20110630

false vacuum

Various scientists have confirmed that it's entirely possible the world will just spontaneously end. One of the ways that might happen is the idea that, basically, we're wrong about the laws of the universe. All of existence might just stop being "existence." Or maybe it would just be destroyed. I'm not pretending to understand. The point is it doesn't take much to destroy the world. It only takes the easiest thing in the world: we have to be wrong. And if there's one thing I'll bet anything on, it's that.

I always used to find this terrifying. Everything could end in a moment of perfect agony, or maybe not even that. How can we deal with that?

But it's all hinged on the basic fact that everything we think we know is wrong. All our perceptions and our tiny human notions are wrong. That bothered me for a while, too, but I stepped outside this evening, and the wind was blowing and there wasn't a star in the sky, but the whole city seemed to have this shimmering beauty about it, all mutable and alive. Every thing we've gotten wrong about it is nothing but iridescent potential. Every time we break another law of physics we get closer to the chaotic things we were meant to be.

1 comment:

Lord Kitten said...

I was gonna go off on one about how crap that level of skepticism is, but the last line is a really likeable notion...