Let's talk about the idea of a document that a group of people agrees to accept as true and uses to establish the veracity of all emergent claims as well as the morality of all proposed courses of action. You've got two Jews and three opinions but you've only got one Torah so the correct opinion is the one that can be shown to be most supported by the God-given text. Or, you've got nine Supreme Court judges and two possible verdicts but you've only got one Constitution so the correct verdict is the one that can be shown to be constitutional. Or you've got a surly Board of Directors and three building proposals but you've only got one Vision Statement so the correct proposal is the one that can be shown to move the company closer to its vision. In all three cases, what you've got is ethics as poetry analysis. "Is it right?" just means "Is it supported by the text?" 

The beauty of this idea is that it combats tyranny. Neither the most powerful rich man nor the largest majority can simply act in their own self-interest. All decisions must conform to the high ideals established in the text.

The power of this idea is that the essence of an institution does not rest in the merely mortal brains of its founders but in their immortal words. Therefore, the institution continues to fulfill its orginal purpose even when the people who started it are long dead.

The danger of this idea is that the text is probably wrong. I'm a believer in moral progress. It does not surprise me that we in 2011 look at the founding texts of old institutions and shout, "That's sexist!", "That's racist!", and "That is simple false."

There is a poem called "The Things That Are More Excellent" by William Watson that fully articulates my priorities and ethical stance. Like a good vision statement or constitution, it speaks generally enough to be applied to any question. Take, for example, why same-sex marriage should of course be legal and opponents should stop yammering about it. Watson writes, "Shall we perturb and vex our soul for "wrongs" which no true freedom mar, Which no man's upright walk control, and from no guitless deed debar?" That's just perfect.

I've often thought that when I one day start a school "The Things That Are More Excellent" would be its consitution and all proposed policies and programmes would either be in line with the poem or thrown out:
 
What would the school hope to cultivate? "The grace of friendship, mind and heart linked with their fellow heart and mind, the gains of science, gifts of art, the sense of oneness with our kind, the thirst to know and understand"

What would our basic approach to behaviour management be? "Not nobler is that to be free, the stars of heaven are free because, in amplitude of liberty, their joy is to obey the laws".

Would Monday afternoons be given to debate club or nature walks? "Tired of the Senate's barren brawl, an hour with silence we prefer, where statelier rise the woods than all yon towers of talk at Westminster." 

I am not certain I should plan my school that way, though, because I'm worried about the aforementioned danger of the constitutional approach. I want my school to not only keep pace but the lead the way as society becomes kinder, gentler, and more moral. I'd hate to thing that in 2534 my school 's founding principles will be decried as somethingist. Watson states that "the things that are more excellent" are precisely those things that do last, but can I be certain that what he and I espouse will stand the test of time?

Read the poem and vote: 
False, true now, or true forever?

As we wax older on this earth,
Till many a toy that charmed us seems
Emptied of beauty, stripped of worth,
And mean as dust and dead as dreams,--
For gauds that perished, shows that passed,
Some recompense the Fates have sent:
Thrice lovelier shine the things that last,
The things that are more excellent.

Tired of the Senate's barren brawl,
An hour with silence we prefer,
Where statelier rise the woods than all
Yon towers of talk at Westminster.
Let this man prate and that man plot,
On fame or place or title bent:
The votes of veering crowds are not
The things that are more excellent.

Shall we perturb and vex our soul
For "wrongs" which no true freedom mar,
Which no man's upright walk control,
And from no guiltless deed debar?
What odds though tonguesters heal, or leave
Unhealed, the grievance they invent?
To things, not phantoms, let us cleave--
The things that are more excellent.

Nought nobler is, than to be free:
The stars of heaven are free because
In amplitude of liberty
Their joy is to obey the laws.
From servitude to freedom's _name_
Free thou thy mind in bondage pent;
Depose the fetich, and proclaim
The things that are more excellent.

And in appropriate dust be hurled
That dull, punctilious god, whom they
That call their tiny clan the world,
Serve and obsequiously obey:
Who con their ritual of Routine,
With minds to one dead likeness blent,
And never ev'n in dreams have seen
The things that are more excellent.

To dress, to call, to dine, to break
No canon of the social code,
The little laws that lacqueys make,
The futile decalogue of Mode,--
How many a soul for these things lives,
With pious passion, grave intent!
While Nature careless-handed gives
The things that are more excellent.

