Quantum Science & Why I Am Grateful to Donald Trump!
Quantum physics provides a new way of perceiving the world. The deep patterning of nature – both visible and invisible – provides a glimpse into the web of connections throughout the universe. It is a challenging science as it creates an upside-down perspective of reality. Newtonian science from which we still operate in the 21st Century declares we are all mechanical parts of a greater sum. Medicine still looks at our bodies as disparate parts rather than a holisitic whole though that too is beginning to change.
When I began to draw upon quantum science as a metaphor for various dilemmas in my personal life and began looking at my world from a quantum perspective, I began to find peace and order. It was the metaphoric language of “chaos theory” that “a system can descend into chaos and unpredictability, yet within that state of chaos the system is held within boundaries that are well-ordered and predictable. Without the partnering of these two great forces, no change or progress is possible. Chaos is necessary to new creative ordering,” where I found myself deepening and expanding my conscious awareness to include what cannot be seen by the physical eye. I began to meditate and explore the magnificent and infinite realms of inner consciousness.
Fritjof Capra the physicist wrote that “the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.” If I considered myself and my soul as a great thought rather than a Newtonian law of physics, what would I find? Disequilibrium!
The Second Law of thermodynamics as it applies to equilibrium is the tendency of a closed system to wear down, to give off energy that can never be retrieved. Equilibrium is the end state in the evolutions of closed systems. Disequilibrium, perhaps meant, that I wasn’t in a closed system nor is our political system. I was open to receiving the message that the universe is an open system keeping itself off-balance and in a state of non-equilibrium to expand (as the Hubble telescope has determined in observing the universe as continually expanding) and change.
Too many people who voted for Hillary are contracting within themselves – I started and it made me crazier. If we cannot trust the universe for god’s sake or the earth, of which we are gazillions of people but minuscule in long-term impact, to regenerate itself, we succumb to fear and fragility. The earth will survive our bizarre human bullshit course of destruction. It will shake us off with disease or shut down sustaining us with resources but it will continue with or without us. Father Thomas Berry wrote that the universe needs us as much as we need the universe. We are the dynamic, creative intelligence that helps earth consciousness thrive.
The great poem by WB Yeats in 1937 leading up and into a Nazi regime is often quoted now – “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” As right as that might feel, it is based upon fear.
The world is orderly and nature proves it. Autopoiesis – self-making and self-production. A systems scientist back in the 80’s described “that any living system is a never resting structure that constantly seeks its own self-renewal,” and autopoiesis suggests that all organisms – I include humans and political systems, subatomic particles et al in the organism category – are self-creating through engagement with all other systems. Some famous chemist said that disorder can be the source of new order. Quantum guys describe a dissipative system as energy gradually ebbing away but it doesn’t necessarily lead to the death of the system. It is a necessary process of letting go of the present form to reorganize in a form that was better suited to its changing environment.
Individually, we do that when we’re depressed. We do it during divorce or giving birth, getting married or changing jobs. We do it every damn day and a political election that didn’t turn out the way we hoped or planned is the same thing.
This dissipative state in terms of the Democratic Party is the only way our political system can change. Republicans no longer have the compassion, thought-process or integrity to do the changing. It’s the party of hate, fear and isolation and there is no more perfect symbol of that than Donald Trump who is beyond the political status quo. He is the grenade launched into the system that needs to be changed. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are not the agents of change. Einstein wrote that a problem can’t be solved by the same consciousness that created it; thus, we have at least two years of our fragile union dissolving into an entropic, dissipative state.
Contained within chaos theory is something beautiful – there are no set patterns of determinism, predictability or control – (Newtonians – the cause and effect people can’t stand that thinking) there is only interconnectedness. Energies merge and change, relationships weave in and out of each other, what appear to be ripples become a seamless fabric. When systems and Newtonian science try to separate out events they create the appearance of disorder. The beautiful images that arises from Chaos Theory are called “strange attractors.” (find pictures on the internet) These are swirling motions that trace the evolutions of a system, that never does the same thing twice and is impossible to determine what it will do next; yet, the system holds order within it. Therein lies the paradox that all structures of life are transient and that life is not about control but dynamic connectedness.
My point is that we are all coming from old paradigm thinking. We are trying to separate the election from our long-held beliefs that our political system is controllable. It’s been telling us for decades – since Nixon really – that there is no control. Quantum metaphors and quantum science are begging us to make the leap into a new paradigmatic thought process to stop yammering on about facts (polls and pundits were absurdly wrong) and focus on relationships – even with people with whom we vehemently disagree.
I am looking at my life in these terms now. I am grateful – that’s right – grateful that Donald Trump has blown up my perception of the world. It’s like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – we can measure the particle aspect of matter, or the wave aspect but we can never measure both at the same time. It asks science, humans, political systems to basically change our relationship to how we measure and observe life. We create our environment through our own intentions and I think we got a bit self-righteous, entitled and lazy. We are the people who are capable of evolving consciousness: ours, our political systems, our relationship with those who are not capable. We need to stop whining, stop isolating and re-engage on a deeper level. We are the strange attractors.