In Eastern philosophy and Buddhism there is a concept called “impermanence”[1], and in ancient western philosophy we identify the same with “Panta Rei” of Democritus “the dark” that we translate with “everything flows”. In the modern pop-mythology on these two concepts, the popular “Seize the Day”[2] or “Carpe Diem”[3] is added. All these condensed philosophies that have found their way into the popular culture through the so-called “one-liners”, contain the same Buddhist root of constant change, unrest, and inherent feature of the universe to be in constant motion. Man needs to adapt to such a nature of things and do as much as he can, which is to use these instant-philosophies for his own benefit and to get the best out of it, or in the true modern spirit, seize the day.
But despite such an intention of the modern man to adapt these philosophies to everyday practical life, there is something deeply unsettling in their essence. In the ancient Western philosophies that laid the ideological foundations of modern Western civilization, the world came from chaos, which is a state of utter restlessness, and from it came the “order” or the so-called “cosmos”, the world we know, which relies on the principles of causality and clarity, a world we understand and can be clearly defined. This clearly identifies the roots of Western spirituality, which are based on simple rules for action that we must respect if we want to live in a harmonious and meaningful world, rather than in chaos, internal or external. Science, especially physics, superficially seems to agree with this view. We live in one seemingly mechanical world of Descartes, in which each cause has a consequence and every part works according to the whole. Newton’s and even Einstein’s view does not offer a fundamentally different image of law-led space, although are formally different from those of Descartes.
So, there are clear laws governing the world, but if we look more closely, like in the scene with the garden in the movie “Blue Velvet” by David Lynch[4] , where the idyllic representation of the American suburban life framed in the stage of the father who waters the grass in the garden is disturbed with his death and introduces us to the reality of the “not so idyllic” green garden where there is another life of insects, a constant movement, an untamable nature in which there are no rules, emotions or harmony, in one word, if we look closer, we see chaos.[5]
Such an insight into the true state of nature is provided by quantum physics (and the more exotic theories of chaos, strings, etc.), which shows that in the basis of nature there is no order and logic, but chaos, paradoxes, the existence of the same particle in two places, spontaneous disappearance and appearance elsewhere, the binding of particles with a “spooky action at a distance”[6], and it seems that in this theory the light itself cannot be considered either as a particle or wave, so it refers to one or the other way, depending on… be careful – do you observe it or not! I will not pretend to understand quantum physics and I’m not a physicist, but its concepts fascinate me deeply. Schrodinger[7], one of the founders of quantum physics, said: “If you think you understand quantum physics, you do not understand it,” so I hope that in this context you will allow me to convey my fascination without questioning my expertise.
But the question arises, how did we come to quantum physics from the Indian philosophy? First of all, the most important scientists in the study of the atomic and quantum world, Schrodinger (Nobel Laureate, also known for his cat[8]), Heisenberg[9] (the uncertainty principle, Nobel laureate and famous in the pop culture from the series Braking Bad[10]), Oppenheimer[11] (the father of the atomic bomb) and finally, but not the last, Niels Bohr[12] (Nobel laureate), every one of them read Indian texts like the Vedas and Upanishads, Vedanta, Bhagavad gita and others, and some of them even read in Sanskrit. According to certain findings, the roots of key concepts in quantum physics can be found in these works that provide a deep insight into the nature of reality that is not shown in the ordinary observation, but only by means of meditation or mathematical concepts in the case of science. But quantum physics is not just philosophy, hypothesis or theory, it is the most tested and verified theory in the history of science.
Once we have found the connection between Indian philosophy and science, we come back to the concept of inconsistency in everyday life, the idea of transience that, whenever you try to catch your slip from your hands like a moist soap. All of these above-mentioned questions were imposed to me when, in an attempt to make an archive of texts in the media about my works, after actively publishing prose, with my name for several years, and under the pseudonym Branko Prlja, for 15 years. For years I have been trying to do this, but every time I said “another time”, partly because it’s a boring, archival and somewhat self-serving procedure. Who am I to do an archive of texts about myself? But let’s say, for practical reasons, I needed such an archive.
To my surprise, I soon became aware that much of the texts I previously seen online now were nowhere to be found. Some of them disappeared with the extinguishing of newspapers such as “Utrinski vesnik”, “Denes” and the like, but another part that should exist in other media like “Nova Makedonija” were also missing. Probably, by updating their sites and bases, they also disappeared in that process. After all attempts, even for texts from just a few years ago, I had to quit. I found part of them in print format, which made me think about the impermanence of the digital world, the world made up of units and zeros, laser, magnetic, electronic records on the medium, and hence the impermanence of the world in general, composed of electrons and protons, neutrinos, and quarks.