To hug the wealth ye cannot use,
And lack the riches all may gain,--
O blind and wanting wit to choose,
Who house the chaff and burn the grain!
And still doth life with starry towers
Lure to the bright, divine ascent!--
Be yours the things ye would: be ours
The things that are more excellent.

The grace of friendship--mind and heart
Linked with their fellow heart and mind;
The gains of science, gifts of art;
The sense of oneness with our kind;
The thirst to know and understand--
A large and liberal discontent:
These are the goods in life's rich hand,
The things that are more excellent.

In faultless rhythm the ocean rolls,
A rapturous silence thrills the skies;
And on this earth are lovely souls,
That softly look with aidful eyes.
Though dark, O God, Thy course and track,
I think Thou must at least have meant
That nought which lives should wholly lack
The things that are more excellent.

This is everything that happened as I remember it:

January, 2001

I am in grade eight at Harold T. Barrett Jr. high school and there’s an election on in the United States. I am interested in politics but I don’t really understand it. I draw political cartoons the humour of which is entirely derived from the candidates’ names. I depict “Bush” as a shrub and “Gore” as just a bloody mess. The shrub becomes President. And I become a baptized Baptist.

September, 2001

I am in grade nine at Lockview High School and my math teacher is crying in class. I don’t understand why until I come home. New York is under attack. I know it is a big deal because everyone keeps telling me it is but my worries are all wrapped in something else. My family is moving 13km down the road and I am entering the strange world of Bedford Jr. High. In October, the War in Afghanistan begins.

March, 2003

I’m in grade ten at Charles P. Allen and the US is invading Iraq. Suddenly everyone loves Jean Chretien because he says Canada isn’t going. I’m just trying to avoid looking stupid by keeping my growing Afghanistan vocabulary (“Osama bin Laden”, “Kandahar”) separate from my new Iraq vocabulary (“Hussein”, “Baghdad”).  In December, that last Liberal they’d ever love bows out of politics. Paul Martin becomes Prime Minister.

June, 2004

The Martin Liberals face an election but retain power and I get my first job. I’m ringing through groceries at The Superstore. I’m still doing it six months later when Bush is elected for the second time. On Boxing Day, 2004, the tsunami hits Indonesia and I accept Red Cross donations at my check-out.

June, 2005

I graduate high school. I move to Ontario in August while Hurricane Katrina is ravaging the South. For the first time in my life, I’ve lost religious certainty and I know that I know nothing. In September, I start at Queen’s planning to become a philosopher. An election sprawls out over the holidays. Talking points include the Sponsorship Scandal, same-sex marriage, and the gun registry. It is the first time I'm eligible to vote in a federal election and I quiver in the ballot box. I watch the results with the three PhD students I live with all of whom I am too shy to talk to. Stephen Harper becomes Prime Minister in the smallest minority government since Confederation. With Rabbi Lewis and Dr. Narbonne as professors, second semester is the best time I ever have.

September, 2006

I move back to Nova Scotia and transfer to SMU. Now I want to be a paleontologist. I’ve seen “An Inconvenient Truth” and I’m ready to discuss it.

December, 2006

Saddam Hussein is hanged and I get my first boyfriend and my first kiss.

May, 2007

My Dad goes to Wainwright, Alberta to train for Afghanistan. He’s still there in the summer when I take a job teaching geology to children and decide I might like to be an elementary school teacher.

February, 2008

My Dad goes to Afghanistan. The US military is busy surging in Iraq so Afghanistan is a pretty insecure place. In March, I take a petroleum geology research trip to Trinidad paid for by Big Oil (notably British Petroleum) and have my first beer. I nearly die in a rip tide and start to rethink my life. My first and to-date longest romantic relationship ends.

May, 2008

I graduate SMU. I don’t let anyone forget that I do so summa cum laude. That might be because I’m trying to forget that my Dad can’t be there. Summer brings him home. It also brings my stint at the Haliburton Hotel, my second year of Mini-U, two wild romances, and my first view of the foxy Sarah Palin. The television screen at our Cabbage is fuzzy but she looks undefeatable. I’m sure the future is Republican.

October, 2008

Harper is elected again with a bit of a stronger mandate but the word “coalition” begins to appear in the media. I am in the first year of my B.Ed. at Mount Saint Vincent and I’m a total wreck. I hate all of my classes and my complicated love life is ripping me in pieces.

