Galaxies or neurons? The Universe is, or is like, a Giant Brain. Or the Brain is, or is like, a Little Universe. Same diff.
Last week, I read this story:
It’s not a very recent/topical one (from the end of last year) – but being as it’s about the self-similarity of networks ranging from the internet, the brain and the Universe itself, I figure a few weeks isn’t that significant.
Anyway – the headline is ‘Physicists Find Evidence That The Universe Is A ‘Giant Brain”. An intriguing one, is it not?
So I wanted to write something about the idea of networks – and the people who work in this kind of theoretical mathematics, which is so entirely beyond my understanding (technically, if not thematically). I don’t know whether working in these kind of mind-blowing theoretical (yet perhaps realer-than-real) realms of science would make you more connected to the world around you, or indeed make you feel the total insubstantial nature of the world around you. So that’s the feeling from which I started to write, imagining one of the scientists involved, lit by the glowing bank of computers which must have been deployed to crunch this much data…
As I posted the news story on Facebook (one of the networks it mentions), a friend used the phrase ‘As Above, So Below’ to sum it up – and that formed the starting point of the poem. At what point is such an aphorism just as useful as all the data we can find? When do we cease to be able to understand (and just need to allow the Universe to get on with it)?
I don’t know – but I hope you enjoy the poem. The ending fully let out my inner-hippie, and I make no apologies for it 😉
As Above, So Below
or, Capital E. Control A. Control C. Control V.
‘Universe Is A Giant Brain’: journos, tip-tapping innocently,
will claim they cannot see the difference between,
like, metaphor and simile.
Knowing this, the analysis complete,
he sat at the centre of the screens, replete
in the data. The sense of having caught
something. Then, a gagging spider, he
Selected All and hit Delete.
So, on every page of the report
he reproduced the phrase in haste –
Copy Paste Copy Paste:
As Above, So Below.
As that very morning, LinkedIn
had asked him if he would like to connect with
Everything. Capital E.
Control A. Control C. Control V.
He uttered: Fundamental Laws,
as Facebook asked him what he thought about
Everything? Capital E. Pushing question marks
down cables in the floor; whispering answers up
into the lattice-dark. As
Everything updated its status:
As Above, So Below.
With a winking smiley 😉
Control A? Control C? Control V?
Capital E. Controls Cosmos. Controls Velocity.
Consciousness Copy. Vastness Paste.
Control Facebook. Paste Brain.
Copy Everything. Paste Same.
Cut Above. Paste Below. And so
the report was pasted onto his profile:
As Above, So Below.
So, he sent Everything a message
as the single word ‘Love’. Capital L. Thinking:
As Below, So Above.