8 - Our environment
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We,The People, are not happy
The atoms of planet Earth seem to move randomly between the trees, the animals, the ocean, the mountains…. This is only the appearance. They follow some general ideas. One of them is called ‘the association of opposites’. Another is ‘the fractals’. There may be more.
Human life could also follow some general ideas that are not obvious. We may find, someday, that the fractals, the association of opposites, human lives, the Fibonacci numbers and many other processes can be associated together to make a ‘general fractal’ that governs the universe.
For the time being, let’s go back to the material world.
The first fractals appeared in 1979. That was only the beginning.
Have you watched fractals before? They are beautiful. They have colors and movement. There is something fascinating about them. Sounds, colors, and movement are criteria of life. Looking at 'fractals' is like watching television or the wood burning in the fireplace.
Benoit Mandelbrot discovered the fractals using a computer to show the connection between shapes and the mathematical formula. Zn+1 = Zn2 + C. You start with one point, and the formula tells you where the next point will be, and the next, and the next… That takes many operations that only computers can do. We went even further. We made fractals in 3 dimensions and music fractals.
After this discovery, we found fractals everywhere in nature. They are in cauliflowers, ferns, mountains, lighting, our circulatory system…. For more than 5000 years humans were eating cauliflowers, looking at ferns, climbing mountains and afraid of lightning and nobody realized that they were surrounded by fractals. That does not make them look very bright - Does it?
The association of opposites
Another way to look at our environment is to start with a circle and a straight line. One is infinite. The other is limited. It is an association of opposites. Planet Earth is full of them.
Our DNA is a combination of a circle and a straight line. That does not prove anything. It is only a clue that there could be more.
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Our two hands are the mirror image of one another, made to work together.
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Our brain is associated with our nervous system. One brain inside bones with a spherical shape is associated with many nerves, outside the bones with elongated shapes.
We are surrounded by associations of opposites like we are surrounded by fractals.
- Some opposites are more difficult to see than others. For instance, there is an association of opposites between the blood circulating in our veins and the leaves of a tree. The blood in our veins is red because it has iron that attracts the magnet. Red and green are complementary colors. The leaves of the trees have chlorophyll, which is green because it has magnesium, which repels the magnet. Our blood circulates. The chlorophyll does not. Blood is inside our body. Chlorophyll is on the surface of the plants...
One association of opposites does not mean much unless you can find more…. Let’s keep digging.
- Ovule and spermatozoa. There is only one ovule, it moves slowly, it is circular and is one of the bigger cells of the body. On the other hand, there are millions of spermatozoa. Their shape is a straight line, and they move fast. They are very small. Ovule and spermatozoid are obviously made for each other.
- Body and soul. Our body belongs to the material world where everything has a weight, a color, a shape. It is a domain where we can use our sense organs and do experiments. The soul does not belong to the material world. We cannot experiment on souls in a lab. Nothing can be measured. The outside of the body is connected to the center of the soul. This is what makes touching important and gives us goose bumps.
- Our life is a compromise between two extremes. We cannot survive alone. To live in society, we must abandon some of our freedom. In a democracy, the individual has all the rights but must delegate some of his rights to the government. Everybody must drive on the same side of the road. On the other hand, we want to preserve our freedom. We want to live the life of an individual but remain in society! We have to make a compromise between two opposites.
Something similar can happen in the life of a couple. Each one must renounce some of his/her freedom and respect the individuality of the other. To be able to ask any question and get a complete answer implies that you don’t ask questions that infringe on the others’ freedom. Two people can be associated with two planets turning around each other - united by their distance.
-Our life is divided between time awake and time asleep. When awake, we are conscious and have full memories of what happens in the material world. When sleeping, we are not conscious and have no memory.
- Our conscious mind is centered in the domain of experiments and science. Our unconscious mind is in the domain of feelings and direct knowledge. Men could have their center of gravity in the conscious mind. Women could have their center of gravity in the unconscious. Sexes are an association of opposites made to supplement each other.
-It is by investigating the faraway planets that astronomers discovered the dark matter and dark energy that surround us.
-We spend most of our life being free… inside limits.
- Here are some more examples: Attraction and Repulsion of magnets - Past and Future.
If we are looking for associations of opposites, chances are that we will not find them. If we are open-minded without looking for them, we will see them everywhere. We will find them with our intuition rather than thinking.
...and all the rest:
After the fractals and the association of opposites and the Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio you may wonder what else exists around Earth, waiting to be discovered. We learned about the dark matter and dark energy around us by studying the trajectories of distant stars. Could we learn something about what happens during our sleep by studying the black holes in the stars?
What we can learn from fractals and opposites is that intuition is a better tool than thinking to investigate Nature. That may not seem to be very scientific, but who cares, as long as it works?
