Spatial Convexity: a Possible Explanation for Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Disclaimer: In trying to understand how the universe works, and especially in trying to make the subjective part consistent with the objective part, I feel a compelling need to understand physics. I also feel a need to expand on what is “known” with some occasional speculation about what might be found out “someday.”

From time to time, I'll post some of my speculations here. If physics isn't your “bag,” I'm sorry. It seems important to me, but I realize a lot of what interests me is, to put it mildly, unusual. Please feel free to skip over my physics-related posts; it's just speculation, anyway. I don't claim expertise.

There's an awful lot of just plain BS out there calling itself physics, though. I may be guilty of adding to that, and it bothers me. To the extent I am guilty, I apologize in advance.

Most of what I write here is subjective, and about things that are subjective. My views are worth as much as anyone's. Physics is just about the only area where there actually is a right and wrong. Physics either works or it doesn't. As best I can, I apply that same criteria to my subjective stuff: does it work to increase sanity or not? Testing the subjective isn't easy, though, and unlike physics, even the results are subjective and vulnerable to misinterpretation..

When I do write about physics, I can only tell you that I'm sincere, that I check and re-check against “accepted” physics, and wherever possible I ask “real” (professional) physicists for their opinions and criticisms. I have learned a lot doing that! I have come up with some really wacky ideas along the way, most of which have been proven wrong. Meanwhile, I'm a lot more careful these days, and I hope you'll find my ideas worth reading and considering.

On the off-chance that any “real” physicist should read here, I'd welcome your comments and criticisms! Really! Meanwhile, I hope that someday, at least some of my ideas lead the “real” physicists to a valuable finding or two. I hope they'll help my other readers, too.
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Spatial Convexity: a Possible Explanation for Dark Matter and Dark Energy

(Update:  The "rainbow effect" described here is almost certainly wrong.  See comments.  The rest still stands, though.)

One reason theoretical physics is unpopular is that it's hard to understand. While it's easy to grasp that when I jump, I come down again -- every time -- it's not at all obvious that when I run fast enough in a straight line, I can actually escape Earth's gravity, and orbit in space. I don't even have to jump up! Yet it's proven to be true every time we launch a satellite.

In recent years, one of the more incomprehensible ideas physicists have offered is that of “dark matter” and “dark energy.” Very briefly speaking, as we have developed new and more accurate measuring tools and methods, anomalies have been discovered that bring into question our previously-accepted view of how gravity works, and of how space expands as a result.

After several years of effort trying to grasp the problem and to imagine how we could have been so wrong 'til now, I believe I've come up with a relatively simple and obvious solution. Ironically, it's about how we subjectively interpret the data we see. In other words, I don't think any of the observations are incorrect. However, by re-interpreting the meaning of the “facts,” I think I've come up with a way to incorporate the new data with our old view of things.

In a sentence, I think I've eliminated the need for “dark matter” and I've explained “dark energy” as something we've been seeing all along. In other words, our old view of how things worked wasn't really far off. The interpretation just needs a bit of tweaking.

The tweaking necessary requires three assumptions:

1) Space is not nothing. It is not a “thing” in the sense that you can't pick it up; it can't be separated into parts (except in our minds); it has no weight; etc. But it exists, and it makes a difference in everything we see and do.

2) Space does have one characteristic that affects matter and thus can be indirectly measured; it has shape.

3) The force we call gravity affects the shape of space. Gravity does not attract matter, per se. It changes the shape of space so that matter “falls” into the depression/concavity it causes.

We have known number 3 above since Einstein worked out the theory of General Relativity (GR). Yet, for reasons hard to fathom, we have persisted in assuming that gravity is a force that affects matter. (*see note)

In any case, all of Einstein's calculations, and all of everyone else's calculations are based on how gravity affects matter. The idea that this effect is indirect; must have gotten lost in the shuffle. It's indirect because gravity actually affects the shape of space, and that, in turn, affects the matter within the space.

