Space and Particles, but mostly space. And not really particles, when you get right down to it.

Here are some lessons sourcing from current scientific thinking, with the caveat of these lessons being also the product of mine own sythesizing, occasionally with little rigor, and all of the above have been more or less iteratively imprinted in my mind -- with all of the implicit and explicit potential for nested glitches in the logic. Wow -- I wanted to get a lot in that sentence, and I did. At what price, though? I would like it if you would let me know if you do/do not get the meanings of that sentence. Keep in mind I am evaluating my ability to communicate these ideas, not your mental capabilities. In other words, if you don't get it -- blame me and let me know. Comment below or e-mail me: marc.e.scott@gmail.com

If you are interested in these ideas and would like to learn more, the two best books I know that break this stuff down and make it palatable are: Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley and the Tao of Physics (and Web of Life and Hidden Connections, the latter being the latest and probably most speculative) by Fritjof Capra. Also, Brian Swimme has several works on our universe's cosmology and what we can learn from it, including how human consciousness can reasonably be considered a logical extension of the basic creative forces of the universe.

So, look around. Pretty much everything you see is a particle. It has mass -- it is contructed, at various levels, of molecules, atoms, electrons, neutrons and whatever they named the little bits of stuff that exist down at the quantum level. When you reach out to touch whatever you see, your hand (or rather the electrons (maybe another named thing, but I think it is a particle with a negative charge which I think is an electron) that make up the external most surface of your hand, actually presses up against the (electrons (see previous caveat) that make up the external most surface of) thing you see. The point, electron stuff notwithstanding, is that pretty much most of what you see is solid.

Except that it really isn't solid as we think it is. You've probably heard this -- that at even the atomic level, in each and every atom stacked up to create that thing you see, there is actually more space than there is particle. By a long, long shot. I have no idea what the proportion is exactly, but I'm pretty sure it is accurate to say that an atom, all atoms and therefore everything you see (and don't see -- like air and fart gas) are more than 99.9% space. I suggested that you have probably heard this before -- well, whether you have or have not, take a moment to look at your sorroundings and see them as little tiny particles spinning and turning and when you zoom in in in you see the space in which they spin. When you press down on the table before you, your relatively insubstantial hand is pressing against a relatively insubstantial table -- (remember what the parentheticals above conveyed regarding what is actually pressing against what, so our relative insubstantiality doesn't contradict our experience of substantiality (along, of course, with the nature of the relationships between the atoms that make up your hand an between the atoms that make up the table, which at the scale we live matters, I think).

So it all is mostly space. To finish this exposition, and to really add the kicker to all of this, the particles that exist down to the quantum level are actually not substantial. This fact made the turn of the century quantum physics freak out -- they actually had, literally, existential crises when the apprehened the fundamentally insubstantial nature of substance. Well, of course the probabalistic relationships that explain interrelationships at the quantum level freaked them out even more, but thats for a whole different time/space/blogpost.

I learned this stuff, more or less, within the last ten years. But it was only within the last year, as I attended and completed the CTI Leadership Program, that I learned how to frame this stuff as a useful aspect of a model for living. (This is really about 3/8 of what I am all about -- understanding stuff such that I can apply it -- its just one of the games that make life interesting for me.) Here is my first attempt at expressing the useful aspects of this knowledge.

First of all, let's not try to operate at the quantum, or even the atomic, level. We'll let our knowledge of these levels, all of the things and non-things there and how the operate and interrelate, inform what we experience up here at the human percepual level. At this level, let's limit our focus to two aspects right now: particles (our experience of them as solid and their implicit insubstantiality we mostly know from above) and space. The other player with which we have some experience is energy -- which is of course is what really comprises both particles and even the vast vast vast majority of what we are calling space (the more traditional physicists definition of space is some phenomena that is created by the expansion of the universe in the medium of time (and vice versa) or something like that). Energy is really really important. Remember, it is the basis of everything.

So, to summarize:
-- Energy, some kind of dynamic expression of the actual original moment of our universes creation (commonly known as the Big Bang, but reinterpreted as the primordial flaring forth by Brian Swimme), is the basis for everything we experience. If you can get a handle on his idea, even a loose handle, we are doing well.
-- At a level or two up from where energy is all, we have what appears to be solid material, or particles, that is actually comprised mostly the space within the container that I suppose must be defined in part by the positions of particles as they spin and tumble.
-- I haven't fully explained this, but it the basis of it is pretty straightforward so I'll tack it on here in the summarizing: particles and space make up what we see; they are organized into the trees and cars and earth and breath and breathing and speeding bullets and bursting of blood vessels of the nose when it is punched and cultures and sytems and politics and art et al. I don't really have a handle on how exactly particle and space make up these very complex constructs, but I assure you they do. If you need, I'll work it out, but it seems unnecessary to me.

I know, I am barely hanging on to all of this at the same time myself, so I am imagine it must be tough to keep it all straight. Just let the words I am offering, and the experiences you have as you read them, simply inform you and don't try to hold it too tightly. If it interests you, your mind will return to it occasionally and you'll start to see it more and more.

