'The Bitch Set Me Up' - Politics And Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle In A Delightfully Faux World

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle  asserts that certain pairs of physical properties cannot be measured precisely at the same time. If the position of a particle is measured very accurately, its momentum becomes highly uncertain, and vice versa.  

This principle at the heart of quantum mechanics describes the basic organization of matter.  In layman's terms, you can never know what's going on.  In the world of sub-atomic particles, there is no truth, fact, or absolutes.  It all depends on who's looking and what one chooses to see. 

Heisenberg of course was only describing an esoteric world of bosons and muons, particles which not only cannot be fixed in time and place but which exist for only fractions of milliseconds - evanescent bits of matter that sometimes are and sometimes aren't.  This theory paired with Einstein's Theory of Relativity - another now you see it, now you don't world of surprising uncertainty - describe the universe as unknowable, or knowable as long as you can put up with probability. 

These scientific theories, like Darwin's theory of evolution have necessarily been applied to life above ground, the normal, pedestrian life of solid matter, solid observable things beneath which the particles of the quantum world go whirling. 

As much as we might like to claim the absolute truth about an idea, a premise, an observation, or a conviction, we quickly find that it all depends on who's looking and through which lens. Five eye-witnesses will see the same event in five different ways. You may be convinced that what you see is undeniable, but it is a function only of perception. 

Philosophers like Hume have pondered the metaphysical nature of the question  'If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?'  Is errancy or consistency the rule of being? 

This conundrum should lead us to confusion and a terrible state of indecision or quandary, but of course it doesn't.  We observe, conclude, and pass on the information as the truth.  The information makes the rounds, changing character and veracity each time it changes hands, and by the time it has come to a dead end it no longer resembles its first telling. 

No one seems to care about this maybe, perhaps state of affairs.  As long as we believe what we see, read, or hear, the story ends there.  What happens to the information when it leaves our intellectual property is someone else's business. 

Ivan's Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov admits that he is a vaudevillian, and without his antics life would be a bloody bore, three hundred and sixty five days of Sunday Mass, a predictable, dull, and sodden state of affairs.  And so he makes things up, lies, distorts, discombobulates until there is nothing left but fiction, fantasy, and likes and dislikes. 

What would life be like without rumor, gossip, and innuendo?  Getting at the truth, the principle of our judicial system, is nothing more that getting at the most plausible fiction.  The dead body might be lying there ashen and cold, but how it got there, under what circumstances, and why is another question altogether. 

Murderers plot their killings in intricate ways, and one only has to watch a few episodes of Miss Marple or Poirot to see how the intricacies of the crime are discovered, sewn together to form a conclusion. 'He couldn't have...Of course he could...Why wouldn't he...' are all part of the marvelously wicked pursuit of the truth. 

Former Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC was caught in a sting where he was found smoking crack with a prostitute.  'The bitch set me up', shouted Barry as federal officers handcuffed him and took him away.  He was smoking crack and the girl was a hooker, but beyond that guilt and innocence were figments of perception. 

A bank of television monitors at the gym, tuned to Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC when covering the same incident, portray it in different ways, configured according to their political philosophy and the profile of the audience.  'US War Planes launch destructive strikes on Iranian regime infrastructure' is the headline on one channel while 'Trump's destruction of civilian infrastructure causes civilian deaths'.  Viewers assume that their preferred source is correct, when any less biased observer can only conclude that an attack happened. 

History has a way of moderating events. Does the fact that slavery has existed since Ancient Greece and Rome; that the capture, purchase, sale, and barter of conquered, captured enemies was a way of life in sub-Saharan Africa; that 19th century ethnography placed Africans lower on the phylogenetic scale than white Europeans; and that the unusual co-existence of labor and capital in each slave ensuring his protection and care obviate the moral opprobrium so common in America? and give a chance for practical assessment, integration, and social evolution to happen?

The American Left states with certainty and absolute judgment that European colonization was inherently bad - a manipulative, exploitive, arrogant, and inhuman oppression - and that as a result any of the laws, traditions, principles, and practices derived from empire must be erased, expunged, and discarded.  Yet, the advances in the governance of civil society, the flowering of arts, science, and literature thanks to the right and power of kings cannot be dismissed. They happened just as surely as labor, resources, and wealth were taken as rights of the colonists. 

If this one principle - the Uncertainty Principle - were understood and adopted as a prevailing social ethos, the world would be far less of a contentious, contested, and disruptive place.  A measure of Heisenberg, one of Epictetus and the Stoics, one of Sartre and the Existentialists, and one of Dostoevsky's Devil would make for a much more civilized place. 

Ah, yes, say those Darwinians who contend that human nature is and always will be aggressive, self-defensive, territorial, and self-interested and that metaphysics and phenomenology have little bearing on desire and ambition. 

Yet the result is the same.  If one believes that human nature is as described and hardwired, then there is no point in getting exercised about true belief.  True belief is the heart and soul of politics, and if one accepts that the hysterical claims of the Left are Darwinian in nature - an expression of selfish identity, absolutism, and violent defensiveness - one can easily dismiss them. 

Which is why politics is such a circus, a marvelous freak show, a three-ring event, a vaudevillian act, an impossibly hilarious Borscht Belt comedy routine.  With the notion that such inarticulate hysteria is par for the course, as silly and preposterous as that of previous administrations and those to come, life can be worth the price of admission.