Madness Pt. 1

                                  Prelude

                Obscure journey of a demigod.

It was raining. I remember vaguely, but the rain did make the scene more nostalgic. Time's about to hit five in the evening. Half asleep, I squinted at the computer screen while surfing through reddit.

I had just finished Neon Genesis Evaneglion and was deep inside my mind wondering about the good and evil nature of humans.

Ever since I could affrim myself to being an individual aspiring to live an authentic life, human nature has cornered me to gaze at the sophisticated and complex behaviour of humans.

Is a man inherently good or inherently evil?

If mankind is inherently evil on a larger scale of defining meaning to the universe, then that means my own very nature is evil. Or is it appropriate to even consider human nature to be either good or evil?

Individual perception is more important in understanding our own reality; justice and liberty have different meanings when we consider an individual or society, but as a social person, I feel so alienated from the masses with my personal perspective. 

Where does my innocence fall? Is curiosity the innate innocent nature of a man? Can a person really lose their innocence in some parts of life? Or is innocence evolving into wisdom?

A toddler born into the world of living will behave as an animal, showing only certain primal instincts encoded in its genes to survive, but soon that human baby will grow. That's when the consciousness becomes aware of its own existence. 

Isn't it pointless to label a toddler's nature as good or evil? If so, at what point in life can we determine its nature?

Even if we were trying to determine a person's nature to be good or evil, we should consider a great number of facts about that person's reality and perception. It'll be a greater hassle, but still possible. Keep in mind that we can never predict this nature.

The good and evil nature of an individual is purely subjective and can fluctuate between both or neither, if only that person is self-affrimed. 

Otherwise, it will be pointless and futile to even ask the question.

What about society? Isn't society inherently evil? Every society creates itself with norms and laws of its own, which we call culture. These intricate laws keep society intact. That's where the subjectiveness of human nature arises. The duality of good and evil is born out of social culture. 

How can we articulate society to be evil when its existence gives meaning to our individuality?

Can conscience and Innocence only be attributed to a person who very much appreciates the existence of a society that is good?

I really want to break from this relative existence of duality, yet I'm bound to it. What if we are all asking the wrong question? 

What if the question isn't about good and evil, but instead of innocence and conscience? Maybe hatred and love?

Sanity and Madness? 

 

 

   "Still, greatness asks for a monster. " 

       

                             Chapter One

                Paradox of Self actualization 

 

I was a fool. All this time, I used to wonder how far I had come to understand reality with my intellect capabilities just to stumble on quantum field theory in physics. The narcissistic perception of myself has been shattered into a million pieces. I now accept, with all my pride hanging down my shoulder, that I know nothing of the universe yet, even with all of the stretching.

"I am nothing but a tiny flicker of light in the grand syllable of things, trying so hard to produce an infinitely small flactuation in a blink of time "

Even in the impending uncertainty, I am certain about my existence and experience in my reality.

At the end of the day, I have to stand at least a mile away and pay my tribute to all of those intellectual minds that shaped humanity. They were the epitome of creation.

As that being said, I tried to gaze at my own reflection of a "self" in my reality and those realities that conjoin with mine. The further I seek out the absolute reflection of my ego, the more I stumble away from a materialistic and absolute truth governing my existence. My own "self" becomes fractured and disorganised as it evolves itself into another person's reality, for my own "personal truth" becomes invalid in them.

When I tried to define my own self, I was struck with the unlimited potential of my own self. For sure, defining it will surely destroy its undefinable potential. This undefinable and unlimited potential of my ego is not inaccessible, but rather it likes to exist as a whole, like a giant orb of dazzling light inside a dark void of nothingness.

Maybe that is my soul?

There will be a point in every person's life where he or she can accept every aspect of themselves and all of the choices they have made and will make in the future. It's not about making the right choices but rather understanding that every choice you make isn't circumstantial and your own consciousness will play a much larger part in it. Once you accept the choices, you can cope with the suffering that arises with them. (Sacrificing for your loved ones) Each state of mind you have towards your projection of reality reflects how much deep knowledge you have about yourself, and you are completely aware of this thought as well as the existence of this thought of awareness. Then I believe a man will become self-affrimed or self-actualized.

