Inevitable, or What?

Our English correspondent Seneca III returns with a meditation on Albert Einstein, Multiculturalism, and the collision of Islam with postmodern Western Civilization.


Inevitable, or What?
by Seneca III

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.”

— Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking Glass

Of Relativity and Moral Relativism

The most well known equation of our times, the mass-energy relationship e = mc², did not just pop into existence out of nowhere. It was not some sort of rapidly inflating singularity, not some moment of brilliant intuition, but the result of the long, hard, distillation and clarification of concepts evolved from the thought experiments of a particularly powerful mind, a mind both preceded and accompanied by others of a similar order^[1].

The results of these thought experiments, were they ever to take on verifiable substance, had to be expressed by a set of (quite complicated) mathematical calculations, in this case explained but not iterated in full detail in Einstein’s ‘Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1916)’^[2], calculations that would have to withstand both the rigours of long-term peer review and the results of physical experimentation that would also have to be capable of replication^[3].

And, as we know, e = mc² did pass muster so that today just about anybody with some basic mathematics, with or without a calculator and given the value of the constant ‘c’ (speed of light) and that of one of the two variables ‘e’ (energy) or ‘m’ (mass), can easily calculate the value of the other, undefined, variable. And these end-users do not even have to begin to understand the deeper mathematics that underpin this seminal reality; they can just take and utilise the equation as it stands without having to dig any deeper, and can do so in confidence that their result will be correct and of practical use.

Moral equations, however, are a different beast entirely. They too deal in variables, some simple, some complex, that are also the product of thought experiments (though rarely those of powerful minds). In these cases both the variables and those value judgements held to be constants are primarily observations, perceptions formed by the demands of the beholder’s particular time, place and motivations, relative to his or her reference frame.

Consequently, as it might be useful for us to understand the essence of the term ‘reference frame(s)’, at least in a physical sense, I offer hereunder a truncated, and somewhat personalised version of an explanation of Relativity as given by Einstein in Ref.1, above, where he used as an example the movement of railway trains.

“Imagine you are sitting on a railway embankment level with a train as it passes. It is rather an unusual train (this is a thought experiment, after all) in that one of the carriages is glass sided and seatless, and the train is particularly smooth running, silent and without vibrations. Here in this carriage a man is standing holding up a ball, and at that point roughly where your line of vision intersects the path of the train at right angles he releases the ball.

Now assume that your visual acuity is of a high order and you are able to follow the path of that ball and register it clearly in your mind’s eye. If this is the case then what you will perceive is that the ball falls in an arc trailing away from the direction of travel of the train. (This will occur whether the train is accelerating, decelerating or travelling at a constant velocity; the shape of the arcs would differ yet arcs they would still be, but for ease of explanation we will forget about the slightly more complicated +/- acceleration scenarios and focus on the constant velocity one.)

Yet what about the man on the train, he who dropped the ball; what has he perceived? Well, let us put ourselves in his position. Under conditions of a constant velocity, with no other effectors such as drafts, what we will see having dropped the ball is that it travels in a vertical straight line to the floor of carriage. Also, were the train travelling smoothly without the clickety-clack of wheels running over expansion joints, and had we looked up and observed our other self on the embankment against a blank background without any reference points, then we would have seen ourselves moving away in a direction opposite to that of the train.^[4]

But, (and this is a key point) at least by the way we measure things in the Euclidean plane, an arc is longer in length than the straight line connecting the point of release of the ball to the point vertically beneath it on the floor of the train. And the ball must have along travelled along this arc for we have seen it with your own eyes when on the embankment.

Or did we? We have also seen it with the eyes of the man on the train, and those eyes saw the ball fall in a vertical straight line — in the same amount of time it took to travel the longer distance of the arc as observed from the embankment.

Bit of a problem here, then, guys. Something changed and it is not easy to see what because if nothing else when one thinks about it this whole scenario is very counter-intuitive (but not nearly as much as ‘Quantum Mechanics’ or ‘Quranic Metaphysics’ are — but I think we shall leave those for another day).

Essentially, did the ball travel faster or slower in one place than it would in the other? Did a different temporal dynamic exist in either of these places; specifically, was time running faster or slower in one of them somehow?

Was it an optical illusion? Are we simply going crazy? Well without going into a lot of rather complicated calculations the answer is ‘yes’ (but only by a very tiny amount, virtually immeasurable at the velocity involved here) to both of the first two questions and a categorical no to the third and fourth.

What we actually perceived is simply the inevitable result of observations made from two different reference frames, each from the other, and in this particular case one frame is moving and the other one is stationary. What we are seeing is ‘relative’, relative to the perspective permitted by the relationship of the two frames in terms of their different vectors and orientation — Hence, Relativity.”