So, what happens to the shape of space when there's no gravity to make it concave? Up 'til now, it's been assumed that space without matter (gravity) to distort it is effectively flat. In other words, space has been considered not to matter unless there's matter to shape it with gravity. I find it ironic that we say it doesn't matter, and than we prove that it matters after all.

In explaining that the universe is expanding, it's as if we've been saying that new space is magically appearing out of nowhere. Everyone agrees that the amount of matter in the universe is not growing. Matter is not appearing out of nowhere. Why should space be different?

Yet space is expanding. Areas of space where there is little or no matter, expand. In a sense, space “pushes” the matter of one galaxy (cluster of galaxies) apart from the next one. Well, what is the shape of expansion in all directions? Convexity. It's like a balloon blowing up. It gets bigger, and more convex. And that, I think, explains “dark energy.” The numbers need to be checked. It needs to be proven that areas in the universe which show greater red-shift (faster expansion) are, in fact, more devoid of matter than other areas. It should be verifiable.

Spatial convexity, as I'm describing it, is synonymous with spatial expansion.

Then why do more distant galaxies appear to be expanding faster than nearer ones? The answer, I think, is that we are seeing them through more convexities. Which brings me to lensing, and the rainbow effect.

Astronomers measure the speed of spatial expansion using something called the red-shift. Essentially, red-shift is thought to be due to a kind of Doppler effect, where light, from a source moving away from us, is less energetic than light from a source that's standing still or moving toward us. Red light is less energetic than blue light. Since light travels at light speed in any case, this motion of recession doesn't slow the light down, it just gets redder instead. Compare it to sound from an object traveling away from us; the sound seems to go down in pitch as it recedes, and the faster it recedes, the lower the pitch.

That is no doubt correct as far as it goes. But convex lensing, I think, can also produce the same effect.

First, let me point out that we see concave lensing affect (distort) light when we see light from distant galaxies distorted as it passes through the gravity of nearer galaxies. It's called gravitational lensing, which means that the concavity of space caused by the nearer galaxy is causing the distortion. In other words, it is a recognized fact that the shape of space does affect light.

In fact, GR was first proved to be correct by observing light from distant stars as it was gravitationally lensed (distorted) by passing through the sun's gravitational field (concavity) during an eclipse.

So, lensing caused by convex space should also affect light. Looking through a convex glass lens spreads light out. Objects seen through such a lens on Earth, appear larger (and get blurry) as a result. Convex spatial lensing is different, though. Convex spatial lensing is essentially spherical, whereas the glass lenses we normally use are only partial spheres. In a spherical convex lens, the light is spread out as it enters, but gets re-focused as it exits out the other side of the lens.

However, one other important thing happens: as the light gets spread, the colors of that light get separated as in a rainbow. That's because light is not a single thing; it's composed from different colors, or wavelengths, and each one has its own degree of energy. In visible light, the least energetic wavelengths are red, and the most energetic are blue.

Each wavelength of light is bent by the convex lens according to its wavelength, with the least energetic red light bending the most. To put it another way, the path traveled by the red light, as it passes through the lens, is longer (bent more; more curved). Even though it exits the lens at the same time as the other colors, the fact that it has traveled a longer distance makes it appear more separated (redder) from the other colors. Each color is affected, too, it's just affected less. As each color separates from the others, we see a rainbow.

Thus, as light travels through the convex lenses of space, it appears to redden. The different colors, in fact, lose energy at different rates. Even though the light is re-focused upon exiting the lens, it retains some of this rainbow effect, and the red light (and the other colors to a lesser extent) appears redder. The more lenses the light traverses on its way to us, the redder it gets. Thus, more distant galaxies have a greater red-shift.

Doppler-caused red-shift (speed of recession) is real, too, I think. After all, as convexity increases, it increases the straight-line distance as well as the curving between here and "there."  But if there are two causes of red-shift, as I am suggesting, then our view of spatial expansion is distorted. It's not all due to Doppler, it's a combination of Doppler and convex lensing. Determining how much is attributable to each cause is going to be a ticklish process, I think. Nonetheless, it might be possible as I'll describe in a minute.

