The View from the Top
An Essay by Christopher Bek
christopher.bek@gmail.com
Summary—This essay pans the Moon, the view from my balcony, doctors I have known, seven modern thinkers, and one septillion stars.
Quotation—These doctors mean well (some of them), but they all seem to be suffering from a kind of nearsightedness. They do not see beyond things, far ahead. They do not see your Purpose, Vision, Mission, Core Values, and Measure because they seem to be so nearsighted, or not being able to look beyond the tip of their nose, far ahead; they have no great vision like you do. Something like that. Your vision is the Ultimate Vision (because it is, clearly!) for everyone on the planet.
—Dion Erico Viglione
The following is from the chapter entitled: The Superlunar World from the book entitled: The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (2011) by Lawrence M Principe: “Until the modern age, the heavens were quite literally half of people’s daily world. The sky and its movements were inescapable. It is ironic and tragic that while modern science now gives us better explanations of the workings of the celestial world than ever before, modern technology means that most people can no longer see its nightly movements with their own eyes, feel its presence, and marvel at its beauty.”
Qu’est-Ce Que C’est Moon? Being downtown, I cannot see the nightly celestial activities with my eyes. I do, however, take a good look at the Moon whenever I spot it, and wonder: Does the Moon really exist? I like to ask people that question when I see the Moon—and get three responses. The first is anger, the second is to change the subject, and the third is nervous laughter. Never do they consider that the Moon is encoded on the boundary holographically. It is like Bertrand Russell said: “Most people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do.”
Panning from West to East. I also like looking at the sublunar world from my balcony. From left to right on my north-facing top, sixth floor balcony of my excellent Horizon Housing bachelor apartment on Eighth Avenue SW in Calgary containing thirty pieces of art and six hundred books. The view from west to east presents the following:
1) The Mewata Armoury of The Canada Defense Department reminds me of everything that is great about Canada.
2) The Foothills Hospital on the horizon has many great memories for me including living with the Buckley brothers from Springbank in a house near the hospital while studying applied mathematics at the University of Calgary.
3) The C-train tells me that my apartment is centrally located and reminds me of everything that is great about Calgary.
4) The old Planetarium reminds me of EF Schumacher’s quote: “We shall look at the world and try to see it whole.”
5) The Rumble House Art Gallery across the street is run by a couple of teachers, and reminds me that they are not ready for my art.
6) The Discovery Child Care reminds me of possibly creating a new organization called: Honourables and Doctors for the Children.
7) The Mainstreet apartments are the perfect main floor location for a Bernoulli Station—a math/philosophy café.
8) The University of Calgary downtown campus can be seen from my balcony.
9) The former Nexen building—formerly Canadian Occidental Petroleum and its subsidiary CXY Energy—for whom I put on the efficient frontier with an Insurable Risk Retention Study.
10) First Alberta Place was the location of The Wyatt Company—for which I worked for seven years in Toronto, San Francisco and Calgary.
11) The Globe Cinema where I have seen many great movies including The Matrix with my friend Dion.
12) Bankers Hall was the location of Canadian Pacific Limited for whom I consulted to for three years.
Panning the Doctors. Also from The Scientific Revolution book: “In the early modern period, studying the world meant not only uncovering and cataloging facts about its contents, but also revealing its hidden design and silent messages. This perspective contrasts with that of modern scientists, whose increasing specialization reduces their focus to narrow topics of study and objects in isolation, whose methods emphasis dissecting rather than synthesizing approaches, and whose chosen outlooks actively discourage questions of meaning and purpose.” The doctors enumerated below are specialists who have all sold their souls to become doctors.
1) Dr Surani was my doctor who told me, upon seeing a draft of my The Theory of One, that most great thinkers are not discovered in their lifetimes.
2) Dr Ryan—I walked into the Foothills Hospital on 1 February 2001 and told her in writing that: “I just thought I would give you a heads up before the airplanes start falling out of the sky.” That is how smart I am.
3) Dr Darlington was a Forensic Psychiatrist who did not believe in souls, and treated me like a liar.
4) Dr Naylor—I told him that I was outside the cave of behaviourism. He said: “Behaviourism!” And then he laughed.
5) Dr Gibbs—I challenged him to debate Behaviourism vs Existentialism, for which he failed to respond.
6) Dr Buckley never got tired of telling people that he was better than everyone else—and refused to meet with me.
7) Dr Fucking Izu—I once told him that I have an IQ of one divided by zero—for which he turned away and mumbled something derogatory.
8) Dr Fitch studied philosophy as an undergraduate, yet knows nothing about philosophy.
9) Dr Reznikov is the best doctor I ever had, yet was still abysmal.
10) Dr Hajela—They say an expert is someone who avoids the many pitfalls on the way to his or her grand fallacy. He is an expert in addiction, and his book is called: Addiction is Addiction—whatever that means?
11) Dr Gurevitch is podiatrist with an incredibly small mind.
12) Dr Shields is a doctor of geology who specializes in gang raping Mother Nature.
Working Without a Net. There was a study conducted some decades ago where a group of people has their work checked, while another group goes unchecked. It turns out that the unchecked group made less mistakes and had a better quality of work. This was presumably because of overconfidence, and of not wanting to contradict others. Whereas solo-flyers are alone in controlling their destinies, collaborators must rely on others. Two solo-flyers of note were Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac—who worked alone their entire careers in relativity quantum theory, respectively. Relativity and quantum theory are two pillars of modern physics. Several modern thinkers worthy of our admiration are: Planck, Rutherford, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac.
Max Planck (1858–1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta in 1900 won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as the originator of quantum theory, which revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes.
Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) was a New Zealand physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867). Apart from his work in his homeland, he spent a substantial amount of his career abroad, in both Canada (McGill University) and the United Kingdom.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for relativity, the photoelectric effect (which won him the Nobel Prize), and also made important contributions to quantum theory. Einstein was one of the greatest minds who ever lived. His name is synonymous with the term genius. Einstein, Time Magazine’s person of the century, is responsible for the 20th century’s moral relativism and artistic modernism.
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. He developed the Bohr atomic model, that has been supplanted by other models, yet its principles remain valid. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of science.
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theory: Schrödinger’s first equation provides a way of calculating the wave function of a system as it changes dynamically in time. Schrödinger’s second equation is: Atman equals Brahman.
Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the principal pioneers of quantum theory. He published his work in a 1925 breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, his matrix formulation of quantum theory was substantially elaborated. He is also known for his uncertainty principle published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum theory.
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a professor of physics at Florida State University and the University of Miami, and a 1933 Nobel Prize recipient. In 1925 Schrödinger constructed an atomic model based on matter waves—while Heisenberg constructed a model based on matrices. Dirac then nailed down quantum theory once and for all by proving that the two are equivalent.
Closing Arguments. Astronomers believe that there are a septillion stars in the universe. Our star, the Sun, contains 99.8 percent of the mass in the solar system. Moreover, it only took fourteen kilograms of matter converted into energy to blow up Hiroshima. Given that we do not understand consciousness, the question is: where did all those stars come from? The answer is, just like the Moon, they are not really there—and are just images encoded holographically on the inner surface of the sphere. I shall conclude with what Elon Musk said about the universe: “There is a one-in-billions chance reality is not a simulation.”