Borealism V: Laws of Nature Series
Ep. 1: Diamonds of Possibility | Our conscious potentiality
The past is always fixed; the future always open.
At 5,400°C (almost 1000°F), Earth’s core is just about as hot as the surface of the sun.
Though it’s all tucked away 4000 miles beneath our feet, confined to a 800-mile radius — which is about three quarters the size of the moon.
But it’s there, and it radiates heat pretty far.
In fact, the deepest hole that we’ve ever dug — the Kola Borehole of Russia — taught us that things get hot quickly as we dig into Earth’s crust. At only 7 of those 4000 miles, thermostats clock in at 180°C / 356°F.
All this heat packs some powerful potential, and that potential is no better exemplified than in the formation of one of the most sought-after materials amongst our species.
“All is beautiful and unceasing, all is music and reason, and all, like a diamond, is carbon first, then light.“
-José Martí
When a projectile of magma shoots upward from deep below Earth’s crust, it cools rapidly as it ascends, leaving a hardened trail of vaporized carbon. Inside this trail is an assemblage of all kinds of new compounds — not unlike what’s observed during or immediately after particle collisions.
Very rarely, these roots of melted matter (referred to as kimberlite pipes) catalyze the most precious of stones, one which we’ve spilled blood over for centuries.
And so we see an interesting process taking shape, whereby burning potentiality hardens quickly into actuality, all along a causal chain of spontaneity, disorder and beauty.
The crystallization of such an abrupt process, occurring at total random below our feet, is emblematic of how our universe functions: chaotically, unpredictably, and seemingly without any reason.
It’s just the nature of things, no different from solar flares and heart attacks.
But it’s when you add in the human element that things begin to take on a whole new meaning — literally.
Those diamonds that are formed, serving little practical utility in the grand schematics of our existence, symbolize the tragic beauty of our movement through space and time — a species operating on its own terms, often in the face of the natural order of things, and often without reason.
Our consciousness, from which our defiance sprouts, flows counter to the laws of nature, specifically that of entropy. Whereas reality grows increasingly complex and disordered, our conscious mind orders the universe into something more digestible.
Whereas reality is brutal by its nature, we try to behave otherwise.
The irony, of course, is that this is far from the reality of how we actually behave.
But the intention is there, and maybe that’s the gem of our existence.
It’s from this process of turning possibility into hardened actuality that, much like the scintillating jewelry of the kimberlite veins, beautiful meaning is formed.
As Amit Goswami once shared with me: “Consciousness is the true reality, and matter is an epiphenomenon bordering on trivial.”
Nothing really means anything, until we decide or observe otherwise.
Our conscious agency, akin to a providence that we’re really quite privileged to exercise, moves us through a senseless world into one that may just make sense after all.
That a burst of energy from the sun licks a habitable planet trapped in its goldilocks zone; that a lightning strike chooses to zig left rather than zag right; that South Africa is home to the most dense networks of kimberlite pipes — these things don’t mean anything while also, potentially, meaning everything — thanks to our conscious application.
Wave functions are ours to collapse; possibilities are ours to pursue; the future is ours to move through as we see fit.
Visit www.borealism.ca for more content, or to read full interview with Dr. Goswami: Currents of Consciousness.
This piece was written with some help from Bill Bryson’s, A Short History of Everything.