When I was a child, I felt a great fear between 6 and 9 years old, prompted by the knowledge that everything is not going to last, that every moment of happiness I experience is only an illusion that is transient and will soon be replaced with another, as an unstoppable and transient experience. Looking from today’s perspective, maybe that’s why I decided to write, and shift into eternity that moment that is slippery and refuses to be obeyed. But the “record” itself is not eternal, and maybe the nature of things is to be transient, like the mandala that the Buddhists, again from the movie “The Little Buddha,” make it from the sand, carefully and for a long time, and then it is destroyed by one move.
In the field of digital and virtual, it seems to me that this principle is even more present than in reality. Millions of words, pictures, videos that we believe “once they have gone to the internet there will be there forever”, and are created in huge quantities at any moment[13]. But regardless of whether you consider the Internet to be a “cloud of data” or an ether, it is not a non-physical form of existence, it is located somewhere on a hard disk in a database and at best a case in a silos shielded from a nuclear attack in the Scandinavian countries of Europe. But it’s more likely that your data is stored on a local server and as soon as you stop paying for the service, or the media stops running, they will be deleted.
But, physical writing of the data is not eternal, your precious archives on a CD or DVD have a 25-year run[14], hard drives are even less durable, and flash memories are more permanent, however, provided you do not write or delete too much, one error and all data are irretrievably lost. The film “Blade Runner 2049“[15] mentions an event called “blackout” that erased all electronic records for replicants. One of them tells how his mother still complains about pictures of him when he was a baby and concludes that it was funny that only paper survived. The inconstancy is in the quantum nature of things, and this is the main obstacle in the creation of quantum computers and the next computer era, otherwise we would live in the future as foreseen by the science-fiction novels of the past.
The real, macro-world is fortunately somewhat different, and here with a reserve you can accept our initial theses about the transience at least when it comes to data archiving. In the macro-world we represent only the realization of the possibilities that exist in the micro-world, according to which in some way these precepts do not apply to our world. What does that mean? First of all, it means that the newspaper where you gave an interview 12 years ago will not spontaneously combust itself, and the book that you have printed in hard copy will probably be preserved for 100 years. Of course, all these things are not eternal, they can be lost or destroyed in countless ways, but they will not spontaneously disappear. So, occasionally remind yourself to print your pictures, write something on paper, and save the newspaper that contains a fond memory or important information. And in the meantime – “Carpe Diem!”.
Bert Stein
Dec 13, 2018
Footnotes:
[1] If we trust the movie “The Little Buddha” (1993), as a good popularization of the theme of Buddhism.
[2] Popularised in the film “Dead Poets Society”, 1989, with a famous replica whispered by Robin Williams.
[3] Latin aphorism from the Roman poet Horace.
[4] Blue Velvet (1986)
[5] Taken from the interpretation of the movie “Blue Velvet” according to philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in his documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006).
[6] According to Albert Einstein, a quote that shows that Einstein himself was suspicious about quantum physics, and in this context his statement ” God does not play dice” is known.
[7] Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961)
[8] A mental experiment that shows one of the fundamental aspects of quantum physics, i.e. quantum superposition (as in the example with light, at the same time particle and wave), transferred to everyday life. For more, visit the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
[9] Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901–1976)
[10] Breaking Bad (2008-2013), the main character Walter White is also represented as Heisenberg, according to the German scientist.
[11] J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967). His quotation from Bhagavad-Gita is known on the occasion of the first successful nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945 (“Now I am Death, the destroyer of the worlds”)
[12] Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885–1962)
[13] According to estimates in the middle of 2018, 2.5 quintillion (2.5×1019) are produced every day in the world, and only 90% of the total amount of information in human history has been created in recent years. Of course, not all information is top artwork or quantum physics, but nevertheless both are information.
[14] The truth is that no one can accurately predict how long a CD will last, and that depends on its quality (and most often we bought the most innocent “Nenayum” media), the way they are stored (most commonly in bells, what are bad conditions ), the conditions in which they are stored (for example, the easiest way to destroy them if you store them in a cola exposed in the sun), whether they are used much and the like. In ideal conditions it should last more, but there are no such conditions in the home.
[15] Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
