Relativity and D-Day 80

One of the greatest theories is Einstein's theories of relativity that did away with Newton's Absolute Inertial Frame which places everything relative to absolute space, and instead said that all frames of inertia are relative.

It's quite intuitive. As mentioned in a recent blog sitting on a chair we are stationary relative to the floor, but we can see the shadows move and the position of the Sun move so we know either the Sun is moving or we are moving. It turns out that having us move solves a load of problem. So relative to the centre of the Earth we are moving, at about 1000mph--on the equator--as the Earth revolves. So we have two answers for how fast we are going: 0 relative to the floor, and 1000mph relative to the axis of the Earth. But pick anything and you have a new speed. There is no actual speed! This sounds weird. But how fast we are going is purely relative and we have no baseline fundamental speed. To ask how fast am I going without a point of reference is meaningless.

What probably confuses us is there is an absolute and that is change of motion. When we speed up and slow down we can feel that and that change is absolute to all our speed. If we get in a plane and fly away from the rising Sun at 1000mph (on the equator) we can stop the Sun and stay stationary relative to the axis of the Earth. But to do this we need to feel the force in our seat as the plane accelerates and changes our speed, in this case slowing us down by 1000mph!

Now getting used to the idea that we have no absolute speed is really quite hard. But if we have no absolute speed then we have no absolute position either. This seems really hard to grasp. If I am in this room relative to the Earth surface but both room and me are travelling at 1000mph then our position is really changing all the time. And we are in a solar system moving at 100,000mph and a galaxy adding 800,000mph and who knows what else outside this. We have no absolute position! Position is relative to something else. This takes some REAL getting used to.

But it is worth it because in fact all things are relative. I'm just getting my head around the "self" being relative. You know how some people like us, and others don't like us, or sometimes people think we are really good at our job, and sometimes other don't. And sometimes even we like ourselves or don't like ourselves, and sometime we think we are good at things and sometime bad. It is like we are full of different selves, or can be one person in one location and another person in another location.

Is this not the same as the consideration above about having no absolute root location.

In here is an extremely tough thing to grasp so don't let it go and think oh that is easy, or what-ever. 

Having no "absolute" root is the essence of existence.

Once we get used to having no fixed location then we can accept that we are stationary relative to the floor, but travelling at 800,000mph relative to galactic centre.

Likewise when we get used to the fact we have no fixed self, then we can accept that at this time people think this of me, or I am this, and at another time people think something difference. It is not that we "change" it is that we only get a foxed value relative to something. Change that something and the fixed value changes. There is no rocking chair called "self" that we can retreat to and call that the "real" me, and more than we can retreat to a place of absolute stop and stationary.

Ooo hectic busy busy. I am always moving and I am never my true self... exhausting.

Well actually the opposite. When you realise that the sense of movement only comes about relative to something else, then you realise you have no true motion at all! When the train next to you pulls away and you feel like you are moving, well relative to them you are. And when you pull away exactly the same experience. The difference is just the acceleration in the second case as your rate of motion actually changes. We are not being nihilistic here and not saying that we cannot move or denying anything. We are simply pointing out that there is no situation where we find a true stationary because it does not exist. And if it does not exist then we have no absolute motion. Nothing hectic at all about that: motion and our bodies do not go together without something else in the mix.

The same goes for self. We have all these situations. Some make us feel great and we are a great self, others don't work so well and we think ouch not a great self. Perhaps we think we are good at jogging, but there will always be someone faster than us. Or we think we are a nice person but then we lose our temper and decide we are not nice any more, or we meet someone amazing and realise we have a lot of work to do. The mistake is to think we are a single changing self. But in fact--like with motion--we are having a self fixed each time. It becomes permanent just in relation to that other thing. This is vaguely analogous to the "wave collapse" in Quantum Physics where things exist as a possibility and then only become an actual value on observation. Except here it is more radical as there is no prior model that collapses when it is measured, we have no numerical position, not even a probability, without a measurement point, and likewise we have no form of self without a situation in life. And because of this there is no time when we are a "true" self. "Self" by itself is nonsense.

I hear that people go mad in isolation. I wonder whether the evaporation of self is not a welcome event when you are brought up to believe it is a solid fixed thing inside you. You think "you "is like a pilot moving around through life like Dr. Sam Beckett in "Quantum Leap" and while situations change there is still a fixed entity at root.

This is wrong. This is like saying that we have a fixed position that is suddenly sped up and slowed down as we measure our self. So this stationary position we think we are in is somehow sped up to 1000mph when we think about the Earth rotating, or 800,000mph when we think about the Milky Way rotating. This makes no sense, and the idea of a Fixed Self passing through time and taking up a position in all our situations in life is basically wrong and something 100% for the bin.

