RAGE
RAGE
Religion, Art, Good, and Evil
(Or... Relativity, Anthropic, God, Equality ... Rationalism, Astrology, Gravity, Einstein ... Reality, Acceleration, Great, Eternity... etc.)
It’s been said by some, e.g. Damien Hirst, that art is the 'New Religion'. One can apply that to art today in both a positive and a negative sense. For example, let’s consider the current exhibition by artist Cinthia Marcelle in Modern Art Oxford -The Family in Disorder. In one room we have a waist high barrier of neatly stacked raw materials like rope, duct tapes, white sheets, black plastic, and bricks, and in the other room we have a chaotic installation made of these same materials, messily filling up the space. The creative input here comes from some local artists and technicians who were given free reign over a few days to do what they would; seemingly an experiment that the named artist had minimal involvement in.
Visiting such an exhibition one is of course expected to be reverently appreciative, to hear/read the statement the artist has made to guide one’s understanding, and then maybe leave a donation. This is indeed a bit like church or religion, especially when there is a moral dimension to the statement (sermon) about the exhibition, which claims to be about global inequality, as well as order and chaos. It might be hard to see how the issue of inequality is meaningfully accessed here - apart from the fact that it is inherent in the named artist who takes the credit, but may have done little of the work in the exhibition, (or not even have been there) and all the creative work is done by the assistants. Perhaps global inequality can also be tagged with a threat of current and impending disorder.
Nowhere is inequality more celebrated than in the present day art world, where the work of a famous artist (dead or alive) regardless of merit and regardless of even whether they actually made the work themselves or merely approved/signed it, may be revered and valued like a sacred (quasi-religious) object and worth hundreds or millions of times more than that of a non-famous artist, as if one person’s time /effort /existence can be worth so much more than another’s.
As in religion, this is all supported by willing flocks who will co-adulate and give power to the iconicism (or iconicynicism) and also by a few who will fund the inequality of valuations with their inequality of cash.
On the positive side, art and religion do not intend to be evil. They can both inspire an appreciation of the world and of existence, a sense of wonder. A visit to an art gallery or exhibition, art works of all genres and eras, can be uplifting in one way or another, like a spiritual experience. But if and where uplifting experiences can affect, change or influence people, then this can attract the corrupting influences that are more interested in power over people than in enlightenment.
I see a crucial inconsistency or aberration in the contemporary art world, arising out of the motives of power and materialism. A stack of bricks, in the context of an art gallery, may be deemed meaningful, iconic and highly valuable. But outside the gallery a similar stack of bricks (and no doubt more visually interesting due to the change of light and atmosphere) may be seen as unimportant and worthless as art. The true / uplifting message should be that a stack of bricks (in the context of the universe) is a vision to behold anywhere and art is thus free to all, in being merely an enlightened and refreshing way of looking at things. Art need not be tied to a particular material object, as chosen by the artist or gallery. But in the art world this crucial message is suppressed, to uphold the value and power of iconicized material objects. The art world wants art to be exclusive or to exclude the world at large as art, denying the ultimate message of art.
Similarly, religions, corrupted by motives for power, tend to deny the original spiritual message and to opt for an exclusion clause. The influences of power may historically insert a verse or two to the original story / source of inspiration, to convey the message that this way / our way / our religion is the real true faith, following the true god. It follows that that other ways with differently named gods are paths of deception and misguidance, the paths of satan. By these means, religions are hijacked to be instruments not of enlightenment but of fear, power, hatred and conflict.
Why, we may wonder, do people who basically all share a similar spiritual belief, but for a possibly different geographical social cultural context and language, succumb to authorities that say they must be enemies? The ironic answer is that, for all the supposed intelligence of the human race, it has a mysterious stupidity – a stupidity that we can all see and yet are unable to resist.
I see this stupidity as a deep rooted evolutionary fault in the human psyche, meaning that one day we may be able to correct this fault, to evolve and become socially enlightened. And a measure of that enlightenment would be if we could all manage a more equal world.
We have long had art, music, science, literature, inspirational characters and hero(in)es to inspire us to make a better world, but somehow the world maintains its stupidity, as if our efforts to heal the world are only tackling the symptoms but not getting to the deep rooted cause.
