Egocentric. Ethnocentric. Theocentric. Culturecentric.
All are based on being centered (or based) on a specific place from which to view things. Even thinking outside the box centers on the box. Being outside implies somewhere on the inside as a reference point.
One can have a 360 degree view from anyplace, but the universe isn't a circle. It's more like a globe. Having that 360 degree view only means that you can see everything on the equator, but nothing north or south. Or maybe a circle containing two points on the equator and both poles. Either way it's a two dimensional view of a three dimensional object. What's worse, it's only the surface being examined, anything not on the surface is outside our scope. And it's true that even the concepts of equator, poles and surfaces have some centricity.
Things get really complicated when time becomes involved, because the surface and the things not on the surface keep interacting, but we can't see anything but the minuscule slice where our viewpoint intersects the surface, causes and effects not on that intersection seem to be magic or perhaps divine. What we think of as the surface is really a frothing fluid that won't keep still long enough to be analyzed.
It's kind of like the dark matter in the universe. We can't explain how the universe works without allowing that there are some things we just can't see or measure. But we keep on theorizing about how it works, using the idea of something we can't see but must be there to balance the equations.
We know that, mathematically, a closed system cannot contain enough information to describe itself. Yet we manage to design computers that do a marvelous job of manipulating more information than any single human could possibly comprehend in a lifetime, and do it in a way that allows said human to both understand and use that information to the benefit of all. And it all happens in much less than a human lifetime. And when there's a problem with the computer it can often tell us that something is wrong with it, what it is, who to call, what part to bring, and how long it will take to fix it.
We even have holograms, 3D representations of solid objects, that can be viewed from any perspective, and in perspective.
My point is that it isn't the object, it's the viewer. As humans, we seem to be limited to a single reference point at any given moment, and we need to learn to be less dimensionally limited.
We need to learn how to see things from all possible points at the same time. Or maybe to see all possible times from the same point.
Some good words to think about: grok, karma, parallelization, synchronicity, interconnectedness, synergy, normalization
All are based on being centered (or based) on a specific place from which to view things. Even thinking outside the box centers on the box. Being outside implies somewhere on the inside as a reference point.
One can have a 360 degree view from anyplace, but the universe isn't a circle. It's more like a globe. Having that 360 degree view only means that you can see everything on the equator, but nothing north or south. Or maybe a circle containing two points on the equator and both poles. Either way it's a two dimensional view of a three dimensional object. What's worse, it's only the surface being examined, anything not on the surface is outside our scope. And it's true that even the concepts of equator, poles and surfaces have some centricity.
Things get really complicated when time becomes involved, because the surface and the things not on the surface keep interacting, but we can't see anything but the minuscule slice where our viewpoint intersects the surface, causes and effects not on that intersection seem to be magic or perhaps divine. What we think of as the surface is really a frothing fluid that won't keep still long enough to be analyzed.
It's kind of like the dark matter in the universe. We can't explain how the universe works without allowing that there are some things we just can't see or measure. But we keep on theorizing about how it works, using the idea of something we can't see but must be there to balance the equations.
We know that, mathematically, a closed system cannot contain enough information to describe itself. Yet we manage to design computers that do a marvelous job of manipulating more information than any single human could possibly comprehend in a lifetime, and do it in a way that allows said human to both understand and use that information to the benefit of all. And it all happens in much less than a human lifetime. And when there's a problem with the computer it can often tell us that something is wrong with it, what it is, who to call, what part to bring, and how long it will take to fix it.
We even have holograms, 3D representations of solid objects, that can be viewed from any perspective, and in perspective.
My point is that it isn't the object, it's the viewer. As humans, we seem to be limited to a single reference point at any given moment, and we need to learn to be less dimensionally limited.
We need to learn how to see things from all possible points at the same time. Or maybe to see all possible times from the same point.
Some good words to think about: grok, karma, parallelization, synchronicity, interconnectedness, synergy, normalization
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