Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
On Being
I'm editing a novel at the moment, and thus putting a lot of time and thought into sentence construction. The fulcrum of a good sentence is a verb. If you have a verb, it's hard to go wrong.
I've known since junior high that even "is" and its variants ("was," etc.) are counted as verbs. But having stared at this fact for several hours, I've noticed something interesting: so far as the English language is concerned, simply existing is a verb... that is, an action. Just being is equal to doing something.
The basic function of existence is action.
It's easy to see how this applies to living things. For example, if human beings are doing "nothing," they are still breathing, digesting, thinking, sensing, and so on. A tree doesn't do a lot of running and jumping, but it's absorbing nutrients, engaging in photosynthesis, growing, etc.
Pushing the idea further, I realized the idea also applies to inanimate objects. Any object that is doing "nothing" is still performing at least one action, and that is decomposing. If humanity winked out of existence, for example, a thousand years from now very little would remain of my motorcycle.
We live in a reality in which anything that isn't being used for a purpose gives itself up for other entities that in turn do use them. There is no such thing as an object that will go unused, down to a molecular level, even if that action lends itself to basic continued existence.
And thus, it stands to reason that the more you act, the more our reality is designed at a basic level to give you whatever is needed.
I've known since junior high that even "is" and its variants ("was," etc.) are counted as verbs. But having stared at this fact for several hours, I've noticed something interesting: so far as the English language is concerned, simply existing is a verb... that is, an action. Just being is equal to doing something.
The basic function of existence is action.
It's easy to see how this applies to living things. For example, if human beings are doing "nothing," they are still breathing, digesting, thinking, sensing, and so on. A tree doesn't do a lot of running and jumping, but it's absorbing nutrients, engaging in photosynthesis, growing, etc.
Pushing the idea further, I realized the idea also applies to inanimate objects. Any object that is doing "nothing" is still performing at least one action, and that is decomposing. If humanity winked out of existence, for example, a thousand years from now very little would remain of my motorcycle.
We live in a reality in which anything that isn't being used for a purpose gives itself up for other entities that in turn do use them. There is no such thing as an object that will go unused, down to a molecular level, even if that action lends itself to basic continued existence.
And thus, it stands to reason that the more you act, the more our reality is designed at a basic level to give you whatever is needed.
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