TagNeil deGrasse Tyson

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A Willful Race Against the Wheel of Reality


Roy G. Biv

Say hi to one of my favorite—and, as far as I can tell, most universally useful—mnemonic devices. With any luck, the above “name” can help you remember the reliable order in the kind of magic that happens, if you will, when light filters through a prism.

Red, orange, yellow.
Green.
Blue, indigo, violet.

Got it?

Good.

Bent by gravity.

But that’s just 7 of 9, though. Indeed, there are 2 more {electromagnetically matter-born} colors [numbers] that exist in essence—and in relation to human perception—as ghosts.

To be crystal clear (in case it’s necessary), your pupil(s)/brain are biologically/physically incapable of directly observing the outermost colors—ultraviolet or infrared—on either edge of a rainbow, at the barriers of light’s distinctive dispersion into hue-rich diversity, around the shade-filled fringes of our collective mind’s balanced eye.

Relevant aside: do you know why polar bears bear white fur? Key factors include the interconnected processes of evolution and natural selection. And it doesn’t happen overnight; these variables move slowly; for example, it took thousands upon thousands and thousands of years to turn wolves into dogs. Geography largely dictates both physical and mental fitness, impacting an organism’s chance of survival into a successful future. See, a dark-coated bear can’t exactly camouflage amid open arctic terrain, thereby enabling food sources [e.g. seals] to more easily avoid becoming dinner. This explains how and why polar bears are the color of snow.

(Albert was right; relativity is important.)

Here comes the point.

Compared to caucasians, people “of color” are born with a generationally earned, genetic resistance to the first and lowest band in any real rainbow, a.k.a. ultraviolet, which, to reiterate, is one of the only two prismatic wavelengths [again, along with infrared] that our oh-so well-rounded and middle-grounded eyes can’t see—the bookends of the spectrum that paints our world’s canvas so very gloriously full of breathtaking wonder.

Question. Could this deeply rooted racial difference influence {if only at a subconscious level} why so many white folks are so painfully blind to how black lives matter?

Only by opening (y)our eyes may you we truly let there be light.

Circular.

Please let in the light, people. We require it to be, after all, and we will become better as a whole as more and more of us grasp the total scope of its vital, unrivaled significance. (More on that momentarily.)

Plus, once we get a widespread handle on the thorny interracial tension plaguing civilization—in other words, when at long last we awaken and stop acting like stubborn, ignorant, childish fools—and resolve our currently ailing society’s counterproductive climate of self-destructive inequality, humankind may must push toward global acceptance of the profound realization, too, that sentient life actually shepherds matter.

Yeah. Life matters. The entirety of Earth’s colo{u}rful catalog{ue}. Every kingdom in each of Her three domains as well as all the species contained among the myriad ranks therein—it’s all here for good reason. One depends on another. We have thus far come up short in our thinking. We are bigger than this. We should be playing the long game.

We (humans) really should party up. Immediately.

We are all connected.

We must band together.

The time to act is now.

We need to mentally separate our sense of self from the bodily burdens we carry.

Who are you? Do you even know? Have you “personified” your identity?

Look, you are not merely a complex collection of atoms—you’re the other thing, the stuff that shines.

Understand that.

And listen, we’re the same.

We have to lighten (our individual loads).

We must share the weight of our existence.

We need each other.

We have to allow our consciousness to evolve.

We were born to be what we are.

We need not be heavy.

We need to be light.

Be cause.

True love is weightless, and…

…light…

is god.

That’s who we’ve always been, who we still are, and who we could, would, should, and will be someday, but only as one.

Matter is not the only thing that evolves. (Duh!)

There is another variable on the right side of the equation.

Light evolves, too.

Ah ha.

Hello, heaven.

See ya soon.

-003

Hmm{m}…

the mic that wouldn’t drop (until it did/does/will)

A question, I have. It’s coming. At the end.

The monogamous tango that churns out day after reliably clocked day.

About midway through the summary of my copy [and I suspect many others] on a paperback edition of Carl Sagan’s heretofore tragically undervalued gift to humanity, directly following a comma that succeeds Neil deGrasse Tyson’s name, it reads (and I quote):

“…Cosmos retraces the 14 billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into consciousness…”

Cosmos [back cover], 2013, Ballantine Books

Now, while that does sound accurate, based on my recent (and very disorienting) grasp of the universal fabric in which we’re all wrapped up and therefore bound to share—and for which Thierry’s {and NdT’s [don’t worry about me]} tremendous work has been largely (if not chiefly) influential, would it not make a wee bit more sense—and, in slightly more important fact, would it not also lead to the long-awaited reconciliation of astrophysics with quantum mechanics and, by extension, ahem, the past-due marriage of science to religion, if we were to realize not that atoms somehow magically morph into thoughts, but rather instead that another factor in the equation, the one that’s tangled up in anything we’ve ever seen, could seed our collective awareness?

You might not get it at first, but, regardless, I shall explain.

Energy means everything.

The left side of the equation, thus, is pretty darn straightforward. E becomes emotion. It hits hard and fast, and it just is. It tells us what we need. Easy. Glad we got that outta the way.

Right of the equal sign, however, is where things and stuff clearly can get a lot more complicated. What if we’re giving atoms too much credit? What about the other variable on the side that isn’t left?

c:

  • the especially speedy variable
  • the one which blooms, radiates, and colorizes
  • the one that sometimes gets cast aside for ease of understanding
  • the one tangled up LITERALLY in anything we’ve ever seen
  • the one that simply must permit our (2020) vision

Photons interact with our big bright round glassy eyes and filter through our stupidly complicated mental prisms before emerging {occasionally} as thoughts.

No matter the scale, whether galactic, solar, or even personal, any body may grow, amassing strength during the sustained, escalating revolution of matter, and it does so only by borrowing energy in an effort to resist gravity.

But a body, the mind is not. And the mind—our mind—is something else.

A lone individual doesn’t amount to much beyond these fleshy bags of water we have to haul around in order to exist. As a single organism, you are made of matter. (In)significantly, you do matter. But, all together now, we embody the other thing, matter’s weightless cohort, that which parents time. As one, we are light. Once we {decide to} awaken and unify across the globe, we could, would, should, and will be faster. Yes, together, we can be faster than light.

As you (may {not}) know, in Einstein’s legendary equation, c stands for celeritas [meaning “swiftness”]; it also stands for color, technically, and poetically enough. Ahh, the lowercase letter c: the reliable constant we’re physically incapable of catching. To me, the solution to our puzzle has become painfully obvious:

Consciousness must be a step (upon which we currently find ourselves stuck) in the evolution of light.

In other words, light evolves, too, through its miraculously chaotic dance with matter across the prismatic tapestry of our precious time.

Anyway here’s my (aforementioned) question:

Right?!

Postscript

What if…

Shrug.