Characteristics that can be attributed to a self-actualized person are intellectual curiosity, intuitive decision making, unbiased emotional acceptance, and the will of humanity.

Because their reliance on society is too great to ignore, unbiased emotional acceptance and the will of humanity play a significant role in self-actualization.

Is it impossible to achieve self-actualization without our interaction with society and also its effect on us?

Self-actualization doesn't mean that a person has to be self-involved and egotistical. Instead, the person becomes more and more selfless as he affrims himself to be a self. It's rather ironic how that works.

Maybe that is a paradox?

An important fact to be stated is that, as I came across selflessness, I realised it doesn't mean sacrifice. To be selfless is to lose all meaning to your existence here by becoming one with humanity and nature. It's rather farfetched when you think about it, but rather simple to experience.

For a certain society, law and order, as well as social justice, should be made with the sole purpose of protecting the self, rather than any political or religious purposes.

"Because I have self-actualized myself, I will only allow myself to be judged on the basis of my personal justice; how it differs from society in the hands of a self-affirmed individual."

 

 

 

 

                            Chapter Two 

                   Curse of Contradiction

There is a certain ethical and moral dilemma around the question of why. To answer those questions, we have to create and define an entire framework of the cosmos, which can only make sense if this framework obeyed a linear movement of time. That's not all these questions demand, but the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent being having an eternal and necessary existence.

55.3% of the world population believe in a monotheistic god, as these religions overshadow the questions of why. We cannot ignore the irrevocable truth about religion's role in promoting humanity's existence to be the centre of everything. Even in physics, once we have reached a dead end in answering a question, we shamelessly evoke 'The Anthropic principle' (observation selection effect). 

And when we think about it, there isn't any other logical way to answer that question. Maybe the only way is to disregard the entirety of the question of why? 

I don't think my intellectual curiosity and scientific temper will ever allow me to disregard one of the most exhilarating things to do in this fantastic reality.

There are, in fact, more religions recorded in our history that don't give sovereignity to an extra-terrestrial omnipotent being. These religions don't give importance to anything except for the existence of humanity. They feel like a manuscript for an ideal human being. Yet they can only be considered as philosophies and tend to be personal. All of these religions' philosophy attempts to unite humanity while also discussing free will. But all failed to answer the question of why. 

How arrogant of us to think that we are the epitome of creation? while we are nothing but animals obeying the same natural law of evolution. "Survival of the fittest".

Evolution played a major role in shaping our consciousness, it cannot be ignored at this stage of our existence, human consciousness is rather evolving exponentially faster than any other organisms on earth. Even though consciousness seems to be outside of materialistic reality, it very much is a product of our reality because we can observe its effect in nature. Human consciousness has become structured and organised. It has very much influenced nature with its mere presence and reshaped it for our benefits.

(Law of Artificial selection, Man made radioactive elements, Artificial Intelligence etc)

Our consciousness has become so aware of its own existence that we demand an answer to the question of why. 

In fact, so many efforts have been made to answer it. Religions were one of those attempts.

Unfortunately, we are still very far from the absolute truth. I believe in the future we will discover a complete theory of everything.

Hope sure is a dangerous thing! 

On the other hand, Buddhism tries to breed a perfect humanity through some teachings that should be practised by an individual if he wants to achieve perfection. Its sphere of interest is very small and pretty much restricted to humanity only. It sure does make you wonder about the significance of the question of why.

Buddhism claims that suffering arises from craving.

If a man suffers, can he not achieve perfection?

Buddhistic teaching allows us to end suffering and achieve a perfected state of existence called Nirvana. Apart from Buddha, I don't think anyone achieved this state of Nirvana.

