the big bang

if science has it right, the best explanation for our universe's beginning goes something like this: all of everything was condensed into a tiny grapefruit sized clump, and then *bam!* it was furiously hurled through space.

boom

in high-school, my buddies and i loved these little tiny firecrackers that were smaller than a pinky yet terrifically loud. we'd buy hundreds at a time to throw into a lake, in empty bottles, at each other… and then of course there are endless fireworks and sparklers that give you not just a split second but entire minutes of entertainment.

so the question is: how long did the big bang last? was it near instantaneous like a firecracker? was it a few minutes like a sparkler? days? years? centuries? millenia?

semantics

ultimately, it depends on how you define "the big bang". the rapid expansion of all matter in the known universe would be a good start. and most people would probably agree that it was no longer happening once stars and galaxies formed. but you could argue that "rapid expansion" means it's still happening since space is expanding at an ever-increasing rate

consider this shape:

is it a rectangle? i say it's 4 triangles. but then again i could pair those 4 triangles into 2 on a whim.

how i divide the shape is completely arbitrary in this context. this isn't high school geometry; it's a pointless blog post. it simply doesn't matter if you look at it as 1 rectangle or 2 or 4 triangles. it's just semantics, and semantics are made up to suit a specific context.

semantic utility

so it's all made up. but sometimes the context makes those arbitrary lines useful. if one of the tires on your car ends up with a hole, it's useful to be able to divide the car into separate pieces–-to separate the tire from the car–-so that you can fix the flat. and if your tire's rim cracks, it's useful to be able to further break the tire down into yet smaller pieces to again fix the problem. we choose where to draw those dividing lines based on the context, but the utility of a given perspective does not make it the whole truth.

i once knew someone who was having a particularly hard time dealing with a breakup. it helped him cope to pretend that the girl had died, and that's why she was gone. when performing calculus, we often pretend that x reaches infinity to help us solve equations. but can anything actually reach infinity in the real world? debatable. and evolution has "gifted" us with a tendency to see danger where it is not, because it's far more advantageous to think a rock is a puma than the inverse. humanity has devised and inherited all manner of ways to perceive reality that have helped us navigate and survive–-from obviously illusory emotional crutches to strange maths to evolutionary instincts. but at the end of the day, it's all made up by a species that can't perceive even 1% of reality.

more semantics

the lines that divide have utility in some contexts, but it can sometimes be detrimental to leave their artificial nature unacknowledged. we view other people and indeed the world as separate from us, and that sometimes helps to inhibit harmonious interactions. even when we logically acknowledge that all is connected, many people still feel on some level disconnected because it has been so engrained in us. this can lead to feelings of isolation and an "us-vs-them" mentality that ranges from mildly unhealthy competition to genocide.

you yourself are a conglomeration of skin cells, living microbes, gut flora, etc… without them, you would not be alive. in the same way, every person, creature, and rock make up the whole of our planet. this planet along with others make up the solar system. and so on, ad infinitum. and if tiny living organisms within us can play a role in our consciousness, who's to say that we aren't tiny pieces of an even grander consciousness? and how might our approach to life differ if we looked at everyone and everything around us as an extension of ourselves? if we felt truly, deeply connected with our fellow man, nature, and indeed the whole cosmos?

"real" life

okay, that last bit might be getting a little pocahantas-y and hard to swallow in light of corruption, war, etc… was jack the ripper an "extension of you" as he terrorized 19th century london? maybe, i don't know, that's not what i'm getting at. if i'm honest, viewing everything as the same is just as "made up" as saying everything is separate. we have within us a tremendous and devastatingly deficient intellect that will likely never fully comprehend this existence. but learning to broaden our views and find balance between perspectives tends to help.

fin

ultimately, the labels and divisions we define can only attempt to articulate reality within a certain context. and the lines we draw reveal more about us than they do the world. everything simply is, regardless of any limited labels we fabricate.

where is the man who has forgotten words, that i might have a conversation with him?

if you call a door a "banana", you still have to turn the doornknob to open it. it doesn't matter if we decide the big bang ended here or there. the flinging of particles is still happening even now with you. the real question is: what do you think? has the big bang ended? or are you part of it? or both simultaneously? reality is a vast painting. we each get to choose how much of the picture we see in each given moment.

credit to alan watts for this idea: you are the big bang

@shitchell –- february 21, 2021