Memorycemetery

In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which laid the foundation of determinism. Through Newton’s ideas in what we call now the Age of Reason, rose the idea of ”clockwork universe”, generally stating that by measuring things as they are, we can accurately explain all the Nature’s phenomenae and predict the future using the laws of science.

 One probably could wonder, what does Newton’s work has to do with my memories. Though I haven’t read the original and was born nearly 300 years later, it had a certain impact on me. As a matter of fact, we perceive reality and interpret it through the prism of our cultural and educational background. It’s never “as it is”, but as worthy as it’s description. My father was a strong believer in science, and wanted me to be a mathematician, a kind of a weird wish keeping in mind he was a poet himself. I remember him trying to come up with a precise word, which could describe what he felt at the moment best. He often felt stressed about it as  he couldn’t. I guess he thought it is easier to operate with numbers rather than words. I remember refusing going to my 1st grade in school: I demanded science. I wanted to study physics and maths, I wanted to understand the mechanics of existence. That’s why my parents have sent me to a school with advanced maths and science programs,  and determinism was what they taught in school too.

My belief in numbers was ruined after I’ve read at the age of 12 some popular books on astronomy and quantum mechanics: it turned out that, with the course of time any system behaviour starts to “fluctuate” and become disordered, behaving randomly. Even orbits of planets, massive bodies, never quite follow the same path. We live in a universe which is rather chaotic, then orderly. Our brain waves,  or the pattern of it’s electric impulses, is also being chaotic. This could be the origin of consciousness , free will and creativity. Our mind is ruled rather by Chaos, then Order. So, if there’s no such thing, as isolated system, why don’t apply theory of Chaos to our brain mechanics, and it’s product - memories? I never could tackle how it’s possible to do so though: determinism, implanted in my brain circuits from early years, demanded a method, a foundation from there to start this quest. I couldn’t set it on moving sands of what my mind contained. It was alike another problem I tried to solve at the time: 1) the Universe is infinite, 2) and still expanding (how it could be? expanding there? what’s there, there it expands now: what is this void made of?). I always have imagined Infinite as a sphere. Trying to pinpoint there could be the centre of an infinite sphere, I’d always would came up with a quantum paradox: nowhere and everywhere; meaning I’m the center of the Universe, as I’m the one who observes it.

I have learnt recently about how fractal geometry was invented. There is the problem in Chaos theory, known as coastline problem. It goes like this: how long is the coastline of Great Britain? The answer will depend on measurement, or approximation, if you like. If you measure it by map, you’ll have one result. Walking around will give you a much larger one, because you follow all the little curves which are not shown on the map. And so on. The smaller increments you use, the bigger is the result.The coastline gets longer the more precisely you measure it. Curiously, the area of the island doesn’t change much, however you measure it.

Fractal geometry had to be invented to deal with this paradox. Being fractal means what the image has attribute of self-similarity. Blood vessels, tree branches, even clouds repeat same kinds of patterns as we zoom in, but get smaller and smaller.

Probably same paradox can be applied to our brain, but in a twisted way: though we can measure it in a way, such things as it’s weight and volume, we can’t even approximate the amount and kind of information it contains. Now science have come up with idea that information encoded in our DNA may be fractal, since it’s not large enough to contain all the information which is there. Being fractal, it would consist just of simple rules and starting numbers, drastically decreasing storage space necessary.

So, could it be possible that our memories and dreams are fractal? What are those simple rules and starting numbers? There does this memory loop start? Do loops have start at all?

I wonder, why do people say sometimes: “walking down the memory lane”? Can I walk around the imaginative coastline of my own being, say from point A: first memory to Z: point of being here and now? What is the distance? I don’t think I can even measure it in my biological years, as they are not equal even within one lifeline: some are nearly endless, in place of others nothing by gaps, black holes.

No man is an island, as John Donne said. Wondering about the context of this words, I typed them in the search engine, and this is what it came up with:

 …This is a quotation from John Donne (1572-1631). It appears in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII:

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

How could a human being of different time and civilization, with virtually nothing in common between us come up with the words I feel so connected with, that they could be mine (well, not the exact words, but the message their contain anyway?). What finaly defines us as human beings? When we set up Memorycemetery, the goal was to collect as many memories and dreams of as many human beings, as possible. Infinetely expanding in Eternity Universe, in a sense: it had a starting point, but it’s irrelevant. The plot had no limitations, it was just getting bigger and bigger, pushing away informational void. Thinking about global consciousness we strive to achieve and picturing this informational expansion of memories and dreams of human being, I kept that picture of universe from my childhood  in mind, with center in each human, posting excerpts of their lives and thoughts: sparks of light in the darkness, galaxies of beautiful stars, called human beings…There are not many of them yet, but numbers somehow became irrelevant for me upon reading John Donne’s words: as we are all connected, as we all belong to human race, as we all share same DNA, we share essentialy same kind of memories, dreams and thoughts. Evaporating details, as we do in Memorycemetery’ tag cloud, we come to the basics: same things important, no matter where and when we live: love, death, fear, hope…

So if every human being biologically represents it’s kind, human race, if you like, it represents and more subtle structures, such as feelings and dreams too. In a way, human beings are also fractals, not only in biological, but also in conscious, spiritual, if you like, sense. We are all figments of each other imagination. it doesn’t matter, how many people and how often will post, I’ve recognized. As long as there’s one, the history of Humankind continues, and our quest is on.

Boris Kislitsin 

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