Meditations Vol II:
Collectio Musings
I. “Life, Uh, Finds a Way…”
About 98% of all species that have ever lived on our planet are now extinct. When just considering all of the extant species, one cannot help but notice the incredible biodiversity… and this marvel observation is operating with the consideration of only 2% of all species. To be sure, when considering extinct species as well, the myriad of life is cumbersome to comprehend. The true beauty of the Earth’s biosphere lies in its basic conditions, which is the collaboration of only a few different forces and constraints, chiefly: genetics, natural selection, and environmental factors. Carbon’s chemical versatility is a necessary condition for the whole production to function. Genetics provides a blueprint for the behavior of cells. It directs the thickness of a blade of grass’ plant cell, it provides coding for the proteins that allow translucency in a jellyfish, the curvature of an orangutan’s wrists, or an organism’s propensity for pathophysiology. Natural selection directs the survival and fitness of species based on the advantage of traits, and if those traits contribute to survival. Environmental factors may range from the biome in which a species resides, or the calamity of an asteroid impact. These three factors have created a stunning breadth of diversity that we are still uncovering through discovery.
II. “As You Wish”
This meditation assumes that there is no metaphysical catalyst for or intrinsic need of free will. Free will is a notion that all cultures, religions, and schools of thought take very seriously, and also have very serious opinions regarding. What does it mean to have free will? The term itself implies that humans have an unmitigated agency, based purely on their own volition. Let’s just assume that this is the case for a moment. The faculties from which these choices are determined are rooted in an amalgamation of a myriad of prior causes and randomness, neither are within our control. That does not seem to be a foundation for “free” will. It sounds like a foundation for a compromised paradigm that we consider to be “free” will. A nebulous stream of circumstances have led Kanye West to be a narcissist: genetic predisposition to mental illness, developmental issues while growing up, and environmental factors such as being incredibly famous, worshiped, and enabled… all of which exacerbate the most imprisoning factor of all: genetics. If he were to suffer a stroke, we might excuse his behavior and extricate him from his fuckery. Though, ostensibly, he is mentally ill (which is pathophysiological, same as the tumor) and he is a prisoner of his genetic makeup, which is also biological in nature. Free will, as a concept in society, contains an essential utility in keeping people in line and holding them accountable. To be sure, we need to illustrate an accountable boundary at some arbitrary threshold, but it seems that the pendulum assumes a great deal more agency on the part of the individual than what is biologically realistic.
III. Give Me Surveillance or Give Me Death
Here is a cliché question: what is freedom? My knee-jerk response to that question is that freedom is the ability to make decisions on my own volition and to know why it is important to be able to make those decisions… in a word: it is to have agency. Do we really have autonomy? Your thoughts on determinism or free will might influence your answer, which is natural and expected. Something to consider while answering this question is to consider all of the factors that play into the “free” decisions that you make. Take an election for example: you have a politician that you prefer over another. You may even indicate to a friend or colleague that you are proud of your freedom to vote. To be sure, that is a noble consideration. Let us consider the factors that play into this scenario, starting with your upbringing. In my experience, people tend to assimilate the views and ideals of those who came before them. These cultural notions are generally weaved into our youth and they are codified by adulthood. How much agency did you have in developing your framework? Not convinced? Let’s say that you decide to go out and buy a new Stanley cup (no shade on Stanley, this is an expedient example and it is one of hundreds I could have used). The marketing campaign for their most recent cups was voracious and penetrative. The advertisements were all over social media. They were a popular topic amongst social circles for a couple of weeks. There might have even been pressure within certain friend groups to purchase one. Now, when we say freedom, we mean complete autonomy to make a decision… total agency… Did someone who purchased a Stanley cup purchase one completely on their own agency? It is unlikely, though I am not drawing conclusions, simply entertaining this thought experiment. Perhaps the most compelling argument against the reality of unmolested freedom is that of surveillance capitalism. This strange sounding term refers to the business models of Facebook/Google et al. The simple way to understand this is that Facebook collects data about content that you “like,” watch, click on, how long you look at any given content, how often you click, as well as a myriad of other factors. Facebook then amalgamates that data using algorithms. The system then uses this data to determine the most potentially successful advertisements it should display to you. The scariest aspect here is these decisions are made by algorithms… humans are only involved insofar to maintain the integrity and efficiency of the algorithms. I would argue that very few “free” purchases or economic decisions are made based on or in response to Facebook interactions. This normalization of surveillance and data mining will only become more ubiquitous as time goes on, creating an inversely proportional correlation: as data mining increases, freedom (and its integrity) decreases as it is compromised more and more.
IV. The Great Attractor
Gravity is one of the fundamental forces, essential variables of the universe, and affects all forms of matter, even light. Gravity comes in a variety of magnitudes. All matter is attracted to other matter. The main variables are size/amount of mass and distance between masses. The gravitational pull between you and your cat lying in her bed across the room is so infinitesimal as to be essentially nil. The only gravitational force of any consequence in your daily life is that of the Earth, in which you are being pulled towards the center. Scaling up from the Earth, the largest mass in the Solar System is the Sun, which all planets in our little neighborhood circumnavigate. In turn, the Sun revolves around a supermassive blackhole in the center of the Milky Way, part of what we call the Local Group, a small band of galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster, which is just a “city” in the larger part of the Laniakea supercluster, which is a nexus of about 100,000 galaxies. At the apparent center of Lanaikea is an anomalous gravitational field, known as The Great Attractor (TGA). We are now at the scale of the largest structures of the universe. Our understanding of TGA is very limited. The leading hypothesis seems to be that The Great Attractor is a confluence of dark energy at the the center of the supercluster. Others think that it is simply the gravitational result of a gigantic mass of galaxies and superclusters, but with limited data, conclusions are unlikely. Perhaps our lack of understanding of the nature of TGA is due to our methods/roadblocks, enormous time spans in which these processes operate, and our relatively infinitesimal lifespans. It is difficult for scientists to detect aspects of The Great Attractor due to the gas and dust ring of the Milky Way, which is obscuring the view of this area of the universe. To mitigate the blockage, scientists employ detectors that use x-rays, which penetrate this ‘Zone of Avoidance’ and allow us to gather more data to attempt to understand the nature of this enigmatic effect. TGA attracts millions of galaxies to it (each galaxy with billions of stars)… this occurs on a timescale utterly incomprehensible to even the smartest Homo Sapiens. This temporal obstacle interferes with our ability to properly understand the totality of the sequence of processes for our potential meeting with TGA. We are also limited by our short lives, relative to the age of the cosmos. Humans have been studying the heavens for only a few hundred years, and only deep space for less than a hundred years. TGA and its attraction of superclusters occurs over a scale of billions of years. We simply do not have the technology or knowledge to compensate for the temporal obstacles that lie in our pursuit of identifying The Great Attractor and revealing its true face. The fact that we can study something so far away is in itself a great accomplishment. This… Great Attractor… one of humanity’s true mysteries… nay, one of the universe’s true mysteries, underscores the threshold of human knowledge, and also highlights our hubris, unfounded or not. To be sure, we have an unmitigated courage and determination to expand that threshold to encompass the unknown.