I respect Buddhism as a religion because, for starters, it didn't produce any Crusaders or Jihad! There are actually a truck load of things Buddhism is rather ignorant of. For this very reason, I had to disregard Buddhism, but it does deserve to be mentioned.

(I found this image on Instagram by an artist called Mr. Kalopsia. Tribute for Buddhism.)

We really tried a lot to find the unknown. There is a certain 'will' encoded into our consciousness (maybe because of evolution? ) This "will" demands the need to be known. It fears the unknown and seeks with imagination to conquer the realms of the undiscovered.

At the end of the day, we have created an ultimate weapon to master the will of the universe.

It is called Physics.

"Throughout the seasons, it lay dormant. 

Frozen in time, forevermore.

The scorching blaze of the sun 

Melting the caramel of its hair . "

                           Chapter Three

                  How to create a universe? 

How can we create a universe? What are the ingredients for making a universe? If I were to write a novel, I'd probably need some characters and their interactions, as well as a plot that could relate to everything, so that the novel makes sense and can be called a novel, right?

Metaphors aside, to state the facts, if I were to create a universe out of nothing, what are the ingredients I need? What are the things that make a universe a universe?

Let's gaze at the universe for a moment. There right in front of me is a wall. I see this wall exists, therefore it has to be in this universe. And everything that this wall is made of is of this universe as well!

We need matter, energy, force, pressure, temperature, and so on. These are called physical quantities. Things that we can measure directly or indirectly. That's not all. There is a particular interaction between these quantities, related by the laws of physics. There are some physical quantities that appear to be constant in our universe. They are called universal constants. (Like the speed of light, for example, is constant for our universe.)

We require the universe's building blocks, which we can refer to as elementary particles. There are a lot of elementary particles. They may be leptons (electrons), baryons (photons, gravitons), mesons, or bosons. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume we have all of these ingredients on hand.

Now we need space for them to occupy and the concept of time. Since Einstein showed us that space and time are in fact one, called space-time contunuum, we can consider space-time contunuum to be the other ingredient. Remember that this space-time contunuum is very dynamic in nature, hence creating gravity.

How did these ingredients create our universe?

Unfortunately, I believe we are still very far away from the truth. But don't be disheartened, because humanity's innate will to unravel the unknown and undiscovered is like sunshine. I mean, it's beautiful.

 

"With pale skin and fragile bones,

is it madness to ask for greatness?!"

Why don't we take a detour and imagine what happened at the beginning of our universe?

There was this dense, 'unimaginably dense and hot' something. Since we are at the very beginning of everything, say time (t) = 0, the laws of physics will be invalid here. Let's call it the Singularity (Gravitational Singularity). For some unexplained reason or another, it blew up, creating a universe with a big bang (Big Bang theory).

This happened 13.7 billion years ago, the current accepted age of the universe according to the Standard Model of the Universe.

The fun part is not the beginning, but what happened after the beginning. The true beginning, Within the glimpse of the passage of time during the beginning, our universe underwent a kind of inflation. Our universe grew in size as space-time contunuum began to be created rapidly. It became larger and larger, creating everything.

This inflation resulted in the production of stars, galaxies, supermassive galaxies and so on.

The grand scale of the inflation at the beginning was enormous and incredibly unimaginable.

Trying to visualise it gives me a chill down my spine.

 

There exists a beautiful theory that tried to explain this inflation at the beginning of the universe. It is called Eternal Inflation theory.

I am going to slice a portion of the universe, there is nothing in this portion of universe except the minimum energy, this portion of the universe which is stable having minimum energy is called a vaccum. We can argue that the universe is made up of vaccum, there is also a vaccum which is stable but having higher energy exist in our universe, we can call this as False vaccum.

According to Quantum Field Theory (QFT), this False vaccum although appear to be stable very much try to become a true vaccum by giving off the energy, through a process called False Vaccum decay. Since there is an energy barrier between two Vaccum, decaying process can be made to happen either through quantum tunneling or through quantum fluctuations. 

