There are 5 known realities in the universe.
Space. Time. Energy. Matter. And Intelligence. STEMI for an acronym.
I think about STEMI like a ball game.
Space is the ball field. It’s where we play. We need to play somewhere. Right?
Time is the measurement of how long we’re going to play. The duration.
Energy is the dynamics, like getting off the bench and getting going. Keeping it moving. Hitting it out of the park and making the crowd roar.
Matter is the ball, the bat, the uniforms, the payers, and the fans. Little stuff like that. It’d be a boring game if nobody showed up.
Intelligence is the rules. The ideas for the game. It’d be a pretty whacky game if there were no rules.
Let’s look at these concepts a bit more.
Space is that dimension in which objects and events occur and have relevant position and direction to each other. We know on earth to observe the three dimensions of height, width, and length. It keeps us from walking in front of a bus. Then, there’s the fourth dimension. Space-Time is now well recognized as the fourth dimension. It’s also obvious, although most don’t recognize it. These four dimensions are fundamental to our understanding of the physical universe. Oh, there are many theories floating around about additional dimensions. Branes, warps, strings, and M-Theory are fun to ponder, but the four dimensional model works very well.
Time can be a problem, though. We move about freely in space, but not in time. Time is linear. It’s a temporal measurement. Pretty much a one-way street. Time travel makes a great plot for Back To The Future and The Twilight Zone, but in reality… it ain’t never gonna happen. Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening all at once. Or, from doing it all over again.
Energy? Some days I have none. Energy is a scalar, physical quantity describing the amount of work performed by a force. There are many types of energy. Nuclear, chemical. kinetic, potential, thermal, sound, gravitational, and that biggie of all, electromagnetism, which is transmitted in waves. A basic law of physics, the law of conservation of energy, tells us that any form of energy can be transferred to another, but the total remains the same. The total inflow of energy into a system must equal the total outflow. So, all the energy available since the Big Bang is still available to us and always will be. It changes form all the time, but the fundamentals do not.
Matter is composed of particles. Anything that has mass and occupies a volume, or space, is matter. But matter needs energy to exist. Matter stays matter until it is accelerated to the speed of light. Then, in theory, it converts back to pure energy and ceases to exist. E=MC2 and all that crap. But relativity doesn’t allow that to happen easily in practice.
Intelligence? I don’t pretend to have a grip on that. All I know is that there is some magnificent source of intelligence that gives order to existence. I believe that manifests itself by way of local and non-local consciousness. And I believe we all are capable of tapping into both forms, if we just allow ourselves.
I’m not a religious person in the conventional sense, but I’ll give credit where credit’s due.
Take Genesis from the Hebrew Bible. Whoever wrote that got the process right in the opening sentence.
I can’t argue with a lot of that (tho fairly I’m Sports-stupid), but if I see life that way then I have the think the societal & anti-societal troubles come from the Intelligence/Rules part. And I just can’t put those 2 factors in the same category at all. No way can I see intelligence as a factor in someone’s desires to follow or not follow the rules.
I’m either misunderstanding or I disagree.
I’m ok with STEM. After that to me it comes down to Desire vs. Ability for everyone. You have to factor in an individual’s background & what has shaped them (warped or molded to them), Support & Opportunity, Personal Desire & Determination, and Self-esteem can make you or break you. Heroes can come from the most deprived of backgrounds, and psychos can come from the most advantaged. It all comes down to lack of ABILITY to control oneself vs. lack of DESIRE to control oneself…
It’s really very simple, until the legal system & especially defence lawyers get involved..
Background is big on who you become, but still it’s Oprah Winfrey vs. Jeffery Dahmer.
Hi Gary! I’ve been out of town and running from the heat. Speaking of which, what’s up with all this heat business. It’s been a blistering summer this year, and now we’ve just had the front portion of Issac run through the backyard and waiting for the back end of it.
What does it mean when the human body begins running out of energy? I find that baffling. I know we call it aging and the amount of energy cells and produce, but I wonder about the triggers different bodies pick up to signal the decrease or increase of energy.
A great post. I love M-Theory and hope you’ll touch on it more in the future. And I have to wonder about the creation of energy and the inability to destroy it. If this life we’re living is an expression of an energy form, what happens when the body breaks down and that energy is released?
Stephen Hawking is a proponent of M-Theory; the theory of everything or the grand unified theory that Einstein spent the second half of his life searching for. Hawking believes in spontaneous creation based upon the ‘general supersymmetric theory of gravity’. He says that spontaneous creation is the reason there is something, rather than nothing, and that it’s not necessary to invoke God to light the blue torch paper and set the universe going. In other words, he says that the universe just created itself with no plan.
I don’t agree. I give the universe far more credit than that. I think that the universe thought itself into existence and I think that thought is the path of God.
But, then, who am I to argue with Stephen Hawking?
I agree, Gary. There has to be some intelligence involved. The three major wisdom traditions springing from the God of Abraham all refer to that power as a name that can’t be spoken. It’s beyond our comprehension. Something set the whole thing in motion, but I doubt it’s anything we can comprehend.
My limited understanding of M-Theory has to do with the failure of string theory as a unified field theory. There was a physicist who insisted there were eleven strings, but that extra string didn’t fit the theory. Then string theory couldn’t be linked back to the big bang. Eventually the eleventh element was added and the strings turned into membranes undulating against each other until enough friction was created to cause the big bang. That sounds as if I have some vague clue as to what I’m talking about, but don’t be fooled:-) My understanding is sketchy, which is why I hope you will be going into it in more depth.
Great post Garry. Cerebral, loved it! I also like the ‘credit- where credit is due.’ “She” would be pleased I think 😉
Be nice to her. She’s going to pick your final home. 🙂