To summarise: Had both of the reference frames been stationary, or moving parallel to each other in the same direction with the same velocity or rate of acceleration/deceleration then both observers would have seen exactly the same thing. And, under these circumstances, each observer would have felt quite comfortable with the other’s interpretation of their mutually compatible environments, or vectors if you will, even if the vectors had a zero value.

However, if the defining criteria (the observed conditions) in either or both of the reference frames changed, even by the smallest amount, then the perceptions of the observers would also change roughly proportionate to the number of differences and their magnitudes.

Thus if there were many differences in these vectors then there would also be many differences in the observers’ perceptions of each other’s reference frame — and the greater the number and magnitude of these differences the greater the difficulty in mutual rationalisation or, if you will, conceptual integration, eventually to the point where such would be impossible to achieve from a wholly singular perspective out of either frame.

Furthermore, to analogise the meaning and application of reference frames in the field of human affairs does not require a particularly different mind-set, for the underlying principles are fundamentally the same despite the transition from the physical to the metaphysical, and so here I suggest we examine that very slippery metaphysic ‘moral relativism’. It is probably best we do so empirically, and first look at how the Oxford English Dictionary defines these two words:

• moral (adjective) — concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour and the goodness or badness of human character.
  
• relativism (noun) — the doctrine that knowledge, truth and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.

And then when, for whatever reason, some person or group of persons put this adjective and this noun together to form a phrase and then present that phrase as an absolute it is incumbent upon others of us to ask the following:

• “Do moral questions have objective answers, or are they simply the product of emotivism or scepticism in relation to one or another moral reference frame?”
  
• “Is moral relativism a set of social practices that promotes the survival and successful reproduction of a particular species or multiple co-operating species or of sub-groups within either or both, or does it lead to the domination of one over the other and perhaps even the destruction of either or both?”

Whatever the answers, there can be no doubt that Islam is on a very different vector from all other belief systems or social models, a sessile and non-syncretic, fratricidal, sadomasochistic, misogynous, fatalistic and totally primordial construct that has known neither Enlightenment nor Renaissance since its emergence from the arid deserts of the Arabian Peninsula fourteen centuries ago.

Nor is Islam a religion, as such a definition is understood in the West. It is a despotic, theocratic political system brutally sustained within and brutally imposed without upon any who fail to defend themselves from its assault with equally draconian ferocity, and those who are determined not to suffocate in its ideological cesspit must now must apply themselves with determination, fortitude and a very heavy hand if they wish to continue to breathe clean air and to think for themselves.

Of Collisions and Catastrophes

In the tiny, inflationary domains of the sub-atomic, such as are momentarily created in particle accelerators or in the heart of stars, and also in the opposite, super-macro volume of the Cosmos, collisions frequently occur.

Whether it be protons accelerating at velocities only just short of light-speed^[5] and smashing together head-on, or the majestic, inexorable passage of galaxies through each other, where stellar fires flare in their mutual annihilation and ram pressure stripping^[6] denudes stars of their essential gases, the forces released are enormous and those entities involved are either destroyed or irreversibly changed by the collision energies involved.

Here, now, with two very different cultural and ideological reference frames attempting to occupy the same space at the same time, and with the avatars of their metaphysical alter egos, their belief systems, competing for ascendance, similar momentous events will prevail, with similar results:

• Consider: If two or more vehicles collide at speed they will effectively self-destruct, scattering debris to the wind. If this happens when the ‘F’ in F=ma is so large that it negates any benefit offered by built-in safety features, some if not all of the occupants of the vehicles will die. That simple.
  
• Thus: If two or more belief systems with vectors that are entirely different collide, and where the application of moral relativism through a repetitive, corrosively disingenuous mix of category errors, oxymora and logic failures is substituted for a healthy process of objective analysis and is the only safety feature on offer, some if not all of the occupants of such vectors will die. That simple.

In this context therefore it is worth noting that the Holy Grail of current research at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a huge underground particle accelerator beneath the Franco-Swiss border, is the Higgs Boson. Essentially the Higgs Boson is a ‘mechanism’ that proposes to explain where ‘mass’ — the drag imparted by particles attracted to a heavier particle such as a proton (the Higgs Field) — comes from. Professor Peter Higgs first postulated this in the early ’60s, and the international physics community has long been attempting to find experimental proof of this field’s existence, or otherwise.

If the team at the LHC, or others who follow, do manage to find it, and prove its existence by replicable experimentation, then the world of physics will be presented with yet another problem: “How, then, can Quantum Physics be reconciled with Einsteinian Relativity, and thus will we be willing to step out again in search of another Holy Grail — The Grand Unified Theory, or GUT as it is known in common parlance?”

