It is perhaps foolish to attempt a denial of relativity and its influence within our lives, but useful to observe and examine, to place it within a different perspective, than that in which it normally operates - unchallenged.
What kick-started my thinking on this subject was watching a monumentous programme on Channel 4 - Journey To The Edge Of The Universe - an incredibly awe inspiring CGI rendition - transporting the viewer through the enormity and powerful presences in our own solar system & galaxy - and beyond - way beyond - a journey covering 2 billion lightyears of travel.
Phot courtesy atlasoftheuniverse
A strange thought ocurred to me - that this mind-blowing display of enormity and power could be simply for effect, for no matter what calculations we perform, no matter what conclusions of measurement we arrive at - the relevance of these conclusions is confined entirely within relativity.In other words, our impressions of size, distance weight and time - virtually any measurement you care to define - only have value in comparison - ie, in relation to another measurement.
The stark fact is - that stripped of this relative method of valuation - we have not the slightest grasp of the reality - in fact, there is no implicit reality to those very notions that we take for granted - size, weight, distance and time.
The strong values that we invest in these notions exist and are derived only in the relationship - one with the other - but in no other sense at all.
Size is not real - distance is not real - weight is not real - time is not real - they are purely derivatives of perception.
Strip away the imposed layer of value - for instance, with size - and we are left with a completely vacant state of being - immeasurable in its own right - the notion of size being derived only in comparison.
Yes - we are microscopic in size in relation to the relative vastness of the universe - but that enormity is also only a reflection of our own smallness.Remove the comparison - and we cannot have the slightest idea of either.
We can say therefore, that we are of no size - that the entire universe is of no size.
The same applies to time - 2 billion light years sounds a phenominal amount when compared to the average 70 year lifespan of a human being - but here we are confined to our own perspective.Looked at from the perspective of a butterfly for instance - who may live for two or three days - a human life would be unimaginable.
Remove the comparative perspective, strip away the validation that measurement lends to the notion of time - and we find that time also is really - no time.
Yet are we not buried and saturated in these relative beliefs - for that is what they are - beliefs - conclusions of perception.They are conceptual conclusions that exist in a realm far removed and possibly irrelevant to the actuality that they presume to describe.
That actuality is the substance of reality, beyond the names we allocate to it, beyond the conclusions we deduce about it.Other than its actual existence - and our own innocent experience of that same existence from within it - it cannot be known in any meaningful way.
Yet for the purposes of administration, communication, organisation - we all tacitly conspire together in the lie of relativity.
For how could we communicate without language, without the pretence of definition?But our convenient definitions carry the danger of arrogance, they can start to imply that we do really understand the terms we use - that these terms actually reflect something that can be known.
But they do not - they are reality held at arms length - held up to the light of reason, by reason - the answers arrived at in that way will always be reasonable, contained, excused, defined - associated with value.
Whereas the substance of actuality - untouched by reason - is entirely disconnected with value, measurement, judgement of any sort - size, distance, weight or age.
An unfathomable and miraculous mystery.
© Reuters
Photo courtesy dailymail
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