I’m struck by how much of our collective existence is spent creating and recognizing patterns. As a programmer, my job boils down to changing polarities of ferro-magnetic cells contained in a very small space. These bits represent programs, programs that are copied to other systems, incorporated into larger sets of other program-patterns that analyze data-patterns, forming other sets of patterns, all reaching up to support high semantic layers. In turn, these patterns help other people recognize pulling “meaning” out of “noise” – distinguishing certain sorts of patterns and dismissing others. Yes, there’s layer on semantic layer, but in essence, we’re all just waving our hands and stirring up atoms in specific sequences.
As a photographer, I suspend transient reflections of lights in a reproducible form in an effort to convey a message. As a martial artist, I seek to use physical movements to organize and refine the flow of stimuli in my own head. The arts move bits of paint, or charcoal, or steel, or atoms in the air forming vibrations, in order to convey some higher-level semantics – but in essence, students of these avocations are no more or less organizing matter and energy that we are: cleaning our rooms, so to speak.
Even the R&D deep thinkers, or theorists, or psychologists, or lawyers, which may not appear to produce in the traditional, brick-and-mortar sense, are performing their own pattern recognition. When they’re not publishing (organizing via graphite or toner on lignin) they’re guiding the electrical impulses in their brains, and attempting to influence the same in others. They’re either generalizing, or delving deeper into the Mandelbrot, finding finer-grained patterns, just like the rest of us.
(Without getting into an aside on free will and random number generation here, particularly disregarding Hume, we must assume that general effort of any profession results in patterns.)
What does this mean? I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Camus lately. Or, perhaps our entire existence is the futile (according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics) attempt at ordering our systems.
That’s a pretty bleak outlook. Is that all we have? Is the sum of our existence this gross? Or, is the value and importance, the driving force in our lives, the emergent meanings of those semantic layers? Is the importance our intention, the idea or feeling or concept we’re attempting to express or communicate, even if only to ourselves?
I’d like to think so – at a visceral level, it just seems right. But even if that’s an illusion, I think I’d prefer it. This isn’t a spiritual argument, either: I can think of no philosophy or religion – or lack thereof — that would result in anything less than suicide if the illusion is not preferred. Even the act of “doing nothing” conveys meaning and intent. The act of continued existence, in the most static of possibilities, assimilates and organize experience involuntarily, and an act of suicide by whatever means imbues semantics. Even “non-doing” is doing. (The Taoists recognized this ages ago.)
And suicide is also a sucker’s bet, since we can’t eve know if the decomposition of our corporeal selves necessarily results in either a net entropy loss or a lack of meaning. And trying to convince others that this there is no meaning requires organization of bits and the conveyance of meaning, not to mention being inherently paradoxical. In order for this to be accepted, it requires the complete extinction of life, spontaneously and without effort, all because “life is futile.” (Which it may very well be, but it yields no “fight the good fight” against said futility.) So, let’s run withe illusion, if that’s what it it.
So is it not what we do that is important, but what we intend? This could be construed as an argument for sin, anarchy, apathy, or whatever your hobgoblin is – and people have in fact argued this – but I see it differently. We don’t disregard action in favor of intention, but we act as we intend. In this way, we most accurately portray our intention – the most important part, if you buy that – and action becomes a vehicle for expression – although we would be remiss to confuse the two. The moon and it’s reflection in the water, as the parable goes.
The bits aren’t important, the patterns aren’t important, but that they freely flow from our intention, forming our communication – that is important.
