Making Connections

I think the ability to making connections is crucial. It's the mark of a truly educated/brilliant mind.

Can you define something unknown without making comparisons to something else that you do know?  Let's say you have to describe an orange.

"It's a sphere. It's orange. It's sweet, and grows in tropical climates."

You didn't describe an orange independently. You described four things I already know about (spherical objects, orange objects, sweet objects, and tropical agricultural products) and told me "an orange is like this."

If I didn't know any of those things, your description wouldn't help.

In order to understand something that you DON'T understand, you have to describe it in terms of something you DO understand.

That's why we invented math. To conceptualize difficult-to-grasp concepts.

Some things that we humans should learn from Atoms.

We tend to think in terms of competition. “McDonalds vs. Burger King.”  “America vs. Soviet Union.” “Whites vs. Blacks.” This mindset is the single greatest hindrance to our development as a human race.

Atoms have a form of bonding called covalent bonding where two completely different nuclei bond by sharing the one thing they have in common…. an electron.

Instead of seeking to annihilate foreign objects when we encounter them, why don’t we seek to co-opt them? Even if the Soviets have a vastly different atomic weight and a different atomic structure, can’t we find some shared electrons? And can’t we respect their space?

Atoms aren’t interested in competition. They’re interested in cooperation.

Atoms manage to build incredibly beautiful and useful structures by sharing what they both have in common. An iron atom does not give up its ironic nature when it bonds with carbon. It shares what it has in common (the electrons) and reserves what its nucleus for itself And both parties grow stronger, not weaker!

Imagine if atoms thought the same way that humans did. “CARBON? We can’t work with CARBON!” squeals the iron atoms. “They’re unnatural! They’ve got SIX protons in the nucleus! That’s disgusting! It’s unnatural!”

(That’s a discussion for another day. Sure, we’re a little different at the core, but not much. Just like atoms, any two people from completely disparate cultures will have pretty much the same values and desires. Maybe we vary dramatically in distribution, but not in composition.)

We’ve been trained to think “cooperation” means “submission.” If you begin working with the Africans, you had better be prepared to find yourself wholly Africanized…. from your culture and dress to your food and music.

But that’s ridiculous. As atoms show, it’s possible to build molecules, cells, organisms, and WHOLE PLANETS if you will simply focus on what you have in common, while still maintaining your identity. We ought to focus more on what we have in common with other people.  If our goal was cooperation, and not conquest, we might actually get somewhere on this planet.

Deep Thoughts

I like thinking deep thoughts. So, whenever I have something come to mind that's new or different, I'm going to record it here. You can read it if you want.