Star-Spangled Qualia
Posted: Monday, July 04, 2011
by Tony Brussat
http://qualiadelic.com
There is a passage in Plato, when Crito is trying to convince Socrates to flee Athens, when suddenly the Laws of State become personified and argue why Socrates ought to stay and suffer his sentence of death. The Laws of State argue simply and truly that they married his parents who begat him, they educated him, and he, by spending his life in Athens, contracted to obey them. Were he to flee, the Laws elsewhere would receive him as an enemy, “for they will know that you have done your best to destroy us.” It is a strong argument that the laws make, and Socrates hoves to it and nobly goes to his immortal death.
The laws – of state, of physics, of perspective and of sense – are all qualia, and the matter of the world is attracted to them, moves toward them, and fit itself around them. People move toward democracy, freedom, equality and tolerance just as a freezing water molecules move toward the six-sided pattern of a snowflake. There is something which is right about it; we know it to be true and right even though we can't really sense it, no more than we can visualize the theory of relativity. Yet once the equation is out there we immediately elect to hove to it.
When matter meets qualia, that is where life is – when Socrates chose death he ensured his immortality. When matter meets qualia, even inanimate matter comes to life – fragile snowflakes in hexagons pile up and endure, and become environments even in the voids between the Sun and the planets. When matter meets qualia, ideas come alive – democracy becomes a living experiment. Ideas come to us in our minds, we live them, and suddenly they are the environment which surrounds us. Then we adapt to the new environment...this is how we evolve, in a never-ending series of qualiadelic relationships.
The laws evolve, then we evolve, then the laws evolve, and we evolve again. So it goes with matter and qualia, and people and politics, and organisms and physics. It is a star-spangled ritual.
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