For that deep rooted cause I have seen a clue in something Einstein said. He was certain of two things. One was the infiniteness of the universe and the other was the stupidity of the human race, the latter of which he was more certain. (The reason why Einstein said he thought that the universe may be infinite was because it's an implication of relativity).
In my understanding I see a correlation between humanity’s mysterious form of stupidity and our conception of the universe.
Say, as Einstein suggested, the universe is actually infinite both in time and space. It means that where you are, here and now, is at the very centre of the universe. That is where you are and will always be, wherever you go. The psyche that is given this impression, but without knowing or seeing the reason for it, is naturally born egocentric and prone to getting carried away with a sense of self-importance, at the expense of an understanding of equality ( for if I am at the centre of the universe then you cannot be, for you are outside of me. You must then be less real and less important than me). Inequality seems right and natural to this psyche.
But where the psyche knows (somehow) that the universe is infinite, then they know that this egocentricity is both the truth and an illusion that we are all equally born with. Therefore equality is understood and believed in, at a deep rooted level. Furthermore, that knowing of the infiniteness of the universe nullifies any sense of the importance of the self, while at the same time opening up the mind to the awesome wonder of the universe beyond the immediate self-centred circumstance.
Those interested in power are possessed by, and want to proliferate, the more stupid and self-centred psyche that cannot understand equality. This one is easier to control through fear etc.
And so it is that throughout history the default societal human understanding of the universe has been in denial of its infiniteness and unfathomability, and it’s possible multiversiality.
Once upon a time it was even a heresy (for a devout monk) to express the idea of many other worlds, and Bruno Giordano was put to death by religious authority for it. The small/finite, fathomable knowable universe accords better with an anthropic image of God, and with hierarchies of inequality where those at the top see themselves nearest to God.
Even in modern times the greatly respected Stephen Hawking expressed the view that by the time of the new millennium, we (scientists) would have the theory of everything, we would understand the universe and know the mind of God. But then before that could happen, something happened which would annihilate that sense of certainty (which Hawking subsequently gave up, to say that maybe there would never be a theory of everything). Against what all cosmologists had expected, it was found, in 1998, (by astronomers Perlmutter, Riess and Scmidt) that the cosmos was accelerating apart, not slowing down.
This shock to the world of cosmologists has led to more open consideration of the possibility of a universe beyond and before the big bang, and more talk about a multiverse, but there is still too much of an illusion of knowledge, of nearly knowing it all, in such proclamations like; 'We know what happened in the big bang, right up to the first fraction of second (the very beginning)'. This is a bit like saying 'We know everything about how this engine works except for what the spark plug is for'. If you don't know how something starts then maybe you are mistaken in your understanding of how it works. Apart from not understanding the key moment, the illusion of knowledge puts aside an increasing number of anomalies that trouble the imagined big bang scenario. (Some of these are the cold dark spot and the axis of evil in the cosmic microwave background (cmb) and the disagreement in the measured rate of expansion from the cmb and from galaxies). The current situation is like a big sudoku puzzle, where everything seems to work out well until you get to the last few numbers, which somehow cannot be fitted into the right place. At this point one does not say 'Well we've got everything right except for the last few numbers (and for those last few numbers all we need is some new physics)'. Instead one realises a mistake has been made somewhere along the way.
Now the funny thing is that though the world's leading astrophysicists and cosmologists are still baffled by the accelerating expansion of the cosmos, ordinary lay persons (such as myself ) are not. I went to a talk by professor Jo Dunkley in Oxford where she talked about dark matter and dark energy, with the aid of her waving hands and kitchen implements. At the end of the talk two shy women students approached her and asked if the reason for the accelerating expansion could be that outside of our visible cosmos there were others (in an infinite universe) and that our cosmos was thus falling out towards this greater universe, on account of gravity. The professor said, 'Well, it doesn't work like that'. She didn't explain why. I can explain why the professor said it doesn't work like that - and also why actually it does work like that.
I had the same idea as those students many years ago in 1994 (before the observed accelerating expansion - because at that time it was seen that the calculable age of the cosmos from the Hubble constant was too young (at 10 billion years) to account for the apparent age of some galaxies, so I reasoned that if the visible universe had been accelerating apart its calculable age would be longer (now 13.7 billion years). I then reasoned (like the students) that if the cosmos was accelerating apart it would be a gravitational effect of a surrounding infinite universe - composed of infinite sub-universes, of which ours was one. Since I was not able to get this theory published anywhere (and there was no internet then) I put it as a text in a painting (thereby creating a new genre of art that might be called 'cosmic theory outsider art') titled The Eternal and Inifnite Universe which was exhibited in a group art show in Reading UK in January 1995 and priced at £7 million (to make the point this was the greatest artwork of all time).