If we use film as an analogy, we see the "same" actors taking on different roles and behaving in different situations. Some actors do indeed do the same kinds of things, but others dazzle us by appearing to be different people really adapted to their role and situation. The latter type are more revealing about the truth, in reality there is no "fixed person" moving through all these roles. If there was we end up with the strange question of wondering whether an actor ever stops acting even when they return to "themselves." How do we know they are not acting even when they are introduced by the birth name. What is the difference between playing a made up character and playing themselves? And then we ask what is the character of the person who is playing all these roles? We get stuck in a kind of Platonic quandary. If we have a fixed self, what is it's character? It needs no character in order to take on other characters? But what is a self without character? This seems like the Indian question of whether God has a personality. This creates quite a division in theology. Burrowing into this we see the problem arises because of a persistent idea of a "fixed self" like a Dr. Sam Beckett sitting behind everything. When we get to questions of death of course this becomes even more perplexing. What happens to our Dr. Sam Beckett when the host body dies? Can't remember how Quantum Leap dealt with that. But if there is no Dr. Sam Beckett then no problem.

I'm sure for more realised beings who have begun the journey of relativity, they would expect the self to evaporate without there being anything to be relative to.

Very early days for me, but I suspect the experiences of those like Buddha and Eckhart Tolle are not that self disappears when they enlighten, but that they see it as something that turns up and then leaves again.

That seems crazy to us westerners who believe in Souls and Selves that are so fixed that they might survive death, but if they do not they are certainly a pebble we carry our whole lives. The idea we can put that pebble down seems nonsense. "Who puts the pebble down?" we think. "Who just thought that?" we think again.

Central to the idea of the Pebble Self is that things come from the Pebble. The Pebble thought this, and another Pebble is writing this blog.

Well someone is definitely writing this, and I hope (with some embarrassment) someone may read it and see flaws in it and realise what an idiot I am. Perhaps that person will be the same pebble that wrote it some year later. This is all true, but the problem is trying to put a "centre" into that pebble, just as we try to put a nail into space to locate a centre and true stationary place for us to rest.

We already worked out above that we have as many speeds as we have things to measure again, and there is no fundamental speed for us to have. We simply do not have a fixed "speed." It all depends upon being relative to other things.

In exactly the same way we have as many selves as we have situations and people to be relative against. But none of them is a fixed true self, somehow hidden away like a pebble that has a fixed location and fixed identity.

This sense of there being nothing fixed in there, of it being free to become whatever it becomes in relation to something else, they call that Sunyata.

This may seem like nihilism and throwing everything away. But just because we have no pure fixed stationary speed, when did that ever stop us from moving? Sitting at this chair stationary regarding the computer, does not stop the Sun moving across the sky as we also move around the Earth. Both at the same time. So which speed are we 0mph relative to the computer or 1000mpg relative to the Earth axis? They are both real. In the same way the many selves we have are all real to. Perhaps sitting at the computer is the speed we want to focus on, but note the sun still moves even while we ignore that speed. Likewise there are selves we like and want to hold on to. But this does not make them fixed, we are just holding them for a bit like a pebble.

Having no actual speed and having no actual self are actually profoundly relaxing in fact. Both these things are not really me.

So where does D-Day come into this. Well certain people (not quite sure who) are very keen that we hold onto a particular self or version of D-Day. We are told again and again about what D-Day was and how we are to think about it. Those people want it fixed.

Well no question it is all these things. But like speed, it only looks like this relative to something else. Change that something else and it all looks different.

I have always like to look at war from the perspective of another species or perhaps an alien. They look upon Humans and see them beating each other up and they must think how odd. Why did those humans killing 80 million of those humans? And WW2 was by far the greatest avoidable loss of life in human history. Plagues and natural disasters we still struggle to stop, but war is decided by nothing but humans and carried out by nothing but humans so is completely avoidable.

Obviously the other perspective in any war is the "enemy." The Allies who remember D-Day today were the amalgamation of the British and American Empires looking to defeat the German and Italian Empires. They also wanted the Russian Empire but decided to take a break. From the perspective of  people outside the Allies it was just the same old Imperial warfare of the last 400 years. Just like Allied Soldiers Axis soldiers fought for their countries and in the case of Axis a chance to define themselves free rom the British and American Empire. What I find unusual today is that the Axis offer a very attractive option, the idea of countries being free to share international power and collaborate on multiple axes seems a very advanced modern idea. But the US have decided that they do not want Axis and we must all march to the beat of a single drum in Washington. Given this I don't understand the desire if countries to join NATO or any Washington led organisation and lose their own freedom. Russia for example is only fighting for its own freedom after all and does it really represent a lesser freedom than Washington?

Anyway that paragraph expresses the "speed" and "direction" of the whole situation relative to a different train going at a different speed and direction. Miraculously D-Day looks different.

So we discover that in fact all things are relative. This does not make them less real, but it reminds us that that reality only last as long as we are in relation to some other thing. Change that thing and the reality changes. And this teaches us the fundamental truth that there is no fixed reality.

Woah wait "fixed truth that there is no fixed truth" kind of. "there is no fixed truth" is not necessarily a fixed truth, it's a remark that when you start with the idea that reality is fixed, you discover that really its relative. Once you have let go of the original idea of fixed then none of this is relevant anymore.