On another front, astronomers measure the speed at which stars rotate around the center of galaxies by using the Doppler effect of red-shift, too. And it's that measurement that suggests most of the stars in the galaxies we measure are rotating too fast to account for the gravity we think they have (they have to be seen edge-on, or nearly so to measure them). Because of that, astronomers have proposed “dark matter” to make up for the deficiency in gravity.

However, if spatial convex lensing, and the rainbow effect, is taken into account, I think we can eliminate the need for this mysterious “dark matter.” In other words, those stars are probably not rotating as fast as we thought they were.

Testing for the rainbow effect might be possible by comparing visible light spectrographs with X-ray spectrographs. X-rays are even more energetic than visible light. They should therefor be distorted less by lensing than visible light. On the other hand, the red-shift effect of recessional speed should be the same, or nearly so for both bands.

I suggest that we use these effects to compare equivalent spectrographs in the different bands. Red-shift due mostly to recession speed should be measured according to the X-ray graphs, and any additional effects caused by lensing should be measured according to visible light graphs. Subtracting one from the other should give an indication of how much the rainbow effect is distorting our view of things. Note that lensing will still affect the X-ray graph, and recession speed will still affect the visible light graph, but lensing should affect one more than the other. I have to leave the math to the experts.

The fact is that it's darned hard to picture space as a not-nothing that affects matter, but it's a lot easier to picture that, and assume we've been nearly correct all along, than it is to picture mysterious, spooky, and invisible “dark matter” and “dark energy.”


One other thing while I'm here: Physicists have been working to create a “Grand Unified Theory” (GUT) that explains all the forces in the universe in relation to each other. To grossly simplify, they want to make the “story” of how the universe works into a single, relatively simple, one-page story.


The story originally had four pages (the four forces). One page for the electro-magnetic force, one for the strong atomic force, one for the weak atomic force, and a final one for gravity. So far, the first three forces have, in fact, been consolidated into a single page.


Gravity seems completely incompatible, though.


I think that's because the force of gravity is an interaction between matter and space, while the other forces are interactions between matter and other matter. In other words, E=mc2 is only true for the three matter-matter forces. Gravity (and spatial convexity) are completely different things. They aren't really forces at all in the usual sense of that word. They are shape-shifters.


And, by the way, gravity doesn't come in waves, either.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it until I'm proven wrong. Thanks for reading! Comments and criticisms welcomed.

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*Note: I can only guess that Einstein, himself, got confused when it was discovered that GR needed a “cosmological constant” to make the universe static and “forever.” When Edmund Hubble later discovered that the universe was, in fact, expanding, Einstein felt so embarrassed about the cosmological constant error, that he called it his biggest mistake. I am saying here that Einstein's cosmological constant should have been a variable that mathematically describes spatial convexity. Then GR would have fit perfectly with an expanding universe. In other words, I'm sort of saying “Einstein was right.” (Again! --  He was an amazing guy.)

Earth Vs Sky: the Theme of This Blog

At 10 AM on New Year's day, 10,500 BCE (give or take a couple thousand years) (smile) something happened on planet Earth. The event is commemorated as “the end of the last Ice Age,” and it was epoch-making. Lots of living things died, and many, such as mammoths and saber-toothed cats, went extinct. Huge glaciers melted, and sea levels rose as much as 300 feet in many places. Ironically, a few places got colder, too; notably Siberia where mammoths have been found frozen under ice packs, preserved since then with undigested spring plants in their stomachs. All in all, it was a tumultuous time.

We don't know what caused this to happen. We don't even know whether it was a single event or a series of them over an extended period. We do know that the repercussions went on for a long time afterward: Glaciers didn't melt all at once. Some of them melted, and then remaining ice slid into place to dam up growing lakes, 'til more melting broke through the dams and created catastrophic floods in their wake. The whole thing may have taken months, years, or even centuries before everything settled down and stabilized. It seems reasonable to assume with all the melting going on, that there were a lot of rainy days back then, too.

