Karma, from First Principles
Before we get into any tricky terrain, let’s make sure we agree on a few basics.
This might seem like an extremely far back, or far out place to take our first few steps, but it is going to pay dividends later if we build this story from the bottom, up.
“if you want to have a life characterised by competence, productivity, security, originality, and engagement rather than one that is nasty, brutish and short, you need to think carefully about important issues”Jordan Peterson, Essay Writing Guide
important: of great significance or value. (Oxford Dict.)
Which important issues should we consider? If importance means significance or value, then importance is relative. So, important related to what?
We are probably most interested in what is important related to us, to you, and to me. What significant issues, related to each of us, should we think carefully about?
A reasonable place to begin answering such a big question is with some facts.
We are Aware
Paradoxically, the most undeniable fact of our existence is our subjective awareness.
We don’t only think about the facts, we are aware of our thinking about the facts. We are not only existing, we are also aware of existing. Otherwise, we would have no cognisance of our contemplating the facts.
Of all the elements of our personal realities, there is surely nothing more fundamental or miraculous than our awareness. And, any knowledge that we can be made aware of follows our awareness of existing.
An under-appreciated fact is that knowledge of our own consciousness is not gained through our five senses, nor through logical reasoning or scientific experimentation.
We can agree on the fact of our awareness, not because of any shared evidence, but because each of us experiences this truth, directly. None of us can prove it to one another, but we all know it to be true for each other.
Western scientific language has not prescribed any valuable term to the act of acquiring knowledge through direct conscious perception, outside of the bodily senses. Western thought is built on objectivity and doesn’t communicate the subjective adequately.
I have learned the term ‘gnosis’, an esoteric word for knowledge, to describe obtaining knowledge through direct perception — learning that occurs beyond the senses. Therefore, our knowledge of our awareness could be the most basic gnostic fact.
In contrast to being aware of our experience, we imagine mechanical machines to be unaware of themselves, operating in the dark. Blind. Automatic. But still operating. However, we are definitely not operating in the dark. We are having a psychological experience. We don’t only exist, we have an awareness of our existence.
Despite being considered THE hard problem in science — consciousness — its existence is the most undeniable fact, and this fact is only verifiable subjectively.
Then, what can we be certain of about the experience we are having?
Everything is Change
Our experience is rich and varied. Our awareness is drowning in sensory information from our body and environment, it is overflowing with thoughts and emotions, plus we are aware of our awareness. Many layers of data continuously overwhelm our attention.
To agree on anything about this rich experience is hard. Understanding anything specific is also difficult. However, there is another directly observable constant across our entire experience: change, our second gnostic fact.
Another truth is the inescapable, relentless and ever-present activity. Another word might be action, or perhaps, motion. We can easily be more certain that everything is in constant motion than we can be certain about the specific nature of anything. Our thoughts, emotions, body, and sensory information never stop changing.
Even something as static-seeming as a rock only seems frozen superficially. If we zoom out to the timeframe of a few million years, or zoom in to the subatomic scale, the idea of it being static disappears. Phenomena can only appear static because of our perspective. Yet everything is permanently dynamic.
We are aware, and the experience of which we are aware is in ceaseless motion. It appears that existence is change in action.
Change is constant. Action is constant.
“There is nothing permanent except change.”Heraclitus (535–475BC)
Change is Energy
energy: the property of matter and radiation which is manifest as a capacity to perform work. (Oxford Dict.)
If everything we observe in the universe is in perpetual motion, and motion is inseparable from the energy that sustains it, then everything we can perceive is inseparable from energy. Energy is omnipresent, and a fundamental component of the fabric of our entire reality.
E = MC^2 (mass-energy equivalence)
Einstein's most famous and simple equation describes how every object with mass, even when at rest, possesses enormous energy in proportion to its mass, named mass energy. Yet, even massless phenomena, like photons, have energy. Every quantum entity may be described as a particle or a wave, which are both merely different expressions of energy. Even empty space has energy, 10^(-9) joules of vacuum energy per cubic meter.
From the mass of solid-seeming objects to the void of empty space, there is nothing but energy and the perturbations in the fabric of our reality that it produces.
Scientists have been searching for evidence of the smallest solid parts of matter for millennia; first for the atoms, then, deep inside their hollow shells. Almost everything discovered has been empty space, plus hints of even subtler activity.
Quantum theory describes our reality as a continuous field, despite sometimes, in some places, appearing solid or separated. Maybe we can improve our perspective of reality by remembering what we know while we observe things as they appear to be.
What we perceive is not what it appears. Nothing is static or solid, nor is anything, or anywhere, void of energy.
Therefore, nothing is truly separate. And, everything is energy. Every conceivable place and thing is part of a continuous field of change.
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”Nikola Tesla
Energy has Momentum
Acknowledging the energetic truth of our reality, we can consider what else we know about energy. However, we cannot describe energy directly, only its behaviour.
“It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is.”Richard Feynman
This mysterious force that sustains constant change is indestructible and cannot be created. The law of conservation of energy states that energy can only be transformed or transferred, it can only change.
