Levels of Scale

Got an email question about “every level of scale”, a phrase we used in the last post on Chris King. This is an explanation, but we don’t claim it to be definitive....or even authoritative.  This is just the measurement system that we use here at the BIPT.  Here are alternate perspectives from wikipedia, from math world, and a very interesting read from The Sustainable Scale Project

BIPT Levels of Scale

Universal

The sum total of everything.  There could be any number of “levels” between our supercluster and the sum total of everything—this is just a guess based on what we know.  The limits of the Universe remain unknown.

We have not found an outside—a final boundary.  As far as we look, there are only more stars.

We have not found an inside—an ultimate building-block of reality.  The deeper we peek into molecules and atoms, the more tiny components (and “empty space") we find.

Supercluster

We live in the midst of Virgo Supercluster --- the vast collection of galaxies that contains the Milky Way.  The gravitational center of this cluster is the supermassive star Sagittarius A*.

CLICK TO ENLARGE
Image from a recent and excellent paper by Jacques Vallee: “Metastudy on the Spiral Structure of our Galaxy”.

Galactic

Jaques is the only guy we trust on UFOs, which is hilarious, because he admits to being sworn to secrecy on a number of topics by the government and has a fairly shady past.

Solar

We recommend the free software program Celestia, which allows you to explore the solar system in 3-D.  It is at first frustrating to navigate, because it’s easy to get lost even inside the inner solar system.  The space between planets is so vast that your landmarks disappear completely, blending in with the stars which surround you.  Our solar system, just like an atom, is mostly empty space.

Also, if you dig Celestia, check out the huge amount of expansion packs you can beef it up with.

Also also, a good page to bookmark is spaceweather dot com, a good tool for keeping track of what’s going on outside the ionosphere.  Since there’s a fairly strong correlation between solar flare radiation hitting Earth and a spike in human violence, it never hurts to have a little outside knowledge.

Global

The God’s-eye view of all human affairs.  Wiki of course has a richly informative page on our Earth, and David Wilcock also has a most interesting perspective on the matter.

Relevant Sciences: Economics, Geology, Archaeology, Meteorology.

Normal

Yes, that image is deliberately provokative.  Not surprisingly, as we move closer to the daily reality of human life, these arbitrary measurements get more controversial.

This level of scale was at first difficult to name.  National borders not only vary in size, they are completely meaningless hallucenations --- a useless place to start.  “Normal” refers to culturally homogenous zones.  When middle-class Americans travel to Switzerland, they feel less disoriented than they would in Hong Kong or in Argentina.

Adolf Hitler is pictured above for two reasons: 1) He was attempted to create a new culture that would span all of Europe and eventually the globe, and 2) because what he did truly was normal, in the sickest possible sense.  Genocide is nothing new.  Genocide has not stopped since the Holocaust of World War Two.  Genocide is a direct consequence of cultural norms being different enough to allow humans to view other humans as disposable animals.  The genocide which founded the United States of America functioned on precisely the same principle.

Sadly, recent genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur make it clear that even very slight differences are more than enough to trigger human brutality --- people with nearly identical genotypes and thousands of years of geographic proximity will still turn on one another overnight.

We included Hitler because it must be remembered that although Hitler was a monster, he was not an anomaly.  He was not unique.  Most of all, he was not inhuman.  All of Germany was not behind Hitler, just as all of the United States are not behind Bush.  But enough were behind Hitler to create a much more dangerous situation --- the majority was scared into silence and impotence.  There will always be true believers, but they are only able to create a Holocaust when the majority enables them to.

This is the “norm” --- projecting enough opinions on every TV station to make us think that if we speak out we’ll be shouted down.  To make us feel like we’re crazy for thinking our country has been taken over by criminal psychopaths.  To make us look behind our backs and think before we speak.  The invisible hand of conformity.

Relevant Sciences: Psychology, Biology, Comparative Theology, Media Studies.

Local

This is whereabouts you live.  Unique to every human.  All the faces are white in the image above because we are from Vermont and that’s where the photo was taken.

Relevant Sciences: Municipal Engineering, Conflict Resolution, Agriculture, City Planning.