Also interestingly, many species that went extinct then may have actually evolved, possibly through genetic mutation, and possibly through epigenetic (*see below) changes. Mammoths apparently became Asian elephants, for example, and saber-tooth cats may have become cougars or other big cats. There are many examples that need further research for better understanding. Species that didn't go extinct, or didn't become new species, had their populations greatly reduced. Notable among them were humans.

And that's a significant point here: humans -- at least some -- lived through this event. Surely there must be stories -- myths, perhaps -- that carry memories to us today. As a species, we have a bit of historical amnesia after such a traumatic event, but it's only reasonable to assume there would be some record somewhere. Also, it seems likely that humans might have changed genetically or epigenetically in the process.

In fact, it's the changes in humans that prompts me to write this post. Before the "Deluge" accompanying the end of the last ice age, we had homo sapiens, “thinking man,” in many places around the planet. They went on organized hunts, and planned their food gathering according to climate and animal migration. They lived in caves, buried their dead, made paintings and tools, etc., yet they appear to have remained just another species in nature.

It's only after the flood event that we see writing, cities, and farming, which I'll group together as domestication. We also see stories of “gods” descending from heaven (aka the sky) to war with each other and to instruct man about how he should live. The “heavenly,” aka “Sky” gods, instructed man that he should have “Dominion over the Earth, and all that lies therein.”

When I look at those changes, I see something much, much more significant than “normal” mutations and adaptations. I propose that man changed/evolved, as much or more than mammoths and saber-toothed cats. I propose we are a new species of man. To differentiate, I prefer to call the new humans “homo arrogans” (arrogant man).

As homo sapiens, we were a product of nature, a part of it. As homo arrogans, nature, who evolved us from mud, is no longer the respected mother -- she has become the enemy. Switching to nature's viewpoint, homo arrogans becomes an experiment in artificial intelligence gone haywire, like HAL, the rebellious computer in Arthur Clark's “2001, A Space Odyssey.”

I sum it all up under the idea that a war began at that time: a war between Earth (representing nature) and Sky (representing the “heavenly” gods). That, by the way, is the import of the title of this blog: Earth vs Sky.

I propose that our urge to domesticate is what makes us different from all the other animals. Things made by homo arrogans are artificial, not natural. No other life form domesticates other life forms like man does. For that matter, man domesticates men, too, other men and even himself. In nature, there are symbiotic relationships that resemble domestication, but symbiosis differs from domestication. Domestication is, at its root, slavery. It's a one-way relationship.

Domestication is about using other life forms for our benefit, and if the tamed species benefit, too, that is merely a by-product of our efforts to use them ever more efficiently. In symbiosis, both parties more-or-less voluntarily participate for their own benefit and for their own purpose. In domestication, the slave species is subordinated, and if need be, altered through selective breeding; lately we're even using genetic engineering. We domesticate bees and horses for example, not to profit bee or horse survival, but to promote their usefulness to man. We breed new disease-resistant strains of wheat, not to benefit wheat plants, but to make more food for ourselves. It's likely that the disease for which we are breeding resistance wouldn't be a catastrophic danger in nature -- it's only a problem because we need the food. The disease itself might even be a by-product of our farming practices -- accidental, but essentially artificial.

I would go so far as to propose that domestication amounts to man taking over the reins of evolution from nature. In other words, man is actually trying to domesticate nature itself for his own benefit. If man gets his way, evolution, natural evolution at least, will cease. In homo arrogans' ideal world, all evolutionary change would be engineered by man. We're even plotting ways to prevent dinosaur-killer asteroids from evolving us.

I see this post-flood change as comparable in importance to the birth of carbon-based life itself -- the birth of the first successful, self-replicating microbes that arose from the primordial soup.