OK, time is just about up and I want to write what made me get up and run back to my house for this laptop.

Let your mind relax, take a few breaths. Take a few seconds to notice your body -- how you feel, the level of energy you have, aches and pains, your mood and attitudes -- and just keep breathing. Shut your eyes (hey -- you figure it out, my job is to get this stuff down, you get to figure out how to record it) and imagine a park, in a city, with some trees and grass and a few people sorrounded by buildings and cars. and consider the trees, actually just one tree. Consider the leaves -- they are made up of those little particles spinning through a relatively large area of space, all within the structure of the leaf, the leaves -- as they trade gaseous particles back and forth and absorb light (pretty much plain old energy) and create new kinds of particles that get circulated throughout the tree). See how when you view the leaves like this they kind of get kind of fuzzy? They have structure and mass, but these are kind of fuzzy, but they interact in such a way with their immediate environment in a way that is also fuzzy. I have to relax my mind here and just let myself see the leaf as a mass of moving bits that trade little bits of themselves back and forth with the rest of the tree and the air around the tree (not to mention the critically important energy from the sun). For the purposes of this scenario, consider the rest of the tree down to the roots to be effectively a thing to hold the leaves and a vessel for the partcles the leaves create to be transferred back and forth with the roots. The roots are reallt just like the leaves, in dynamic, only the particles in play are the soil and its minerals and water, being traded back and forth with the roots and the rest of the tree and the soil.

Notice the grass that is essentially just a lot of soft short trees without the middle part.

Now, notice the people. There are more systems here than I have time to cover, so I'll keep it simple. The people take in energy and particles that are made up of things like the trees and grass, and also other animals that eat the trees and grass, as well as water. I suspect the people take in energy, if not particles, from other sources -- and I'll talk about one of those in a few minutes. But first, notice how the people move around and do things with materials made up of particles -- frisbees, grills, newspapers, etc. We do lots of stuff with stuff. Consider how doing these things changes the people. They are learning and exercising and using up stored energy and breaking things and reorganizing things and doing things to each other and to the grass and the trees. Consider the people leaving the park and entering the cars and buildings and all of the interactions that are implicit here: drawing air and some stuff fom the park into the buildings and cars, and expelling exhaust from both the cars and buildings -- most of the stuff at this particular level isn't very pretty -- so take a minutes to visualize one of your favorite nature scenes and feel the aesthetically pleasing interactions here. Read this paragraph again and this time remember that every bit of stuff, every particle, is made up of mostly space and tiny little particles just spinning and tumbling around. Let it all get fuzzy.

Now, we have covered some of the basic interactions that are happening in our immediate environment at our human perceptual level. To add a dimension:

Now consider how the people have been intereacting with each other: communicating, learning, sharing resources, competing for resources, exchanging particles (aka bodily fluids), creating habits and eventually cultures and sub-cultures, and having material impact in ways that are so complex that I need another sentence to get at them. Now expand the nature of the particle transfers (it might be best to envision them as a form of energy that is transferred as opposed to the actual particles and space) to include the reorganization of materials and systems of materials that move us emotionally, such as art and acts of violence and/or compassion and interacting with children and our parents and disasters and global trends and the balances of political and economic power. Now, regarding being emotionally moved, I think it makes the most sense to imagine this by first seeing the people and their bodies as masses of moving particles and space, and then see the emotions as complex interactions of these masses -- maybe looking something like weather systems within the body system of particles. So, see the people with the churning particles having even more complex churnings of particles (remember, the emotions) that have impact on other people, their more complex churnings of (emotions) particles that are traded back and forth like love and hate an anger and joy and play and fun and annoyance.

(I can't resist a view at the systems with which we are currently fucking up our planet, but what is outside these parentheses more important than what is within, so either skip this or be prepared to compartmentalize -- We buy goods and services that are sourced from parts of the earth that are far away, with lots of implicit particle transfers such as the materials the goods and services, as well as the means to transport them back and forth (this is mostly the not pretty level if interaction), and lots of implicit transfers in the actual extraction of the resources (think strip mining and agriculture and hunting) and the reorganizing of the particles (think petroleum refineries and food processing plants), and lots of implicit impacts of the resources being taken from their source (think deforestation and depleted farm soil and over-fished water) and, finally for now, the exchange of particles that leave "foreign" particles behind as we extract and reorganize and transport the material that become our goods and services (think nitrogen run off into our water systems and the acids left behind by strip mining and the CO2 et al that is exhausted into the air and water by the transport machines). (For the advanced parenthetical reader, let all of these systems of exchanges nest comfortable, but complexly, into the system that is our biospehere, including the natural environments and the weather systems and the ages, from ice to the paleozoic to the technological ages.))

Now, see it all. The trees an buildings and parks and scenes of nature and the people and their creation an reorganization of particles into goods and services and all of the particle transfers going on, including the emotional transfers among the people. Let it all get fuzzy -- don't try to get too precise. Just see it.

It's ok to say, "whoa" as if you are just coming on to a new (or, who knows, previously experienced) drug.