In my understanding, my model of the universe and the explanation of the cosmic acceleration was supported by the theories of relativity. But if right, he question then arises, 'Why do cosmologists and astrophysicists still fail to realise this explanation? The professor's comment 'It doesn't work like that' dates back to some reasoning of Isaac Newton, to model an infinite universe using a series of concentric shells (the shell theorem). In my explanation I show there is a fault in the application of this ancient reasoning, as is underlined by Einstein's re-understanding of gravity (as an effect that travels rather than an action at a distance). So why then did not Einstein see it, given that he saw an infinite universe was the implication of relativity? I would say that Einstein went with the consensus view of his time, that the universe was a steady state and singular universe. My explanation of the accelerating expansion involves a dynamic recycling multiverse in which the sub-universes are not steady state (they each accelerate apart (and eventually come to overlap like Venn spaces)).
As I said, though the explanation is simple for anyone to understand (unlike the kind of explanations scientific journals tend to publish) it is all an expression of the ultimate implications of relativity, and indeed the ultimate conceivable universe, for one cannot go beyond an infinite eternal multiverse.
if scientists still don't see this theory, well perhaps it is appropriate, and often the way of things, that the best theory is the last to be considered. One should not leap to the ultimate theory before all others have been considered and eliminated. Another reason is that the multiverse theory is untestable in the hard scientific sense (of lab based experiments) and this seems to have become a reason for rejecting a theory as unscientific. To put it another way, professional scientists do not want to know that the nature of the universe happens to be inherently beyond the scope of knowing.
Then there is the objection that a multiverse theory too glibly dismisses the anthropic principle, i.e. the realisation that the laws of physics and chemistry (in the visible universe/ our cosmos) appear to be finely tuned to allow the emergence of life, and so ourselves, as if intended. A multiverse hypothesis says there may (have been) infinite universes and we just happen to be in the one that allows us. This might rationalise the anthropic illusion, but it doesn't de-mystify the universe, if it says the infinite universe can allow infinite realities/sub-universes. The mystery of the multiverse idea is not so much the possibility of infinite other realities but the actuality of any singular consistent realities, when the original context should be formless or chaotic. What converts the infinite possibility to something realised and definite for the perceiver? How are we locked into one reality? This is where the semblance of intent seems to appear, not just in a once upon a time beginning of a new universe with a set of consistent laws, but in the ongoing, moment to moment continuation of the laws.
We take for granted the existence of constant physical laws, as the natural, and then tend to question events that differ from what consistently happens, as the supernatural, but there is an all the time mystery in the natural. I find that in a multiverse theory, that well explains the accelerating expansion as well as other mysteries and ultimately even the laws of physics, that the implication of intent in the universe becomes unavoidable. That's not something any scientists should be ready to accept because it sounds like an excuse to use the word god. Using the word god in explanations has been shown by science to be premature, an obstacle to a better more rational understanding (and in that sense science means not using god's name in vain, which would be blasphemous. (N.B, - Now there's a irony; seeing blasphemy as an unnecessary reference to god, instead of looking for a more rational explanation. One could say the reason is that it is the intention of god for humankind to properly pursue the rational explanations as far as they may go, so that when we reach the place where rationality can progress no further, there we are closest to whatever god is).
This then is why I think (know) that science /rationality will be reluctant to accept the ultimate theory/ understanding of the universe - because it ultimately implies a god, the supernatural, the metaphysical, the spiritual, or whatever is your word, the Word, for it.
