The Fallacy of Order

Just hours ago, in dusk’s fading, I could see the end of forever, but now I see its beginning…

Time is a curious thing while not being a thing at all. It exists because we perceive it to, and while it is measurable and observable, and from our natural perspective, stable and constant, it also none of those things. It doesn’t exist. It is wholly a construct of our perception, one that is mutually shared by every person on the planet. It is a construct of consensual reality, born and bred of our need to order the chaos of the world both that we might understand it and control it. And while we have found convenient ways to order Nature through measurement, we can’t control it.

There are forces at work in the universe that do affect time, contracting and dilating it, but these again are only matters of perspective based on the speed at which one is traveling; I’d not be surprised if in time we find that size affects that perspective as well. The reality though is that time is the one thing that never changes, it only appears to based on perspectives and because we -need- it to. We–and everything else in existence–are constantly changing, moving from right now to right now, but time itself stands still; it is always right now.

The concept of eternity or infinity or forever isn’t really something that the human mind can grasp or understand. I think that this is because we both live in eternity and wholly outside of it. From a scientific standpoint, everything in existence is nothing but a number, even us. Each of us is just one number in an infinite array of numbers. And while numbers can define moments in time, or pieces of eternity, those same numbers, while appearing to be tools of order and control are in fact perfect agents of Chaos. The thing about numbers is that they never end. Never. There is no limit, neither forward nor backward, whether real or imagined, whole, prime, odd, even, fractions, exponents, variables, or any other possibility (and I’ve got little doubt that there are forms of numbers we haven’t discovered yet). They go. And they keep going. And they can do so without ever repeating. They exist in all possible combinations and change each other constantly. But they do not change themselves.

What this means is that you, me, us, we are singular moments in an eternity that neither exists but also -must- exist, else we wouldn’t be in it. We can no more control our coming into this moment than we can our leaving it, we can only control what we do with it while we are in it. There is no difference from one moment to the next, there is only a difference in us–in other words, the numbers change. There’s a thought that says the very act of observing a thing changes that thing. Sometimes those changes occur in ways we can perceive and comprehend, sometimes they don’t. But the change happens whether or not we perceive it.

This is where Chaos becomes a factor: change. We believe in our vanity that the only thing we really have control of is ourselves, but the reality is quite the opposite. Every change we believe to make of our own choosing is a response–it is a reaction to a stimulus, to a thing that affected us. We have some measure of choice over how respond to that stimulus, but we still change as a result of it. And when we change, something or someone else also changes. It is a cycle without end, one we affect by our perception of it, but have no control over. Even the attempt to resist change causes change.

People spend so much time fighting for control–of life, of money, of happiness, of ideologies, of themselves, of others, of nature, of numbers–that they forget the most important thing: just be. Just be here, or there, or wherever you are, whatever you are. It’s all you really can do in the grand scheme of things.

Control is an illusion, a construct of the universe struggling to experience and understand itself through us, as us. Each of us is just a number in an infinite possibility of numbers, and we are never the same number from one moment to the next, and eventually we won’t be in that moment anymore, at least not in any way that we currently perceive or comprehend, and maybe never will.

Chaos allows the perception of order–of control–as a matter of convenience. Order can only exist within the limitless possibility of Chaos, even while not really existing at all–just like time. Order is limited, finite, and without potential. It is a useless attempt to control the uncontrollable, and it seems like we are the only things in existence that fail to understand that. The rest of the perceived universe goes on as it will, existing as it does from one moment of change to the next without any thought towards measuring that change, stopping it, ordering it, or otherwise controlling it. It doesn’t worry about what might be or what was, it simply exists. It just is. It is the full manifestation of its potential in the moment that we perceive it, or that it perceives itself.

And we are no different.

So be. Exist. Don’t be in the moment. Be the moment.

It’s all you really are anyway.