December, 2008

Parliament is prorogued. I write a song about it and get my 15 minutes of Youtube fame.

January, 2009

Once again, I’m in a classroom where the teacher is crying. But these are happy tears. She’s an American who was there the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Now we’re watching Barack Obama be sworn in as President. I’m also in love and taking an art class that lets me paint from the innermost self.

May, 2009

I seem to be failing my first teaching practicum and my mom is diagnosed with breast cancer. A month later, I’ve passed practicum, my mom is cancer-free, and my dad and I are rebuilding the house. We work from dawn ‘til supper. I mess up critically on the love front but it still manages to be the best time of my life since Queen’s.

December, 2009

Parliament is prorogued again so the Conservatives can perfect the economic plan. No songs this time. I’m concentrated on just making it through my last semester at the Mount. It is awful but not as bad as last year. I have friends now.

April, 2010

British Petroleum is responsible for an enormous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m doing my awesome second practicum at Rev. H.J. and in May, I become a licensed teacher. I work at the Heatherton C@P site which is a lonely, lonely job.

August, 2011

I have an intense albeit short-lived return to religion. I start dating a Christan guy, I go to church for the whole autumn that I live in Ottawa, and then in January I get married at Bedford Baptist Church.

March, 2011

I’m living in a remote village in the Himalayas and back to knowing I know nothing. The Conservative Party is found to be in contempt of parliament but I’m too busy teaching to even read the Wikipedia entry that explains what that means.

Today (May, 2011)

Raze your glass, let’s burn a toast,
To a guy, my faberite one,
Fair in height, poor, 51.
You wonder why I liked him most?
He was a book.

The phrase “you only want what you can’t have” is true by definition. To be “in want” means to be without. You can love something that you have. You can want to continue having it. But you can’t want it. I propose that there are three concepts that the human mind wants, that it yearns for and burns for, precisely because it cannot quite possess them. I call them the seductive concepts. They are, namely, the “infinite”, the “infinitesimal”, and the “perfect.”

In daily conversation, we throw around the word “infinite” to mean “really, really big”, “infinitesimal” to mean “really, really small”, and “perfect” to mean “really, really good.” These popular usages, though, fail to capture what so fascinates people about the words that they bring them into daily conversation to begin with! Diverse disciplines, from theology to poetry to physics (which will be the main focus of this essay) have used the terms more carefully. Mathematics, though, has come closest to kissing the three temptresses and has earned for its flirtations, the title “the science of the infinite.”

In elementary school, we are introduced to geometry. A teacher holds up a piece of construction paper and exclaims, “This is a rectangle!” But if we are very keen and listen very closely, we might hear her whisper a caveat, “Technically it is a rectangular prism because the paper has thickness. And technically it is not even that because the sides aren’t really straight and the angles aren’t really 90°” Our mind is in a war zone with the world we can observe on one side and two of the seductive concepts on the other. For the visual aid to be a rectangular prism, it would have to be perfect, with perfectly straight sides and perfectly right angles. For it to be a square, its length and width would have to be equal and its depth would have to be infinitesimal.

Geometry is filled with the perfect and the infinitesimal but to make eyes at the infinite it easiest to consider set theory, a branch of mathematics little touched in elementary school. Set theory is the business of establishing groups of things (usually numbers) by setting rules that guarantee admission to the groups and then making statements about how many members each group would contain. A set theorist says, “let’s consider a set containing all the positive integers. How many elements would be in that set?” The answer is Infinity.

The answer is also half the number of elements in a set containing all the positive and negative intigers, and this makes the mind twist up like a Cirque du Soleil contortionist. How can one set be, in any sense, half as big as another set, if both sets are infinite? It seems to defy the rules of this world. Maybe in Oz or Wonderland such a thing could be but here, if two objects are the same size one cannot possibly be half the size of the other. Can it?

The most incredible fact of them all (and the number of incredible facts is really, really big, though not infinite), is that this universe, which does not contain within it observable examples of the infinite, the infinitesimal, or the perfect, was itself an example of all three 13.7 billion years ago. At the Big Bang, at the moment just before 10^-43 seconds, the universe was simultaneously infinite, infinitesimal, and “perfect,” in a particular way that I will define later.