This unbreakable quality makes energy perfectly reliable, it will always exist in the next moment, transporting the previous into the next. The conservation of energy and its momentum is understood to be a type of symmetry across time because the laws of nature remain constant across time, to physicists.
Additionally, whatever form energy takes, it operates as a vector — any quantity of energy has both magnitude and direction. This is unlike a scaler entity which possesses only magnitude.
To change the magnitude of energy at any location requires moving it to another place. Because we cannot destroy or create it, or teleport it, speed and momentum limits apply.
Therefore, energy has limited location options available in any next moment, determined by the position in the previous moment, and the laws that govern changes in linear movement and momentum.
The same applies to the second qualitative vector component of energy, the direction. The options available for the angular direction of energy in any moment are restricted by the direction it possessed in the moment prior, and, the forces that govern change in angular momentum.
Therefore, the location and direction of energy in any moment are inextricably tied to the moment before. Every complex system has momentum at every instance in time which is hurtling towards the next instance, resisting being altered by any significant degree.
To escape these limits would be akin to teleporting — transporting all energy in one arrangement into a new arrangement, quicker than we understand is possible. To change a system requires changing the arrangement of its energy. The arrangement resists change with its inertia. Only energy, properly applied, can redirect it.
Every instance of activity is in an unbreakable chain, connected to its past like a memory, and its future like a destiny.
momentum, product of the mass of a particle and its velocity. Momentum is a vector quantity; i.e., it has both magnitude and direction. Isaac Newton’s second law of motion states that the time rate of change of momentum is equal to the force acting on the particle. (Brittanica)
There is no instantaneous transformation of any process or story. Our entire experience operates according to an unbreakable chain of cause and effect.
“Cause and effect, means and end, seed and fruit cannot be severed. Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.”Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sum of the momentum of the past causes the effect that is the present, and future.
Everything is in motion. Motion is energy. Energy has momentum.
So what?
Momentum has Consequence
Humans are concentrated vortices of activity. We are made of many forms of energy, continuously transforming, constantly active. Lots of energy means lots of momentum.
Momentum keeps everything in an unbreakable chain of causality. We can be certain, every action is both an effect and a cause. However, the impact of our actions is immeasurable, causing ripples, both, throughout all the layers of ourselves, and far and wide into the field.
Like every other phenomenon, every aspect, layer and component of our physical and mental self is in continuous change. That change is caused and guided by activity, primarily our activity. Our every action is the stimulus that causes our future self. We become what we do, physically and psychologically.
Even our genes, once thought to be our inescapable blueprint, are now known to be determined by action. Epigenetic causes, not genetic destiny, compound over time to result in the effect that we are now, and will be.
Neither nature nor nurture can trump the impact of our own actions. Over time, every minuscule fraction of change we undergo redirects all our following actions, in turn, recreating new future ripples.
“Learn to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”Leonardo da Vinci
Beyond our Self, into the world, our ripples reach further than we know. Every word, smile, gesture or glance, causes changes around us that we can never know, changes which in turn cause more changes.
Every greeting, conversation, or idea exchanged, every compliment or curse, reaches into lives in ways we cannot measure. Every goal we achieve or habit we master, every win, loss or nearly miss, each, initiates different trajectories which are universes apart.
Through wide-ranging, far-reaching, accumulating, compounding, and exponentially growing effects, the smallest difference in the trajectory of our behaviour will create radically different consequences that compound over time, within ourselves and in everything around us.
These processes manifest a very real and continuous butterfly effect, a phenomenon that complexity scientists describe as sensitivity to initial conditions. An extreme sensitivity that complex systems exhibit because of the rapid compounding of any change or difference, however small initially.
Tiny differences in the arrangement of a complex system will produce completely different outcomes down the line. The complex system that each of us experiences as our own story reaches into every atom of our body and mind, and extends further into the field around us than we can know. We are each a universe of forces to be reckoned with.
“When it comes to compounding, don’t trust your intuition — you have no idea how powerful it is.”Manoj Arora
By simply existing, we are the cause of enormous effect, with no escape from having such enormous influence. Our power is genuinely immeasurable. We are responsible for an impact of immense proportions, throughout our body and mind, and far and wide into the world. For each of us, and beyond, our actions are of profound consequence. In fact, the single greatest determinant of our life experience, in every regard, is our own action.
In Conclusion,
- To exist is to act.
- Every action brings immeasurable consequence.
- No experience can occur without the appropriate causes.
These describe some aspects of the law of cause and effect, karma.
Our existence is, very clearly, of profound consequence. Especially to ourselves.
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”Galatians 6, The Bible
We are, and we are within, an inescapable process of change and momentum, hurtling from moment to moment — no escape, no free lunch.
If we don’t take responsibility, to whatever degree possible, we give our full consent to unintended consequences, for ourselves and everything we affect.
In fact, our actions and their consequences are the most important issues for us to think carefully about.
From here, we should answer two very important questions:
- What control do we have over our actions, and in turn their consequences?
- Which consequences would we choose, through controlling our actions, if we could?
These questions will be where we head next, on this particular journey.
These concepts pervade my thinking and perspective of reality and many of her aspects. They will come up many times as we share many ideas.
Thanks for the company.
Godspeed.