Good Morning Everybody,
It is a beautiful day here in Brooklyn, NY.
I woke up this morning and looked outside to find that it had snowed in the night. It is still snowing right now, and the backyard is covered in white. Lovely.
I woke up thinking this thought: The Universe is made up of three things, and three things only.
They are, (in no particular order):
Matter, Space, and Conciousness.
In the beginning, there was nothing. No space, (for how can one have space without matter to define its edges?)
No matter, and no conciousness.
Then there WAS. Kaboom!
How and Why are for brighter minds than mine to discover, but no matter, the important thing is that there was nothing, and then an instant later there was everything.
Bear with me here, I’ve got a point.
My point is that wherever you have matter, you have entropy.
“Entropy: Noun, lack of order or predictability, a gradual decline into disorder.”
Now space is not the enemy of entropy, but it does stand in the way of it. Space inhibits entropy by keeping things simple and orderly. A nice clean desk: space. A desk covered in papers, banana peels, toothpicks, computers: entropy.
More matter= more entropy. The greater the entropy, the greater the number of interactions between those bits of matter brought together. The more interactions, the greater the chance of complex systems arising.
Complex systems like: Human beings.
Here’s a wonderful thing: No one can tell us why we are human, or even, HOW we are human. You see, we are all of us built of the same non-conscious building blocks. Calcium, iron, hydrogen, helium, carbon, these simple things make not only us, but also the Ford Cortina, the movie Spaceballs, and every other thing in the Universe. Why our special mix of building blocks allows us to dream and imagine is a question that no one yet has been able to answer.
We humans are simply the most complex of all the systems we are currently aware of. We are the most capable of producing entropy and harnessing its potential. We are the most capable at coaxing matter to come together and interact. And where there is interaction, there is further creation.
I sit now in my apartment, surrounded by the trappings of my humanity: banana peels, dvds, bedsheets, ashes. All of these things are here because of me and my fellow humans, and all are, in the eye of the Universe, completely equal.
This is my second point: Matter IS Conciousness. Where you have matter, you have information, which is in itself a set of instructions, which is a form of conciousness.
“What?!” You say. “A rock has the same conciousness as me?”
Nope, but a rock does have some conciousness. Just enough to let it go on being a rock. A rock is physically responding to the same external forces as we are, and by that I mean, somewhere in every rock is a set of instructions that define its physical characteristics. I shall be grey, I shall be heavy, I shall sit motionless until moved, I shall crumble over time into dust, perhaps then to be reformed into something else.
Now take me: I shall sit here writing this, I shall be wearing long underwear, I shall have eaten a banana, I shall be encased in a suit made of flesh and bones, I shall respirate, I shall digest the banana, I shall convert the banana into flesh and bone, I shall have blue eyes, I shall have pale skin, my eyes shall see my surroundings and my brain shall form thoughts.
A longer list of instructions than the rock, but a list of instructions just the same.
We are all just acting out a set of instructions. We humans have the advantage over all other matter in that we are aware of the instruction list.
So as you go about your day, take a moment to be aware of yourself and your surroundings. Let your conciousness expand to include everything around you. Feel the struggle of all matter in its tendency toward complexity, and most importantly allow yourself to feel compassion for all things.
Appreciate the matter around you and within you. Appreciate the consciousness around you and within you, and definitely appreciate the space around you and within you.
Alive, dead, animate, inanimate, we are all in this together.
We all struggle together.
All my love and profound respect,
Jackson
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