To plunge deep into the heart of this essay, the expansion of the universe, I will take as my knife the diagrams I made for two blog entries on the subject back in June. Apologies are extended to the few loyal readers for whom this will be rehash. The first diagram is a two-dimensional representation of the expansion in which all of the matter and energy that exists is represented by eight dots. Matter and energy are different forms of the same stuff, so let’s just call the dots “bits of Stuff.”

http://pics.livejournal.com/eel_grass/pic/00007fe8/

The diagram shows that, as time goes by, every bit of Stuff moves farther away from the origin point and farther away from the other bits of Stuff. It is crucial to recognize that there is no conceivable perspective from which the expansion could have appeared to unfold as shown above, as having gone out from a central spot where the universe “used to be” when it was infinitesimal. A space where it used to be does not exist because space only exists where the universe is. There is no “where” else. Moreover, to any observer, sitting as he would necessarily have to be on one of the bits of stuff since they are the only places that exist, all of the bits of Stuff would appear to moving away from his Bit of Stuff not from any other origin. So it is with us humans in the Milky Way. All the far-away objects in space appear the be moving even farther away from us:

http://pics.livejournal.com/eel_grass/pic/00008zbw/

This diagram shows expansion in action (G moves to G', etc.) :

http://pics.livejournal.com/eel_grass/pic/00009py0/

The above diagram demonstrates quite beautifully why the most distant objects are moving away from us faster than nearby objects. In the same time it took G to move to G’, E moved all the way to E’. The idealized Hubble’s Law words it thus: Any two points which are moving away from the origin, each along straight lines and with speed proportional to distance from the origin, will be moving away from each other with a speed proportional to their distance apart.

When I first made these diagrams, it bothered me that the rings of dots representing all the Stuff in the past and present universes were not concentric. Even though it would be a mistake to imagine the single point where everything was 13.7 billion years ago as a location that you could go to in a spaceship, I wanted to be able to include it my diagrams so the outward expansion was well depicted.

The solution was my beloved Hollow Cone Model, which I would kind of love to be famous one day. The apex, the infinitesimal point at the tip of the cone, represents the infinitesimal universe at Time 0, the moment infinitesimally earlier than 10^-43 seconds. The sides of the cone show the universe’s whole past as it grew to its present size. The outer rim of the cone is the universe right now:

http://pics.livejournal.com/eel_grass/pic/0000h0wx/

 

The above diagram shows why all the other Bits of Stuff are getting farther away from us (the red dot), further Bits faster so than the nearer Bits, even though our location is definitely not central. It does not account, however, for the affects of the non-infinite speed of light on our perception. Let me elaborate. Light is the fast thing going but the other Bits of Stuff are so far away that the light they emit takes ages to travel to us. Suppose that the brown dot is the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest spiral one. It is 2.5 million light years away, which means that when we look at Andromeda, we’re actually seeing it as it looked 2.5 million years ago, just before the genus Homo evolved. That seems like a long time ago until you consider that the purple dot is the galaxy IOK-1. Its light shines to us from 12.88 billion years ago. Very distant objects, then, are very early objects, close in time to the beginning of time, the Big Bang. What we observe, then, is not the current universe, the bottom rim of the cone, but a veritable cross-section of history. We see nearby Stuff as it was a short time in the past and faraway Stuff as it was a long time in the past. We see something like the circle outlined in red dots below:

http://pics.livejournal.com/eel_grass/pic/0000k1yz/

 

It is actually more complicated that that. Consider the light we currently see from IOK-1. IOK-1 is 12.88 billion light-years from us now but the constant expansion of the universe guarantees that we used to be closer. The light, then, began its journey toward us at a time when, if the universe were not expanding, it would have taken less than 12.88 billion years to reach us. I have no idea how much less than 12.88 billion years but for the sake of argument, let’s say 11 billion years. The light was tricked (if energy without mind can playfully be said to be tricked) to embarking down an 11 billion light-year road that over the course of the journey, expanded to become a 12.88 billion light-year road. The total duration of its journey then, was some length of time greater than but not equal to 11 billion years and less than but not equal to 12.88 billion years.