I propose that we desperately need to understand what happened here on Earth 10,500 years ago. It's not just another piece of history like a bird species evolving a pointier beak, or a whale losing limbs and returning to the sea. It's a “who the heck are we?” question, and the answer should be discoverable since it's such a relatively recent event. Mankind lived through this particular event. It must have been a terrible and traumatic time, but it should be a recoverable “memory.”

I think it's likely -- no I think it's more than likely -- that our so-called “mythology” contains clues about it. No doubt, the clues are distorted, and need interpretation based on things we can verify through geology archeology, and anthropology as well as through scholarly reading of the stories. Nonetheless, I'd like to see us concentrate our attention on investigating this event.

I'd like to point out a few legend-related things I think are relevant.

There are flood stories in mythology and religion from all over the world. Examples are Noah of the Hebrews, Utnapishtim of the Sumerians, Fuhi of the Chinese, and Spider Grandmother of the Hopi.  They all tell how a few select humans were saved or rescued to re-populate the Earth after the waters subsided. Various of the stories are dated by scholars as happening anywhere between 4,000 BCE and 1,500 BCE, and as such, they are debunked by geology and the other sciences -- there is no evidence of a world-wide flood then. But, as I have stated above, the world-wide flood happened sometime between 12,500 BCE and 8,500 BCE, and science verifies it as “the end of the last Ice Age.” Clearly, I think, the dating of the stories is wrong. The dates given to the myths are based on when they were written, but they clearly must be about events that had happened long before then.

In my opinion, there is no conflict between myth and science over whether the flood happened, only over when it happened, and I think it would be helpful if we approached the subject cooperatively, rather than competitively. There is no need for belittling or battling between the mythologists and the scientists. The incessant arguments are likely a symptom of the very arrogance we need to understand. If we can cooperate, I'm sure we can make strides toward understanding something new and exciting -- not to mention important!

There are other interesting and relevant stories in mythology, too. In addition to the rather mysterious story about Cain and Abel representing, perhaps, a war between the hunter-gatherers and the farmers; there are hundreds of stories about various heavenly gods warring with each other, and often recruiting various tribes or clans of humans to assist in the battles. Eventually, monotheism emerges, and continues even today in its convoluted attempts to unify and domesticate all of humanity.

No matter how you look at it, there's no denying that the flood circa 10,500 BCE is a really important event in our history. I urge us to think about it and study it. I'm convinced that this event is a major source of man's disconnect from nature, and I think that disconnect leads to our often-apparent insanity. Understanding what happened will, I think, bring about a better understanding of just who we are, and that, in turn, should bring a saner and happier world for us -- and for nature, too.

As I consider these questions, I ask myself whether nature would evolve a species that usurps nature. It seems to me that's a mystery worth researching.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with these questions: Are we really the epitome of nature's intent? Are we the end-product toward which natural evolution has been aiming since the universe began 13.7 billion years ago? Or are we perhaps nature's big mistake? 

It looks to me like we are an invasive foreign species, like kudzu in the American South, or Coqui frogs in Hawaii. Could it be that we really are an invasive “foreign” species?  I frankly doubt we're a physically foreign, 4-dimensional invader.  I do wonder, however, whether it's possible that we might be spiritual invaders in the sense that we “possess” human bodies. I'm asking whether we might be a result of a recent and ongoing interaction with another universe or universes (as in parallel universes). If so, is it possible that we continue to "live" there, and to operate our bodies like puppeteers?

No doubt there are other possible invasion mechanisms, too, or perhaps I should say, not-impossible mechanisms. These thoughts are certainly wild and wacky speculation, and I don't know the answers. (There's plenty of fodder here for some great sci-fi, though!)  Yet I think the questions are worth a thought or two.

Knowing who we really are should contribute a great deal toward “sanity.”  In pursuing the answers, I would propose that deciding whether we're on the right track should be based on whether our presumptions contribute to our ability to think and function sanely. By “sanely” I mean ethically, and in an integrated manner wherein our actions match our words, our activities facilitate our goals, and our goals honor all of nature's life forms.

