The Garden Beyond (Values, part II)

The title makes this sound like a post about utopia. That wasn't my intention, but maybe, in some ways, it is. When Jose Garcia over at Meme Therapy asked me for a quote about achieving utopia, I discussed the same issues, although just briefly. Here, I'm going into greater detail. In the last post, I talked a bit about the difficulties of defining a solid value to a single sunflower. If we have trouble with something as simple as a flower, then how can we expect to judge anything more complex, like the garden or ecosystem around it? How about the whole changing environment on this planet, or the universe itself?

How about other things that fuel political debates, like oil and embryos? How can we assign value to them? That may sound a bit crass, but people do it all the time, without thinking about all of the involved aspects. Some make assumptions about a universal law, and so feel qualified to make judgments about values like right or wrong, or what is treasure or what is trash. The trouble is, usually when cornered about the source of those values, they point to an infallible creator, whose views rely on ancient assumptions. Many of those ancient assumptions (like the assumption that a woman is property which, like a mule, lacks any sense) are ridiculously outdated, but some would-be amateur ethicists don't really seem to know the difference. That's the trouble with having a source of values whose intentions one cannot even guess at.

I always felt there was a source that was somewhere in between the universal law being sought by physicists and the idea of God. (I'll admit, feelings aren't very reassuring answers. I can feel like I enjoy a mocha shake, but the statement doesn't mean much until I'm drinking one.) Refusing to accept self-gratifying answers, I needed a more tangible source than God, but more of a fulfilling source than a cold, expanding universe, with an unlikely lump of rock and water in one corner that we humbly call "Earth." So, I changed my perspective, in order to ask different questions. Rather than trying to understand the origin of these values, I looked at their relationships to matter, and the subsequent effects of our somewhat flawed and overly inclusive perception, and saved origins for later.

This is where dimensions came into the mix. I realized that a value is simply a relationship between two individual bits of matter, analogous to the first dimension, a line between two points. It doesn't matter, for this exercise, what causes the relationship to exist, or even what type of relationship we're talking about--gravity between two bodies, an electromagnetic charge, or a romantic Bambi-style twitterpation--only that the two are connected. Together, the relationship between the two bits and the two bits themselves constitute information. Consider each bit is probably connected to other bits by other values, and that information becomes more complex. When you've added more bits, or other values, you've added another dimension. So, we have one dimension defining values, and another defining information. Combine information to make something useful, like a molecule, or a protein, and, ta-da, you have a three dimensional experience. Sounds simple enough, right? Except it is almost too simple. In itself, there is no reason for a three dimensional thing to be anything more than a big mass of interactive information. Why is there a sense of the beautiful, or the grotesque? Why have different arrangements at all? Here, we have a framework, but it has all the personality of an empty shell. Where does the variety of values and overall change fit in?

I'll discuss that next, and return to both the use of metaphor, and the development of my backyard. Throw in the doodles on my banner, and it all fits together, as simple as sunflowers.

Image of my garden combinded with a Hubble Space Telescope photo of Spiral Galaxy NGC 3370 via HubbleSite.org