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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Continuity, discreteness, infinitude, and finitude
Life is finite. It's something I've been thinking about lately.
Our life often seems a tug-of-war between the continuous and the discrete; the infinite and the finite.
Our life often seems continuous - each moment blends into the next. You inhale, you exhale, inhale, exhale, and unless something draws your attention to it, each breath blends into the next. Often, even each day blends into the next. Monday feels like Tuesday, which feels like Wednesday, with only slight, smooth modifications in between. Even more continuously, the sun rises with a reliability more predictable than clockwork.
Yet at the same time, there are moments where life doesn't seem to flow so smoothly along. There seem to be pivotal, life-changing moments - even world-changing moments - where people are stunned, hold their collective breaths, or receive great fortune. People even form words and phrases around such events - antediluvian for "before the flood", and pre- and post-9/11.
Yet these moments which seem to stand out so clearly compared to most other moments, even these moments have a continuity to them. Other moments precede and follow after them, and are even linked to them. The plot-diagramming that they taught me from 3rd-9th grade is finally coming to use. Each story has a beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and an end. If the story is of the flood, then the beginning is G-d deciding that the world needs to be flooded, and telling Noah to build an ark. The rising action is the building of the ark, and the filling it with all the animals. The climax is the flood itself. The falling action is the receding waters, and Noah sending out birds to check if the land was dry. The end is Noah exiting the ark, to start repopulating the world again. Intrinsic in the end is a new beginning. This is more continuity.
For 9/11... the start is that the hijackers were upset at the US. So upset, that they planned a terror attack. This planning is the rising action. Included in this is the ignored intelligence that the US had about it. The climax is the hijacking and collapsing of the twin towers (and the Pentagon attack and the Pennsylvania flight). The falling action is all the media coverage, and the end would likely be when a final body count was made. Yet, one could say that the attacks were the start, the panic afterwards and the Patriot Act were the rising action, Bush's decline in popularity was the falling action, and Obama's election was the end. Even for life-changing events, one moment flows into the next.
At the essence of this is the nature of reality. In Chassidic thought, G-d didn't create the universe only to let it sit on auto-pilot for the rest of time. G-d created the universe, and continues to create it, every single moment. Just as when you imagine sitting by a lake, with a cool breeze on a hot day, the water glinting in the sunlight... it is your thought that is keeping your imaginary world in existence. So, too, G-d is constantly thinking of us, and everything in this world, down to the path a leaf takes as it falls to the ground, and because of it, we and everything around us exists. Each moment is fresh and new... and because G-d continues to think of it with all its details, it continues to blend in with the previous moment, and the next, and so on.
So we have these continuous lives, but they are finite. There is a birth, a life, and a death, for each person. The number of moments in our lives is uncountably infinite, yet the set of moments in each life is bounded by birth and death.
However, the same is not the case with our soul. Our souls are parts of G-d Himself. Since He is infinite, then we have a piece of that infinity within us. When we do the mitzvos that G-d commanded us, we connect more with that infinite part of ourselves. Not only that, we tap into G-d's power, and thus the effects of our actions ripple beyond the finitude of our lives.
We may be finite beings, but our actions have infinite effects.
Our life often seems a tug-of-war between the continuous and the discrete; the infinite and the finite.
Our life often seems continuous - each moment blends into the next. You inhale, you exhale, inhale, exhale, and unless something draws your attention to it, each breath blends into the next. Often, even each day blends into the next. Monday feels like Tuesday, which feels like Wednesday, with only slight, smooth modifications in between. Even more continuously, the sun rises with a reliability more predictable than clockwork.
Yet at the same time, there are moments where life doesn't seem to flow so smoothly along. There seem to be pivotal, life-changing moments - even world-changing moments - where people are stunned, hold their collective breaths, or receive great fortune. People even form words and phrases around such events - antediluvian for "before the flood", and pre- and post-9/11.
Yet these moments which seem to stand out so clearly compared to most other moments, even these moments have a continuity to them. Other moments precede and follow after them, and are even linked to them. The plot-diagramming that they taught me from 3rd-9th grade is finally coming to use. Each story has a beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and an end. If the story is of the flood, then the beginning is G-d deciding that the world needs to be flooded, and telling Noah to build an ark. The rising action is the building of the ark, and the filling it with all the animals. The climax is the flood itself. The falling action is the receding waters, and Noah sending out birds to check if the land was dry. The end is Noah exiting the ark, to start repopulating the world again. Intrinsic in the end is a new beginning. This is more continuity.
For 9/11... the start is that the hijackers were upset at the US. So upset, that they planned a terror attack. This planning is the rising action. Included in this is the ignored intelligence that the US had about it. The climax is the hijacking and collapsing of the twin towers (and the Pentagon attack and the Pennsylvania flight). The falling action is all the media coverage, and the end would likely be when a final body count was made. Yet, one could say that the attacks were the start, the panic afterwards and the Patriot Act were the rising action, Bush's decline in popularity was the falling action, and Obama's election was the end. Even for life-changing events, one moment flows into the next.
At the essence of this is the nature of reality. In Chassidic thought, G-d didn't create the universe only to let it sit on auto-pilot for the rest of time. G-d created the universe, and continues to create it, every single moment. Just as when you imagine sitting by a lake, with a cool breeze on a hot day, the water glinting in the sunlight... it is your thought that is keeping your imaginary world in existence. So, too, G-d is constantly thinking of us, and everything in this world, down to the path a leaf takes as it falls to the ground, and because of it, we and everything around us exists. Each moment is fresh and new... and because G-d continues to think of it with all its details, it continues to blend in with the previous moment, and the next, and so on.
So we have these continuous lives, but they are finite. There is a birth, a life, and a death, for each person. The number of moments in our lives is uncountably infinite, yet the set of moments in each life is bounded by birth and death.
However, the same is not the case with our soul. Our souls are parts of G-d Himself. Since He is infinite, then we have a piece of that infinity within us. When we do the mitzvos that G-d commanded us, we connect more with that infinite part of ourselves. Not only that, we tap into G-d's power, and thus the effects of our actions ripple beyond the finitude of our lives.
We may be finite beings, but our actions have infinite effects.
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