Part Two: Physics

Chapter Nine: Physics

9.1 Equality - An American Fantasy

It's a fact: All men are not created equal.

The American ideal and our way of life that follows from it is based on the assumption that “all men are created equal”. Sorry Charley. But such an assumption only makes the ass out of you and me. The painful truth - to the most compassionate amongst us - is that we are extremely unequal in just about every way you wish to measure.

We are all woefully dissimilar in our abilities. It is not only in the obvious external world matters of materialism and wealth (or the lack of) that separates the brotherhood of mankind. Even less comfortable for us to acknowledge are the mental and physical advantages or handicaps that we seem to come into the world with as if by the luck of the draw. No, it’s not Fair. It doesn’t even seem at times very nice. Often God is cursed for these discrepancies and Faith is lost over such cruel disparities.

Many of the older cultures around the world would find this idea of all men being created equally quite foreign. Monarchies are, or were, predicated on the fact that the ruling classes where very definitely above the “lower” class peasants, tradesmen, and merchants. Cast systems like that in India also play on the inherent inequality of men (and women) by grouping family lines into three separate classes instead of just the two (ruling and ruled).  Even within religious systems there is the premise often held that the priests are closer to God than the average person.  Indeed, the whole concept of esoteric knowledge rests on the foundation of inequality - only the priestly elite could possibly understand the "higher" secrets of sacred truths.  "At one time, apocrypha was a term used to describe books that were "hidden away" because they were considered too esoteric or sacred for the common reader."¹

It is fairly easy to recognize inequalities in physical traits. Some are endowed with strength and stature. Some are blessed with a face which is easy on the eye. Although many of these initial differences can be modified with exercise or plastic surgery, later injuries or illnesses in life can leave people with a great inequity in mobility and self sufficiency. Advanced age affects people differently, unequally.

But less obvious are the more subtle changes only recently coming to light. Changes in peoples ability to sense the world around them. Oh, no. Nothing as flighty as psychic powers or anything like that! But rather the everyday physical senses of hearing, smell, sight, taste, and touch.

We have discovered that there are Supermen (and Superwomen) that are interspersed with the ‘average’ population. There might even be one living next door to you! Super-tasters, for example, experience food in ways that the rest of us can never know. These people are born with roughly twice the number of taste buds on their tongues as the rest of us. There are others who are born with a greater number of sensory fibers in the cochlea of the ear. Some have a greater number of olfactory nerve endings in their noses. And so on.

People experience the world differently. We experience gross or subtle differences in our immediate environment due to a greater or lesser number of sensory apparatus. But there are also great variations in the processing of sensory impressions within the brain as well. Our measure of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) shows a spectrum of capability to store and retrieve details from memory. A more recent term - and I don’t know if there is a test for it yet - has allowed myself to more clearly define my own person, Emotional Quotient, indicates how differently we respond to events emotionally. The two latter (IQ and EQ) are not as ‘hard’ as the differences in physical apparatus, as they are the result of ‘software’ like programming by life experiences as much by physical abilities. The balance of nature and nurture that we now know plays equally in ‘who we are’. Even so, by adulthood most of the intellectual and emotional attributes that we are going to have in life are fairly well established. I am not subscribing to the “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” theory, because I know you can, but overall by our early 20s our attention span and other learning skills as well as our basic emotive responses are in place. We recognize these individual abilities and traits as a (very large) part of who a person is.

One of the most fascinating differences in our abilities to process information is revealed by a condition called synesthesia². Syn in Greek meaning ‘together’ and aesthesis meaning ‘to perceive’, a synesthetic experiences a world where perceptions intermingle. Say the number “two” to a synesthetic and they will not only internally image “two” but they will experience an internal image of a color as well. And these colors are not random. A “two” to a synesthetic is always yellow. Or green. The color may vary with the individual, but not with the association. So one person may see “three” as blue and for him it will always be blue although to another synesthete “three” may conjure up the color purple - and for her it will always be purple.

There are other cross-perceptions that the synesthetic may experience besides numbers and letters evoking color. A sound might produce a taste or a sensation of touch. An image may inspire an odor and so on. See Also: http://www.discover.com/dec_99/featsyn.html

The point I’m making is that as we continue from here to interpret our findings of science and the humanities, we must bear in mind that like the story of the Three Blind Men  we are all apt to interpret things differently since we are all different physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Some of us may never know the deep and powerful experience of a religious epiphany. The Faithful must be patient with those who will ever experience the rapture of the spiritual world. Likewise, some will never visualize the complex mathematics that define the universe in ways only a few can understand. The scientific must have patience for the lay persons who cannot conceive the complexities of the physical world.

We are not equal, but we can hopefully learn to trust those who carry the torch of those abilities and experiences that we do not share in common. Maybe some people can see auras. Perhaps one can catch a glimpse of God in an algebraic expression. Just because we ourselves cannot experience it, does not mean that no one else can either. Lets recognize our differences and learn from them as we prepare to go into the final chapter of Faith and Physics.

#1 The Missing Books of the Bible - Volume 1 - Halo Press, pg. 7 [Back to Text]

#2  synesthesia: (Amer. Her. 3rd Ed.) syn·es·the·sia also syn·aes·the·sia. n. 1. A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color. 2. A sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain. 3. The description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another. Synesthetic adj.  [Back to Text]