Another problem, concerning me, and in the current context, is that this theory is not coming from a scientist but an artist. That should not exclude it from being the right theory, I refer to Edgar Allan Poe, a poet, who was way ahead of scientists in seeing the (or, a certain) explanation for Olbers paradox, though he was ignored. Today, to be published in a scientific journal, one will not be judged on the possibility of the correctness of a theory but more on the basis of using the exclusive language of modern science, including reams of complex mathematics and terms that are scientific sounding substitutes for ordinary better understood words (eg stochastic instead of random). Like the art world, this is part of a culture of hierarchy and exclusion. The thought that a lay person or an artist might see / understand the universe better than a professional scientist is not welcome. Surely the universe was designed to be complicated so that only people who think in a certain way could understand it. But I find some assurance in what Einstein said, "To Understand the Universe one needs the mind of an artist and a scientist". To put that another way, one needs to use all your brain, not just one hemisphere, (the left). Another Einstein quote to remember is "If you can't explain something simply (and accessibly) then you don't understand it. And why should the basic principles of the universe be inaccessibly complicated. That would suggest something intentionally contrived and surplus to requirements for a consistent reality.
I see an artist as someone who is more of a natural observer of the world and the nature of reality, and whose observations are not prejudiced by the notion that everything should be rational. For example, though I am reasonably aware of what is rational and what is not, I have seen that there is something to astrology, I can even guess people's 'sun signs' from (tangible) visual clues. This excludes me from acceptability as a rational modern day scientist, whereas from my perspective, I see those would-be-rationalists as being poor/insensitive observers, whose notion of what is going on in reality is blinkered by prejudice, or fear of being ridiculed by their peer group / flock other scientists/ rationalists. However, it is interesting to note that some of the greatest scientists and in particular cosmologists of their time have had an interest or even practiced astrology. Eg Kepler, Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo and even possibly Newton. They knew that astrology was not a rational science but that there was perhaps/ apparently something to it. Given a more advanced understanding of physics and science today, it is actually more possible to achieve a non-dismissive rational explanation of astrology now than it was then. But I would warn that astrology should not be officially incorporated into a society (history shows that doesn't work out).
A typical modern day scientist will deny the possibility of anything 'irrational' to the extent of becoming unrealistic or unreasonable, or even self contradictory. My test is to ask people what they think of crop circles. Typically, they'll believe they are done by pranksters. It is true that the occasional one or two can thus be accounted for, but if one learns a bit more or has actually observed some of the many hundreds that occur, they tend to be precise, huge and very complex patterns with no observed (possibility of) human makers. And who on Earth would be bothered to make so many, anonymously? I asked Professor Max Tegmark and he thought they were the creations of students. Yet here is a scientist who goes around lecturing and writing books on the multiverse, so you think he would cite crop circles as some evidence for the theory (that if there's a multiverse then there could be intelligent pan dimensional beings who could be the makers crop circles)).
Stephen Hawking was not so dismissive. Accepting that they could not all be hoaxes or made by parties of humans, he considered the theory that crop circles were the result of peculiar weather vortices. If this theory were true, then the laws of probability would dictate that for even one neat geometric patterned complex crop circle to have occurred there ought to have been trillions that were less apparently well patterned. Perhaps that consideration meant Hawking came to abandon that idea. However it is a good example of now the extremely clever scientific mind has a greater ability to be more detached from reality and thus entertain the more contrived /unrealistic/ wrong ideas.
I think the same could apply to Hawking's theory of black hole radiation, which seems to be accepted as text book fact by the scientific community, despite there not being any observational evidence to support it. The theory says that black holes can radiate (or evaporate) indirectly from a certain boundary (Schwarzchild radius) by converting virtual/ unreal particles to real energy. It is a very clever/contrived theory that may win over with it's apparent ingeniousness, though a more critical consideration finds many inconsistencies and basic problems are overlooked. Apart from these problems there is also a crucial step in the theory (obscured by it's complexity) that if permitted and applied consistently, would mean that black holes could at certain extremes radiate directly (and very powerfully) anyway, without need of dodgy virtual to real particle conversion. The scientific community has missed this point (that is in Einstein's equations), despite the fact that, as more observations have emerged, we see a lot of evidence for black holes/extreme gravity objects actually radiating ( in powerful particle jets) in a way that cannot otherwise be understood. Still, the community clings to the dictum that black holes cannot radiate other than by Hawking radiation, in ignorance of what is observed out there. It is understood that these extreme gravity objects are crucial, where the nature of the laws of physics in our universe / reality may be tested and revealed. Accordingly I find, in the extended theory, that this particular ignorance of observation, and misconception, plays a part in standing in the way of the greater multiverse theory, that explains the accelerating expansion of our cosmos.
Thank you,
Any questions?
Mark J B
