This week’s topic for deconstruction comes from a more recent personal experience. I won’t go into too much detail, as to keep the bulk of the post about the topic itself and not my rambling stories about my weekend. A friend came to visit me this weekend, and caused me to think about the idea of how we perceive distance. This friend was not from the area, and had to travel several hours to get to me. Though I wasn’t the one traveling, it made me realize that I had never really thought about distance as one of the things I took for granted.

Distance is a difficult concept for humans to wrap our minds around. This ties into our difficulties with objective time perception, as I have discussed before. The only way we really have to judge distance is how much time it takes to get somewhere, and this can change based on individual perceptions, as well as mode of transportation. A plane minimizes distance; walking or waiting for a public bus to get you somewhere by a certain time seems to maximize it.

Distance can be measured, that’s true. But those measurements are just additional attempts by humanity to micromanage the universe, and have no more weight to them than any other measurement. They have the same varied scales – meters, miles, feet, centimeters – several different measurement systems that have no values inherent to their existence. Humans make standards that can be compared to, but that is no use to a child on a long car ride or a young couple trying to stay together despite how far apart they seem to be.

Technology is also making the world smaller. Miles are still there, but the ways people communicate make it so there is no difference whether someone is a foot away or a state away or a continent away; you can still text them goodnight. This is beneficial to relationships that must endure distance as a factor, but is also twisting out perceptions of distance. Like the little stickers on car mirrors that proclaim “objects are closer than they seem;” this is becoming the mentality not just with cars on the highway, but also with business partners across the world, fathers and husbands away at war, and best friends separated when they go off to college.

The idea that distance defines the space between two things is a legitimate claim. The part that becomes deceptive stems from the many devices humans have engineered to make people or things appear closer out of convenience. It makes sense to attempt to eliminate distance as a limiting factor of human existence because humans are attracted to instant gratification. The concreteness of distance is valid no matter how fast time seems to pass because there will be a passage of time associated with a certain distance. An individual’s perception of the length of that time span may vary, but if something is not close, you cannot get to it physically without crossing that distance.

Though distance does strain personal relationships, there are ways of making it work to your advantage. Surprises and phone calls can limit the effects of distance, and though the mail is often unreliable, it’s an option. This extends beyond romantic relationships as well. Most of us are some distance away from our families and friends from home, and that distance can strain those relationships just as much.

Distance can also be liberating as much as it is restraining. Separating yourself from home can be a wonderful experience, though also a sad one. Striking out on one’s own life journey is a terrifying and exciting time. Distance from people can allow you to evaluate the relationship, and can take away the pressure to exist peacefully that arises from constant contact. That does not, however, give you permission to ignore your mother’s text or your father’s email.

Video of the Week: I’m Already There

• This song is one of my favorites, and the inspiration for the title. It can apply to many situations involving distance, depending on your own interpretation. I will warn you, it’s as depressing as it is reassuring.

If there is one thing I am bound to bring up in a conversation sooner or later, it’s my favorite television show of all time – Fringe. I’m not going to rant about it here, but rather use it as an example for this week’s topic of deconstruction: parallel universes.

If anyone here has ever seen the show, after the first season the entire plot of the show is exploring the possibility that there is another world out there exactly like ours…but different. Another version of us exists, but their life is slightly altered from ours, based on different circumstances that arise do to different choices being made, both by us and those around us. This theory in general is generally considered to be science fiction, and while it is an interesting plane to explore in the fictional world, there is no proof that is is in fact fiction.

To explain a little more about what the theory is, I have some videos I’d like to share:

• Science of Parallel Universes
• The Fringe Explanation
• Parallel Universes: Many Worlds

The first video is the on you’ll get the most information from, but I enjoy the other two, so I included them as well. If you’re sitting in English class while reading this and cannot watch any of the videos, allow me to summarize what they say. Basically the term “universe” is misleading, as people confuse all of what we know to exist and all of what actually exists to be the same thing – when it really is not. There could potentially be any number of worlds identical to our own, slightly different, or entire different to the point where we cannot even imagine what they might be. There are also different types of potential multiverses beyond simply ones that are different from ours.

The theory that I find most interesting and most probable is the type that good ol’ Walter explains in the Fringe video. Time is linear throughout our lives for us, but each choice we make (conscious or not) creates a point of divergence from which a completely separate universe arises somewhere we will never personally experience. There are infinite multiverses, each with entirely unique characteristics. Even of only one thing is changed, like the colors blue and green swapping wavelengths – think of how profound of an effect this would actually have on our perception of the world. The trees and grass would be blue; the sky would be green. Consider also that there is a universe out there somewhere where you are simultaneously a cartoon version of a chair and the president of the United States.

Though the examples get a little ridiculous, anything is possible with the multiverse theory. This somehow always leads me to the question of whether or not we are alone in our own universe. Are there other planets in our galaxy or beyond where these universes are nothing but other planets, and they somehow developed remarkable similar to ours? If not in this universe, there is a universe where that is the truth.

The magic of the mulitverse is uplifting as well; anything you can possibly think of exists somewhere. While there may never be a way to prove that any other multiverse exists, it is a matter of personal decision to figure out whether or not you personally would want to challenge your mind to accept the idea. It is quite fun to think up different versions of the universe and speculate on what changes would occur and what they would result in. Similar to the assumption game from earlier this semester, the possibilities are as strange or normal as you can think them up to be. “Imagine the Impossibilities.”