      (Representaion of True and False vaccum)

Physicists argue that, the inflation happened at the beginning of the universe was because of the false vaccum decay.

When we look at the process of inflation, we can surely observe that inflation has stopped for our part of the universe, but what if the inflation is still happening in some other part of the universe?

It could create the possibility of the existence of multiple universe completely seperated from each other. 

Multiverse!

Each universe in the multiverse will be like a bubble seperated from each other (no informations can be exchanged between two universes) and an infinite bubble exists as the inflation goes on forever. 

An eternal inflation!

                           Chapter Four

                   Death of our universe

We will all die one day. Anything that has a beginning will surely have to end. I don't know why the universe works like this, and when we think about it, beauty in existence can only make sense when there is an end.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon Dante's Divine Comedy, where Dante searches all of hell for his lost love. Divine comedy made a special sense of wonder inside my mind, because it told me about the fantasy of life, even after we die!

 

I was born into a family that practises one of the Abrahamic religions, and ever since I was little, I used to hear a lot of stories about life after death.

One day, my grandma told me about the angel of death. I remember this because that day I had an insane nightmare. You know, this angel, though made by God to be good, will come to you one day, the day you are supposed to die. This angel is the carrier of souls and is widely feared. If you are a good person with good deeds and have obeyed the religious laws, this angel will appear to you as a picturesque figure, and your death will be sweet and painless. On the other hand, if you are in fact a bad person with evil deeds and have disobeyed the religious laws, this angel will appear as a grotesque and demonic figure with a painful death.

 

Of course, this is all peak fiction. For starters, nobody has any idea what happens when you die!

You can't actually talk to the dead about how death feels!

It doesn't matter if the story was illogical and fictional; I loved every bit of time I spent with my grandma. I don't remember her face, but her fragile and holy figure is still etched inside my mind. I miss her. Let her soul rest in peace.

 

What happens when we die?

 

At this age of stars, for humanity, death is only a technical difficulty. Rather than going over the topic of the death of a human or an organism, as a physicist, I should look into the death of our universe. Will our universe die?

 

What we can do is to try and predict the outcome with the observable quantities we have. There are conservation laws in physics, which give us a small outlook on what to come.

The Law of conservation of energy somehow became a major rule that everything in the universe and the universe itself obeyed. It is because of the symmetry of the universe, 

 

Heat energy is converted into mechanical energy in a dynamic process.

Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding exponentially. The heat energy produced by the stars causes the universe to mechanically expand, obeying the first law of thermodynamics. What happens when all of the heat energy is used up? What happens when there aren't any stars to maintain the expansion?

We will have a cold, dead, and static universe.

This condition is called the "heat death of the universe. (also called the Big Freeze)

Thermodynamically speaking A big freeze is a condition in which the universe acquires a state of maximum entropy as the entire heat energy will be transfromed into mechanical energy, freezing the entire universe into a cold and dark place.

The Big Freeze also gives us the possibility of the existence of this cold and dark universe for an undefinite period of time.

 

The existence of an infinite universe is far more difficult to comprehend than the existence of a finite universe, and the concept of death can only be attributed to a finite. which makes us wonder about the concept of death. Does death mean inexistence? The end of something? Doesn't death only make sense when time is linear?

I believe we are trying to answer the question of the ultimate fate of the universe rather than death, since the concept of death differs in its definition while we associate it with the universe.

 

Instead of undergoing a big freeze, what if the universe collapses on its own after it has converted all of its heat energy and expansion has ceased?

The universe contracts on a cosmic scale as time evolves, eventually finishing the universe in a kind of gravitational collapse. This condition is called the "Big Crunch. But the observational data shows that gravity is rather accelarating the process of expansion rather than contracting it. This condition is currently considered unlikely.

The sense of time for our universe considering humanity is rather unfathomable, yet still we ask the question of the ultimate fate of our universe. In the grand scheme of things, I lie in this moment just to ask,

What is it meant to be a human?

 

To be continued.