Well, yes, I suspect that we will set forth on this long journey. Whilst String Theory is the best candidate to hand there could be others, and others beyond them and perhaps even further. In the world of physics rarely is anything blindly accepted for what it is first seen to be — and any such acceptance can be a long, very slow process until hypothesis becomes thesis becomes theory having been tangibly proven several times over. And then, but not always then, for the Universe remains a very mysterious place and all possible realities, the hoped-for answers to what may be unanswerable questions, need to be relentlessly examined.

The great pity it is in these times that metaphysicists still shy away from examination or re-examination of ancient precepts and would appear to prefer to bury any form of further thought experimentation under a mound of comfortable wishful thinking. Or, as is obvious in the case Islam and in the political ideology of most Western leaderships, buried in the base moral effluent emanating from their abiding determination to sustain their power and privilege at any price they can force us to pay.

So, in the final analysis and in order to bring this rather tortuous circumlocution to an end, I offer some personal conclusions as to the shape of our immediate future:

• Here in the West an atavistic Islam is on a very different vector from our peculiar mixture of post medieval Judeo-Christianity and abrasive Secularism. The cretinous drivellings of an intellectually destitute Imamate really are impossible for a modern, Eurocentric mind-set to encompass, and so do we rapidly approach a spectacular collision.
  
• Any attempt now at taking avoidant action is almost certainly doomed to failure because the demographic has, with malice aforethought, been changed too much. Furthermore any such avoidant action would simply be too little, too weak and far too late.
  
• At the moment the majority of the native inhabitants of the Euro-Anglosphere appear to be paralysed (Cultural Stockholm Syndrome?) by a severe case of Xenoshock brought about by the totally alien nature of the Umma, but I suspect we are not going to continue to stand like rabbits caught in its headlights for much longer.

Simply put, the inescapable fact is that the forced imposition of Islam in all of its primitiveness anywhere outside of its own historic evolutionary cul-de-sacs is, sooner rather than later, going to be totally catastrophic.

— Seneca III

Caveat: As in my case Physics is only a hobby rather than a vocation, those of you who really do know a thing or two about the subject may feel free to point out any of my no doubt many errors. Although, I might add, any comments reference the metaphysical side of the debate would, a priori, tend to be viewed as subjective, or even relative. :)


Notes:

1.		James Clerk Maxwell, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, and Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck amongst many others.
2.		Einstein was not the first to propose a mass-energy relationship, but he was the first to propose the e=mc2 formula and the first to interpret mass-energy ‘equivalence’ as a function of the relativistic symmetries of space and time.
3.		‘Deflection of Light by a Gravitational Field’, ‘Motion of the Perihelion of Mercury’ and ‘Displacement of Spectral Lines Towards the Red’ to mention but three.
4.		You may have experienced this sort of visual (space/time) dislocation if you have ever sat on a train at a station alongside another train without any other reference points in your line of vision. Then when your train started to move off slowly and smoothly there for a short moment it appeared that the other, stationary, train was the one that was actually moving.
5.		F=ma (Force = mass x acceleration), and because relativistic mass is many orders of magnitude greater than rest mass, ‘F’ becomes huge at near light speed velocities — interested parties could refer to the Lorentz transformation (which superseded the Galilean transformation of Newtonian physics and was later re-derived by Einstein via the Special Theory of Relativity) for a clear mathematical illustration.
6.		Spiral arms in fast moving Galaxies speeding through each other tend to be deformed by the strong stellar winds generated by their movement and, critically, some stars become stripped of their gas.

Previous posts by Seneca III:

2007		Oct		13		A Letter to my People
				26		Another Letter To My People
2008		Oct		5		Excerpt From “Ere the Winter of Our Discontent”
2009		Oct		22		The Cultural Death of a People
				23		Do Star Chambers Serve a Useful Purpose, Or Do They Obfuscate the Issue?
		Nov		8		By the Rivers of Babylon
2010		Jul		2		The ‘Phoney War’ Is Over
		Sep		13		Musings on the Winds of Change
		Oct		13		The Fourth Dimension of Warfare, Part 1
2011		Jan		1		The New Year Comes With Ham
		Feb		6		My Yesterday in Luton
		Jun		17		The English Spring
		Jul		12		The Betrayed
		Oct		19		A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night, Part I
				20		A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night, Part II
				22		A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night, Part III
				24		A Long Day’s Journey Out of Night, Part IV
		Nov		3		Are These the Labour Pains of a New Renaissance?
2012		Jan		1		A Furious Tide
		Feb		5		My Yesterday in Leicester
		Apr		22		A Gift from the Religion of Atrocity