Social

Your peer group is one of the most-studied systems in the modern world.  There exists an entire district of the city of New York --- popularly known as Madison Avenue --- strictly devoted to the multi-billion dollar industry of advertising.  Understanding how you and your friend interact is a puzzle for some of the highest-paid assholes on the planet.

Although our technology is unparalleled and our art is beyond anything in the animal kingdom, our social interactions have barely changed at all.  We still use mating rituals, we still establish a “pecking order” of group dominance, we still size one another up when we meet, we still play power games.  We’re not fundamentally much different from other primates, aside from clothing and cell phones.

Relevant Sciences: Psyschology, Biology, Neurology, Evolution.

Personal

The single most important level of scale, because it’s us.  It is here, on this level of scale, that we percieve all other levels of scale.  All of our telescopes end at the same interface: a human eye, which is so finely tuned it can detect individual photons of light.

The entire universe that we percieve and take for granted is constructed in the folds of the grey matter above.

One of our favorite models is that of “perceptual cybernetics”, which divides the sum of all human existence into three distinct parts:

Phy is the name assigned to the electromagnetic signals and “solid matter” which make up the world we experience.

f/x is the name assigned to the actual organs of perception which allow us humans to percieve all this.

Psi is the name assigned to the mysterious “internal conscious experience”, the mind which percieves and then acts.

As Mark Pesce explains:

From an informational standpoint, the entire universe can be divided into three domains. The external domain - that is, everything exterior to the self - is identified by the Greek letter Phy, representing the physical universe. The internal domain - the realm of thoughts and emotions - is identified by Psi, representing the domain of the psyche. Everything between these two - the senses and affectors which mediated between the internal world and the physical universe - is represented as Fx. The precise content of each of these “islands” of information are unimportant; what is important are the interfaces that each present to the other. Both Phi and Psi must pass through Fx, and each presents an interface only to Fx.

If, for example, I were to take an infrared remote control, and shine it into the audience, it’s unlikely that anyone would know it. Though information is being transmitted from the device, you have no senses which can receive this information. This information is lost at the Phi/Fx interface.

For a hyper-complicated and fascinating examination of these concepts, we recommend this essay by Mark Pesce.
Relevant Sciences: Neurology, Psychology, Martial Arts, Healing Arts, Psychoacoustic, Autoimmunology.

Organic

We’re not too sold on this one.  Perhaps there’s no need for an interval between the personal and the cellular --- so this is here as a placeholder more than anything else.

Cellular

We strongly recommend the Lewis Thomas book, The Lives of a Cell, as a useful introduction to, and meditation on, the human cell.

Cells are animals unto themselves, and it’s important to remember how much of “us” is actually alien life --- from the perfectly independent mitochondria within our cells to the billions of batceria and fungus that call our bodies home.

Molecular

The molecular level of scale has been rapidly colonized by mankind in the past century.  For over 2000 years, molecules have been a matter of philosophical debate and mere speculation.  Now, in 2006, we are manufacturing technology using individual molecules.  From pharmacology advances to the frontiers of nanotechnology, the molecular level of scale is becoming a playground for the human mind ---- now we just need to make it an affordable playground.

Atomic

As we mentioned in the previous post, it’s hard to miss the isomorphism between atomic orbits and planetary orbits.  It’s most remarkable to see those same patterns recur at such vastly separated levels of scale.  What does it mean?  We have no clue.

Quantum

Superstring theory looks like a mistake to us.  There is certainly a level of scale --- perhaps billions more --- after quantum, but at the moment, our powers of detection end here.  It’s worth noting that Quantum Tantra physicist Nick Herbert feels differently:

NICK: Oh, ultimate particles, huh? I’d be perfectly content if physics came to an end--that quarks and leptons were actually the world’s fundamental particles. Some people think this, that physics is coming to an end, as far as the direction of finding fundamental particles goes. It’s okay with me. I don’t think that’s the most interesting way to go, looking for fundamental particles. You know my real notion is that consciousness is the toughest problem, and that physics has basically taken off on the easy problems, and may even solve them. We may find all the forces and all the particles of nature-that’s physic’s quest--but then what? Then we have to really tackle some of these harder problems--the nature of mind, the nature of God, and bigger problems that we don’t even know how to ask yet. So, actually I’m not too interested in the problem of finding fundamental particles, but my guess is, from what we know now, that we’re very close to that situation.

From his interview with Mavericks of the Mind.