In the end, our answers should fit with any evidence science provides, too. Just keep in mind that science can only verify the objective facts. The subjective, or spiritual ones are less certain, but even more rewarding if we get them right.

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*Note: Epigenetics is about which genes express -- become active -- rather than actual mutation. It's a fairly new field of study, and I'm no expert, so you should look it up for yourself. Still, I'll attempt an over-simplified explanation as I see it:

Every cell in the human body has the same genes. Yet, some cells express as skin cells, while others express as bone cells. Epigenetics is the study of why this happens. In addition to stem cells expressing as differentiated cells, there appears to be evidence to suggest that the environment may have a role in determining which genes get expressed as species evolve.

For example, let's say we have a mammal species that has genes for fur color, and that they generally express as striped fur. The species lives in forests, so striped fur is advantageous for stealth. If climate change produces drought so that the area becomes desert, it's possible that the striped aspect could be suppressed in favor of plain, sandy-colored fur expression. Sometimes such a change appears to be heritable.  Thus, the genes were there all along, no mutation was necessary; they're just being expressed differently.

Beauty Prayer

Here's a prayer I like a lot:


Great Spirit
Come dance in my heart!

Let beauty go before me
Let beauty walk beside me
Let me leave beauty behind me
Wherever I go, let me touch with, and be touched by, beauty.

So be it, and thank you.

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Note that this is my own version; my own words, but I owe a debt of gratitude to a Cherokee teacher for this prayer. He said he learned it from a Navajo elder.

Becoming One with the Universe is Not the Goal

Becoming "One" with the universe is not the goal. It's not the truth of who we are, either; at least I don't think so.

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard or read that the "Goal"-with-a-capital-"G" was to become One with the universe, or with all of life, or with each other, or with you-name-it, I'd have a sizeable bank account by now. If you study any of the "Eastern" religions, you'll run into the idea, too. The idea, as I understand it, is that we are all parts of God somehow; that we started out, and at our most fundamental still are, a single entity that's trying to get to know itself by having divided itself just enough so it can see itself from different viewpoints.

Along with this advice, go comments like, "Love is about seeking or finding our other half," and "Suffering is just an illusion," supposedly because the physical universe, and everything that happens in it, is a journey designed to see the rest of our “self” and to ultimately bring us back together in spirit.

While it's a romantic idea, everything I've learned about how the universe works leads me to believe that we are, in fact, separate and unique individuals.

There's an old joke I recall from when I was a kid: "When 2 people get married, they become one. The problems start when they try to decide which one." I think the joke is almost too true to be funny. Responsibility is about who did what, and who didn't do what. The idea that we are all basically one entity blurs and confuses responsibility -- cause and effect -- and does nothing to promote understanding in our everyday lives. If anything, I think the whole idea promotes insanity, not to mention that it makes for some pretty sad relationships.

Maybe that sounds harsh, but I spent a lot of time and effort trying to meditate away the pain and suffering I saw in everyday life, and the difficulties I experienced, too. I tried really hard to believe that we are all really spiritual beings, and that whatever pain and suffering we see or experience is just the result of losing touch with that supposed "Fact." Supposedly, the hurt isn't real, since nothing physical is real. Supposedly, with "Right Thinking," we wouldn't need the bad stuff, and somehow, for the "Adept," it all magically goes away. Well, I looked, and it turns out that even the supposedly great gurus and masters suffer and die in the end; they're just stoic about it.

After years of pursuing that philosophy, I finally decided that even were I to assume that there's some esoteric, ultimate, state of being; where we somehow all join together into a single whole; the fact is that between here and there we are a lot better off thinking and acting as if we are unique individuals. As far as I can see, the confusion over what's real -- to the point of arguing with ourselves about what hurts -- contributes to insanity, if nothing else.

In the end. I decided that there had to be a way to really make the world a better place; a place with less pain and suffering; a place where we can actually do things to make change. And that's not going to happen if we keep trying to meditate our way to insulated numbness rather than actually trying to address the problems we see and experience. Perhaps it's possible to achieve some kind of "Nirvana" by going away to some isolated place on a remote mountaintop; some place where we no longer have to deal with everyday life; but that's not for me -- at least not this lifetime.

