09.09.09, 09:09:09

(Photo taken by me, 09.09.2009, 09:09:09)

Date: 09.09.09. Time: 09:09:09. Less than an hour until class. So early in the morning. Groggy, semi-incoherent. Not hungry, but will eat soon nonetheless. Bike afterward. Why capture the moment? What purpose serves it? No clue. Seemed splendid. Once-in-a-century sort of thing. Quite rare. Time now trapped, crystallized in physical memory.

Some are so intent on capturing moments in the then-present time that they forget just what purpose such an endeavour serves. Do they wish to be able to look back on it one day? Remember the past, as it were? This seems oftentimes a fruitless pursuit. Why live one's life through by-gone eras, times which are so long past that they have no direct effect?

Bad question; wrong question. Such actions do provide fruit (or vegetables, depending on one's preferences). Without the past, without experiences, man is nothing. ...or is he? It is often said that, ultimately, man is defined by his collection of memories of what came before in that life. That a particular human is always changing, because events are ever being added to his life; that at no two consecutive points, however infinitely small the change in time is, he is changed, is different from his former self. But what of a constant? This theory does not allow room for anything stable in any life, because no two characteristics are ever the same.

Thus it must be false that a man is defined by his experiences. After all, consider the man who is in a coma. He is unconscious, and is therefore not experiencing. His connection to the outside world is cut off (disregarding certain ideas that allow for him to be able to retain his auditory and olfactory faculties). He retains all his past experiences in his brain, but does not create new ones. Therefore, he is static; he doesn't change, except for his physical body (it remains a fact that he ages, and will one day die). Has he stopped existing? Surely, he has not; surely, he is still alive inside his body, ties to outside severed.

Thus humans must ultimately be greater than the sum of their parts, much like the mass of an atom is less than the sum of the masses of its subatomic particles. It does not fit into classical ideologies, because back in the day, one plus one was equal to two. In modern times, one plus one is only equal to two when under ideal conditions; non-ideal conditions require complex calculations that are normally outside the realm of the average thinker...therefore the population of humanity 'most always approximates the answer to just two.

But the difference, the 'man defect' (compare to 'mass defect' in quantum theory), must be what fails to be seen. Some call it the soul, others call it the spirit, and still others call it ectoplasm. This, naturally, is what causes so much confusion in the philosophical community, as they cannot put their finger on how it exists; they cannot explain the link between the physical brain and how it makes a man a man. Yet perhaps the answer is so simple that it is, to a great degree, overlooked. God created this world, and science is the tool humans use to come to understand this creation. It works. It has worked, and it will continue to work. One day the soul will be figured out; one day all the philosophers will slap their forehead to the exclaimed-in-unison D'OH! After all, if it's true that there are eleven (or was it nine?) dimensions; that space-time is a fabric; that time is relative, and can be broken; that masses do not add up 'properly'; then surely it will be true that the mind-body problem will be definitively solved, with neat proofs and accurate observations. And by finally understanding ourselves, we will be one step closer to better understanding God.

And that will be a good thing.