*January 12, 2025* # From Parts to Whole ![[IMG_4091.png]] > A whimsy fusion of thoughts stemming from [The Systems View of Life](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18554985-the-systems-view-of-life) and [The Unbearable Lightness of Being](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9717.The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being) *** There's this idea of a "Gestalt"; a pattern that won't break down into smaller pieces. Complexities that can't be reduced. They exist in the negative space around *reductionist* views that dominate common understanding of the world and reality. ## Many Things and Little Things John Keynes saw the economy (a superorganism of people, things, interactions, "value", relationships, ...) as some numbers you can adjust. By altering such and such rates, such and such taxes, you can steer the movement of the entity we call an economy. While these knobs can sometimes control short-term outcomes, it's a huge mistake to believe they are a meaningful description of *what is actually happening*. In physics, Newton saw a reality of absolutes; there is a specific definition of time, space, and all of the movement of the universe can be deconstructed like a machine, and parametrized into this space. We find that we can describe lots of things really well like this. By looking at the universe as a calculus, we can look at how something is now, and project it into the future with pretty decent accuracy. We can look at the flight of a baseball, and understand each point of its trajectory as a separate unit, and how all of these units conform to a very specific arc, which we can name using space and time. When we zoom in however, we find it difficult to separate ourselves from the world we are observing. We're left with something hard to put a finger on, and *much* harder to name. Maybe physics is best understood not as a model of reality, but a model of how we perceive it. ## Superposition Our brains are really good at superposition. By nature they navigate a mysterious and parallel reality. They can make good decisions with partial information; where to go, what to do, all without bogging down on the "wrong" things. Consequentially, free from observation, there's nothing to "collapse" these parallel realities, and they proceed in superposition. When I go around a corner, my brain already has an account of what kind of things could be there. Downtown, I'm not shocked if there is a plastic bag or some water on the ground. I'm also not shocked if there isn't. I probably didn't notice. My brain holds the reality of the sidewalk in a way that the presence and lack of a plastic bag are simultaneous. The ambiguity goes unnoticed because it's not important. But it's a different story to care what's around the corner. In such cases, it's hard to notice anything *but* the superposition. Now it's *tension*. ## Surprise! A more sudden experience is to encounter another person approaching the same corner, from the other side. Such experiences can range from serendipitous, perhaps a little startling, to heavy, meaningful, maybe otherworldly. Our minds constantly hold this sense of what we might experience next. Over time our own little worlds evolve, adapt, and reach a point where big surprises seem relatively uncommon; we settle and forget they can happen. Inevitably, they do, literally shaping reality. Surprise is how the universe says something interesting is happening—pleasant or not. Invariably, we change, it changes, something intrinsically new gets going. Life is complex, to assume it should be simple is to skip the important parts. ## Harmony > *The physical universe is basically playful. There’s no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere; that is to say, it doesn’t have a destination that it ought to arrive at. But it is best understood by analogy to music, because music as an art form is essentially playful.* > —Allan Watts In space what we call superposition, in time we call harmony. Melody is free. In a funny way, given all the room in the world, it struggles to say anything at all. It can make circles, ascend forever, fall in patterns. Confined, it fades into monotony. There's a sweet spot though. Given *just the right amount* of space, there's actually *more* to be said. Melody tends to resist structure, but also can't exist without it. Rhythm and harmony weigh it down with their complex boundaries, but it's precisely these delicate constraints that create room for play.