contains distinction. And this leaves only distinction in our reality. However, before we can treat distinction as a model of life with compelling descriptive power, a question must be answered. Why this particular collection of distinctions? We've observed there appear to be distinctions not chosen by ourselves—and that even our own distinctions contain implications that we do not choose. These impositions from outside ourselves are in some way the real universe in which we move. Why are they what they are? What is everything? What is reality?
When we ask, “what is reality”, we are compelled to answer, “all that is”. This answer is generally dismissed as uninformative. One asks, “‘all that is’ in distinction with what?” Or, “then, what is
not?” And if we recognize alternatives to “what is”, how can those alternatives not exist if their nature is knowable? The contradiction that alternatives should exist yet not—somehow waiting in the wings—can be set aside long enough for us to explore a new definition, “all that can be”. For argument's sake we will say the alternatives aren't actual but that the wings in which they lay in wait are.
So, “what is reality?” It is “all that can be.” We now have a definition that doesn't simply defer the problem as “all that is” did. However, our definition has the appearance of being just plain wrong because we see around us astounding detail, seemingly arbitrary specifics in our reality, surely not all that can be, but some strange and beautiful subset of it. How can “all that can be”—a definition so potent with possibility, encompassing all spectra of conceivable thought—be equivalent to “all that is”?
We have already answered our question. The alternatives are lying in wait in the wings, and the wings are before us too. There is no one set of distinctions that describe our reality, rather reality is any and all distinctions. Alternatives including all that we can conceive, there are two conclusions we can draw from this thesis. 1) Anything we conceive is part of reality—it creates the specifics of reality. 2) Within reality we can find all that is conceivable—specific circumstances seen from one perspective are alternative circumstances from another.
It is simply up to us to see how present, particular circumstances are consequences of our own conceptions and where the alternatives to those circumstances—the absent circumstances—are present upon interpretation of given circumstances as a wing in which an alternative waits. In demonstrating this thesis we cannot list all conceptions and the realities they would make. We cannot list all alternatives and point them out in our reality. Each thing we point out creates new distinction and further alternatives. But we can look at examples and keep in mind our reasoning that what we distinguish and what we experience are equivalent, implying that anything distinguishable can be experienced as real.
First we briefly consider how we draw conclusions to see specifics and recognize alternatives. We see in our distinctions implication, correspondence. We do this, for example, when we draw conclusions from the fact that two are opposites—as we know that if not all roads are closed to us, so there must be some road must open to us. We do this when we recognize one thing is an emergent feature of another—as a storm is the motion of water, or as the motion of a person organizing objects can be seen the phenomenon of counting, or as the colors on a page form words and pictures, or as words and pictures form thoughts. We do this when we recognize a contradiction in actuality before us and take from that the existence of a larger perspective with contexts clarifying all alternate truths of that paradox—as we see a whole to be divided by distinction.
Anything we conceive is part of reality
Another way to say this is that the specificity of reality is created by our conception. When we conceive of a thing, simply draw a distinction, we create the implication of that distinction. The specifics we observe are the conclusions we draw.
a) A rule has the feature that it can be broken. The rule is the distinction, the feature is the observation.
b) We are in want only of things we do not have. Our want is our distinction, the fact we never have it our observation.
c) That which we can control at will is within our extent, and so it is that we do not have powers of action at a distance, for that very influence would redefine distance, bringing the distant phenomena into the definition of our extent. The definition of extent is the distinction and the nearness of all we control at will the observation.
And so regardless what distinctions we make, our reality will unfold from those distinctions.
Within reality we can find all that is conceivable
Many alternatives to specifics we observe are easily seen to be present in analogy since so much of our specific circumstance is strictly conceptual to begin with. Emergent phenomena such as words within ink are concepts, so to see their alternatives is to simply to look at the ink as this alternative to words that is compelled to you. More difficult to see are physical phenomena.
We travel forward though time. Why that direction and not the other? It may not be immediately possible to point to a human moving backward through time, one who conceives of his or her reality as unfolding in the opposite direction as ours, but the thesis here is such a thing could be discerned. Physicists see that antimatter is exactly normal matter when time is reversed in the equations. Antimatter has been observed, so upon its observation we've seen a wing of that alternate reality in which a piece of normal matter was moving backward through time. Certainly this isn't proof humans exist in reverse in our reality. Humans are not simply matter but an emergent phenomenon in matter. But when matter can be seen to exist in alternative forms in actuality, and given that alternatives to emergent patterns can be easily found in the actual—as physical things can be counted upward so can they be counted backward, the same activity under a reversal in time—the two taken together make compelling evidence.
Seeking to become composed, assured—virtuosic—we look for understanding and meaning in our world. Understanding and meaning are gained when we create a reflection of the world within that world, within our minds, by creating a model. If any and all distinction is the entirety of what makes up our world, a fundamental model of life is found in distinction itself. It is a tantalizing thought that the world is born purely from distinction. If true, we have succeeded in finding a simple, elemental model of the world that allows us to explore it, predict it, communicate it, take understanding from it. These are the basic instincts of science, philosophy, art and spirituality so when we take insights from this thought we make advances in each of these areas. And this perspective gives us meaning by removing the arbitrary. Life is not arbitrary. If we look we can see where all alternatives exist and recognize that we can effect our own specifics by simply making our own distinctions with care.
tags: science correspondence distinction contradiction philosophy meaning strange beauty