There are two dismal albeit fascinating disadvantages to living in an expanding universe. One is that we cannot possibly see all of it. There are Bits of Stuff that have been sending out light in our direction since the Universe began but, since they are so far away, that oldest of old light still hasn’t reached us yet, and it never will. We are so distant from them that we are moving away from them faster than the speed of light. Their light will never catch up to us. And our light will never reach them. The universe is infinite but the observable universe is a bubble around us with a radius of 47 billion light-years. When we look at Bits of Stuff 47 billion light-years away we see them as they were just after the Big Bang when they were right beside us. That was when their light began the longest journey ever taken, one that started from just a few metres away but ended up taken 13.7 billion years.

The second dismal albeit fascinating fact is that the portion of the Universe we can’t possible see is getting bigger all the time. As the universe expands, more distant objects are pushed outside our observable universe bubble. In the words of so many characters on Doctor Who, “the stars are going out.” There will come a time, billions of years in the future, where we can’t see outside the Local Group. I once watched a physicist muse on this fact on television. What touched him particularly was that if the human species had evolved then instead of now, we could not possibly have developed the Big Bang theory. He felt great pity for future sentient beings with no hope of answering that most pressing metaphysical question: how did it all get here?

Here again we come to the ever-desirous human mind clamoring for understanding that transcends the finite and imperfect objects of the observed world. Humans have the idea of a perfect circle even though they accept that all the apparent circles they’ve seen, including the ones in their minds’ eye, are measurably flawed. When I say that the universe is “perfect” I mean that…

And that of all places, is the cliff where I leave this verbose venture hanging until some future installment that will likely never come. The one-day Bhutan weekend is over and my attention must turn from the infinite to the immediate. I had nothing else to say anyhow.

Choden, when you bent over the butter lamps,

I could see the hint of henna in your hair,

And the glint of that tough trouble you found down in Phuntsholing,

And I burned up and melted in your prayer.

And I remembered Sara back in Canada,

Beside a granite grave in faded jeans,

She placed me. I was plastic flowers.

Ever in bright bloom for troubled teens.

Choden, when you sat by the bukari,

I was the smoke to explain away your eyes,

As I was the rain drizzling down a window,

To reflect on Sara’s cheek as her disguise.

Choden, you are strong and so’s my Sara,

Stronger than my girls should have to be.

Rest knowing that tomorrow will be better,

Blah. I'm a black sheep,
Gnawing off my wool,
Four tags on four bags,
Three-quarters full,
One for Zoraster,
One for Aquinas,
One for a bonny boy,
One for His Highness.

Zoraster, my master,
I used to be his lamb,
He showed me what growed free,
And called me "madame".
He tooketh me then left me
Beside still water,
He couldn't keep a sheep,
That he couldn't bear to slaughter.

I dreamed by the stream,
That Zoraster would return,
To rear me and shear me,
I turned and I yearned,
In shyness Aquinas
Took me for a time
But his fence couldn't hold me,
There was no internal rhyme.

Over the clover,
I wandered in the night,
Ever faster to Zoraster
But the road wasn't right.
Muddied and bloodied,
By a pack of wild dogs,
I lay vile for a while
On a soggy pile of logs.

There a bonny lad in a clan man kilt,
Found me, fell round me
And loved me with a lilt,
He wanted me to follow him wherever he would go,
Couldn't be more pleased if my fleece was white as snow,
But a macho king with a wellstocked flock,
Stole me for his fold and locked it with a rock.

Blah. I'm a black sheep,
And what a thing to be!
At the mercy of shepherds,
Or dogs when I'm free.
Caudled and cradled or pilfered and penned,
I don't have much say either way in the end,
My only truth is to turn tooth and pull,
Be my own sheep and rip out my own wool. 

I wake and grab my cellphone from atop the jumbo pack of toilet paper. The time is 6:20.

You are quiet by the river hearing truth in gentle rest,

I am running to the sunset to find the wonders of the West.

All alone you’re learning much and on my own I’m going far,

But let us come together, love, and be more than what we are.

Let us bend and flex to fit our habits to a single life,

Let us come to be companions, true united man and wife.

Then if your mind becomes too crowded to believe the babbling brook,

I’ll be there to gently calm it with a with-you-always look.

All enfolded by the river we will know the greatest peace,

And the subtlest wisest whispers that the river can release.

And if my legs become too weak to run or I’m too tired,

You’ll be there to carry me and keep me awe inspired.

Restored and racing hand in hand we’ll outpace even the sun,

And reach the red horizon line before our day is done,

And of all the wondrous sights we see and holy truths we ponder,

The greatest one will be the love the grows forever fonder.