The Web of Interconnectedness

I woke up with a nagging feeling, left by the post I wrote last night after having mentioned Neil de Grasse Tyson's quote on how we are connected to the universe. The quote goes like this:

“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

I just want to clarify that Yoda said this a long time ago. He said: “Judge me by my size, do you?” If you think about it, what he meant is that no matter how big or small someone is, their connection to the universe (the force) always makes you infinitely large. Anyway...

I also hope that most people realize that this is not a new revelation, or a new thought that Neil has brought up. Carl Sagan reminds us that we are all stardust, but even before them and with less physics ancient Native Americans also were very keen to the fact that we were all part of the same organism. Even ancient buddhism knew this with the idea of the Web of Indra: "A buddhist concept of interpenetration hold that all phenomena are intimately connected; for the Huayan school, Indra's net symbolizes a universe where infinitely repeated mutual relations exist between all members of the universe."

And one doesn't need to go too far back to know that it's not such a new concept; when we consider the Gaia Theory proposed by James Lovelock around the 1960's : “The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.”

Yes we can take this to the stars, take it to Jupiter and beyond; but let's bring it back home. What does it mean to us, in a very real sense, that we are connected to the natural world atomically and biologically? Also, what does that imply in the sense of connections between people? If I sit here and think; well, if everybody else is made up of the same stuff, and all our thoughts and emotions have the same resonance, wouldn't that mean that we are always, constantly being shaped and shifted by the energy of everybody else? Think about the people around you, and how you influence them, they influence you and so on and on, and how we have taken the work and inspiration of countless others to create your knowledge and personality. There's always going to be a million other people around you creating your world, and you are also on the other hand part of that which creates other people's world.

Again, what I'm trying to do is bring it home. Because to me sometimes these concepts sound all good and nice, and epic, but really, what do they give us? What can I take from it and bring it to my immediate reality?

For many years, I was deeply introverted. I still am more of an introvert, but before I had somewhat of an aversion to being surrounded by many people. Music was a refuge for my introversion, but one day that all somewhat came all crashing down. I was listening to some band, and I just started to think about all the people involved in that particular activity. First, there was the band. A bunch of people I didn't know, singing loudly in my head. Then I thought about all the sound engineers, and production support for the band. Then I thought about the people involved in the distribution of the band, and even the engineers involved in the production of my music player. Suddenly, no matter what, I was surrounded by people. And that's when it hit me: You can't escape it! There's always a million people behind everything we own, everything we make our 'own'; everything we choose to represent us is actually a creation involving many minds.

So at that point, I started to think in terms of how everybody constantly has a Web of Interconnectedness around them, everybody a walking epicenter of countless connections, to people to the natural world, and to the farthest nebula. Okay, let's talk about space for a bit. Space is really exciting to think about its implication in this web of connections. For example, all the pieces of the Universe are there floating around... all those giant Nebula clouds, and all those far reaching galaxies. As Neil implies, we share their atomic make up. So in a way, even those things have some kind of relevance in your life, maybe if they weren't there, our lives wouldn't be the same. Maybe if those things weren't there, as cold and distant as they seem, life on Earth would have never had happened. What I'm trying to get to here is, that even the miracle of life on Earth had to happen through another cosmic Rube Goldberg machine-like process, starting at the big bang. We might never know what the implications of these process actually means to us, but the universe has it stored somewhere in its memory banks. Because if life is created in the universe right at the beginning of the universe, it means that explosions, and the movement of gases (which are the most randomly acting things) determined that at some point, that asteroid would've hit that planet and not that other one, and so on and on, and we get life! If it were to happen again, those explosions and gases might act differently, and instead we might've been aquatic creatures! So yeah. Asteroids. Relevant!

Let's go back to us again. Not too long ago, Aletheia (@N0C3RA on twitter) tweeted these quotes:

“You are not an isolated entity, but a unique, irreplaceable part of the cosmos. Do not forget this” -Epictetus

And also, I credit her for this one: “Loneliness is not cured by human contact, it is cured by contact reality”

I think these 2 quotes are very relevant, and the 2nd one was taken right out the tip of my tongue. If you know me personally, you probably know that for the most part I'm on my own. I'm what many would consider a lonely person, all the pieces are there... I'm not very social, I don't engage in too many romantic relationships, I love living on my own; but in my reality I'm surrounded by people and connections! In fact, sometimes more than I wish! Haha! There is people coming out of the freaking woodwork! How can I feel lonely? In fact, even on my own I feel the presence of a million others, cluttering my space! Haha! I actually don't feel lonely at all, the concept is now almost irrelevant to me. Fact of the matter is, we can't be alone. There is no way for you to be alone. So Aletheia, props to you! Reality indeed, makes us realize that we are part of not just an inter-connected human organism, but as humans we are energetically and atomically connected to the outer universe.

We are all living in this cosmic plasma. That which we call air that we take so easily for granted is like one giant mushy marshmallow that connects us. There is no space, really – it's all full; and that's something to think about when we think about the implications of the actions of our lives in society as a whole. Anything we decide to engage on leaves a mark in the physical world that who knows how many things are created or destroyed as a result. Every button press, everything we say, everything we consume, and I would even argue, every thought you have has a direct implication in the natural world and is constantly in touch with the energy that surrounds us all, influencing others and the universe too. It's all very real because it's matter.

I think even though it's very exciting and epic (and also a bit self-aggrandizing) to think that we share bits and pieces with the sun and the stars (one could write plenty poetry about this) we have to always bring it home, otherwise I don't think the idea gets you too far. Yes we are all stardust, what's next. Let's think about our connections to people, to the earth, to animals, even to our bodies. Our bodies are just like the universe, a part of nature.. they are not really yours, your creation per se. You borrow a piece of consciousness, made by nature. So before we get too far of ourselves and wonder about the implication that our farts are made up of the same stuff Jupiter's clouds are; think about the inter-connectedness of your life, the people in it, your thoughts, how your emotional state (it's all chemical and energetic) affects everyone around you. Soon we discover, that we have so much power to influence our reality, it's up to us to figure out how we want to do this.