Thinking about thinking is one of my personal favorite mind bending pastimes. Its not a simple thing to do, and requires an inception-like state in within your own conscious mind. But since the point of this blog is to deconstruct the very nature of the universe, let’s think about thinking.

The idea of thought isn’t complicated to most people because it is one of those things that is taken for granted without analysis. People accept that the brain functions by producing thoughts…but what is a thought? There is no concreteness to a thought, it is a mere idea that your brain has produced but has not been communicated outside of your own realm of consciousness at its point of conception. Once it is communicated, a thought can then take the form of an idea or a fact – a string of words or sentences that you use to convey a message. Thoughts, though, do not function in the same capacity as words to to language. Words have a definition and a purpose; thoughts are often random and spontaneously generated by no noticeable conscious effort.

There is also the state of being that occurs when one is not having distinct thoughts, but may still be thinking. To keep anyone that might be reading in the present instead of the abyss of their own brains, I’ll take an example here rather than the concept as a whole. Let’s talk about writer’s block. This is the epitome of not having thoughts but still thinking, as there is nothing of substance produced by your mind but you may often experience thoughts about your lack of thinking or just emotional states of confusion or frustration that are brought on when you notice the lack of thought production. I’m sure anyone reading this has experienced this phenomena recently – or perhaps you will later tonight if you haven’t already.

Thinking of thoughts that other people have is also an impossible task. Because every human thinks in their own way, one cannot fathom the thoughts of another. We often try, or are told what we should or should not think about. There is no current technology that allows mind control, though, or even the interpretation of thoughts. We have machines that can detect the process of thinking in a brain, but thoughts themselves do not exist to machinery. It cannot be proven that thoughts exist at all, at least not in the way that we think of them.

The fact that thoughts are so confined to an individual is one of the reasons people have such issues over things that seem like they should be easily resolved; to each individual, there is no other option than their own. Objectively looking at a situation, a third party can say they will make a ruling on what they see – but there is no such thing as objectivity, as each person brings with them an entire life’s worth of thoughts and perceptions and experiences that unconsciously determine how they see the world. This barrier of the mind can be difficult to overcome, but not entirely impossible. Communication of ideas, through means such as those we discussed last week and beyond, can make thinking about thoughts a feasible way to coexist with other humans even if we can never fully understand each others’ experiences.

Another of the things often taken for granted in our universe – and this week’s topic for deconstruction – is the idea of being able to communicate. Communication as a concept is the idea that one thing can transfer information to something else. This is vital to the existence of life on Earth. Without communication, people cannot share things, and neither could other animals, plants, insects, or even machines. The idea of communication links groups together, invoking unity and understanding within a group, as well as clearly defining that group’s boundaries. It also provides a medium to share warnings or exclamations, and provides the possibility of the development of group dynamics.

There are probably billions of ways this process takes place. One of the most accessible components is language, which comes in many forms. The most conspicuous is vocal language, used by humans to communicate with the majority of other humans. There are thousands of languages on our planet, and each is almost entirely unique. Words and letters or characters are the basic units of most languages, and each have their own definition in that language – another series of words to describe the meaning of the original word. Some languages have overlap of words, such as names of people and places and foods. Some have almost as many dialects as they have speakers. Without words, life as we know it would not exist. It is by far the most convenient way to pass most information, and can be learned at a very young age simply by copying the people in the environment you grow up in. Words are not concrete, though, and can be changed or mispronounced and still mean the same thing. They are also an imperfect form of communication because there is not a word for every phenomena or stimulus response that someone may wish to communicate – like the last time you were writing a paper and just couldn’t find the right words to say things how you felt them to be.

Spoken language is not the only valid form of communication, however, even though it is thought of as the most common. Words are constructs that humans use as a way to communicate with as many other humans as possible. What happens, though, when you cannot use words? Today’s answer is probably “Google;” but machines do not speak the language in the same way that humans do. This is because they have their own language, and so the translation doesn’t usually come out quite right after being converted to 1’s and 0’s, then to another set of words.

Written language has an infinite hold on humanity because of its simultaneous temporarity and permanence. It can last forever, or it can leave no trace. There is still the limit of words here, though. There is also the added component of being able to interpret the various symbols on the page or screen. Without the ability to read what is written, written language is a moot point. Sign language is another variation of a language where knowing the vocabulary is necessary to understand what is being communicated. It is the result of humans who were unable to communicate vocally developing their own set of words and phrases using their bodies and facial expressions to serve as a convenient equivalent to spoken language.

There are other ways to communicate other than with words. Chemical signalling is used by insects and some animals in the form of pheromones. A pheromone is basically the chemical equivalent of a word in this case, and also conveys information from a source to a receptor. The organism can then interpret the chemical as a warning or message of social interest. Trees use a similar form of communication, where chemical messages are transferred from one tree to the other.

Each form of communication is valid in its own right. Humans, who have a tendency to assume they know everything there ever will be to understand, don’t always take the time or have the inclination to understand that there is communication beyond words. Sometimes they have a difficult time accepting that spoken or written languages other than their own exist as valid forms of communication. The key to understanding is the ability to communicate, and those who ignore all forms but their go-to will miss out on the majority of what the world has to offer.