Dark Matter

Dark Matter

Occasionally, in an abandoned fashion, I wish that I could be smarter and more intelligent. I wish that I could be as capable as the person who created FaceBook, or that latest genius hacker kid who broke into the Homeland Security's server and was offered a job making a fortune (as an alternative to going to prison for life). Sometimes I wish I could calculate the eonal change in rotational velocity of Saturn's seventh moon without breaking a sweat. All in my head.

But I can't. And really, if I think about it logically, I have to take into account the other side of each of their stories. For every capability of the mind, there seems to also be a handicap. Whether it be common sense or general cordiality, there is always a trade off.

But perhaps if you knew me, you would never suspect how disquieted I am in my current place in life. For these things, except likely in jest, are not what I would express in every day conversation. Or would I?

To look around, we may imagine that we see most of what there is to see in our physical world. The objects we encounter on a day-to-day basis seem to be everything our world has to offer. The stars we see from a distance, their matter exceedingly great in comparison with anything to which we may compare it, appear at first consideration to be all that there is.

However, in reality, we only see and consciously interact with a very small portion of what exists - even just visually. According to Newtonian (classical) physics, we discover that as much as 80% of all existence is not visible or observable by any human sense, or even any scientific measurement to date. The closest we can come to it, in fact, is to study the absence of what we know, attributing all this to the dark matter of which I speak. All of creation ("the Universe") has a unique balance. For every action, there is a precisely opposite reaction. Would that not also suggest that for every piece of matter, there is an equal and opposite absence of matter? And for every physical void or empty space, there is an equal and opposite matter?

Another important thing to note regarding dark matter is that it does not exist as a separate world; it is present to influence and affect all that occurs in the known universe. And change in either light or dark matter must have an effect upon the other, regardless of humanly observable behavior.

My curiosity, however, questions whether this phenomenon also exists for our own human existence. Specifically, personality.

When I meet someone for the first time, I almost always discover, after working to get to know the person further, that my first impression of them was completely wrong. Why? Well, there could be multiple reasons. Among them, our propensity to assume. We assume a person is a particular way if we think they matching up with what we would expect from actions they perform or words they speak. And once that opinion is formed, it is not easily broken. But in doing this, in forming our opinion based on a complete lack of actual data, we not only create someone who may not even exist, but we cheat the actual person about whom the opinion is formed.

Sometimes there are people who make more effort. On occasion, there is a person who chooses to avoid all prejudice and quickly formed opinion. They work hard to learn about the person in question, and allow their opinion and understanding of that person to grow, expand and change as necessary. Yet, even here a person may remain unknown throughout a relationship with another.

There are yet still several more reasons this is the case, including  our very finite, yet chronologically dependent, nature. But I believe there is another reason for it, and I would compare it with dark matter.

We all have areas of our lives, our thought-life, our preferences, desires and even our present, past and future actions which we both do not wish for any others to know, and are even incapable of communicating. Dark matter. What exists without direct reference, yet which has dramatic influence and effect upon all that is visible and observable. How much is there about each other that we will never know? And more frighteningly, how much is there about ourselves which we either do not know or deliberately suppress?

I, for one, know there is much about myself to which this idea may be applied.

Is it possible to really be able to say we know one another?

Can we really even know ourselves?

Good night all,
Me