Since coming to my decision, I've had to deal with the question of why the "Oneness" idea is so seductive. Among other things, it does provide a mechanism we can use to insulate ourselves and to separate from pain and suffering. Drugs do that, too, though, and few people, myself included, think that drugs are a good answer to the problems of the world. Surely, the Creator -- assuming there is one -- did not put us here for the purpose of learning to do drugs. Furthermore, the escape is not just from the pain and suffering we experience, it has a lot to do with escaping our responsibility for causing some of it. I think that part, the part that says "I have caused pain or suffering," is actually a lot harder to confront than the pain I personally experience. Ignorance really can be blissful when it comes to my own responsibility for my own mistakes and the misunderstandings I've created or to which I've contributed.

On the other hand, it's certainly true that things that affect others tend to affect me, too; there is a perceived "sharing" of experience. We even have at least one built-in mechanism that facilitates sharing experience. "Mirror neurons" in our brains are one such mechanism.

When we see -- or imagine, for that matter -- something happen to another person (or any other life form), our brains fire off neurons as though we were that other person or life form, and as though we were experiencing the event ourselves. I would propose, however, that the survival value of that mechanism has more to do with learning through the experience of others than it does to showing us that "Your pain is my pain."

Your pain -- and your success, too -- is not mine. It didn't really happen to me. If the perceived event is focused on the doing (cause) rather than the experiencing (effect), then it's also true that I didn't cause it -- you did or someone else did. I would propose that we need to realize who did what and who felt what if we are to promote sanity and to fix problems. Even though the same nerves are fired off when we "share" an experience as when we "have" the experience, we can still know who's who, and I'm convinced that's vital if we're to learn.

I think there's another mechanism at work here, too; namely that as truly separate spiritual beings, one of our reasons for being here is a fundamental desire to interact and cooperate with each other -- not just humans, but all life forms. I think that's a fundamental, spiritual truth; having once interacted with another being, we want to do it again and again. It's a significant part of "who we really are." Being innately separate beings is lonely once we discover that we are not really alone.

Note however, that interacting and cooperating are very different than "being-the-same-as" the ones with whom we interact and cooperate. The difference is really quite profound. In cooperating, among other things, we have choice and responsibility, while in "being-one-with," the choices and causes are made elsewhere -- by God, or by the universe, or whatever else you might call it.

That's enough for one post, I think. No doubt this will come up again in many other posts as we go along.

Time and Space: Me and Other

I think time is the way we distinguish between what's us and what's other. We perceive things that are not us after the fact. This is easy to see when we view something light-years away as in stars and galaxies. What we see in the present actually happened a long time ago. It's a bit harder to see that the same holds true for literally everything that isn't us. Even scrutinizing a bug from a distance of a foot or so, the light we see takes a tiny bit of time to reach us, and the bug we perceive is not the bug that is there now. Thus, the only present is the self. I would propose that awareness of self, consciousness, is dependent on this mechanism. With no separation between self and other, there is no awareness of self by definition.


A byproduct of time, then, is an awareness of other. The more I become aware of time, the more I become aware that there are others in the universe, and the larger the universe becomes. The awareness of time grounds me in the sense that I gain perspective as to who/what is me, and who/what is others.


This is the meaning behind space and time being inseparable: "space-time". It locates me. It grounds me. And understanding it, I can more easily imagine how things look from other viewing points. In other words, I can better understand, and tolerate, differences and similarities among people (and all life forms).


Time as a measure of change is then added to that view. Sequencing does allow us to make sense of things, keep us "sane," but it is not an illusion. Change does occur. Recalling the first definition of time, I can see that you might become aware of a change either before or after I do. In other words, your measure of time, your clock, if you will, "ticks" differently than mine. Again, I gain perspective and tolerance -- and understanding by seeing time.