Love, work, play: Physics, organism, organization and romance in a nutshell




MIND READERS DICTIONARY : Mind Readers Dictionary show

Summary: The podcast is back. Click the buttons above to have this article read or speedread to you. Meg, a single woman in San Francisco had her habits and routines. She did yoga after work pretty much every day. Some nights she got together with friends; other nights she stayed home and watched DVDs or read. Her friends introduced her to Mark, a single guy from Oakland about ten miles away. Like Meg he enjoyed spending some nights out, but he insisted on practicing guitar every night. They dated and time together felt good.  They liked being out as a couple among friends.  They liked cuddling at one or the other’s apartment watching DVDs or reading.  When one was feeling down the other was usually up so they balanced each other’s spirits nicely. Each felt stronger with the other. Now they’ve been together about four years. Mark moved into Meg’s place and now pays half the rent. They have a new dog, Beano. They never wonder whether they belong together, but of course there are incompatibilities.  Meg likes Mark’s guitar playing, but sometimes they stay home so he can practice when she would rather go out. Mark is glad Meg is so fit but sort of wishes she didn’t insist on going to yoga after work because it means he has to come home right away to walk Beano.  “Love takes work,” Mark says, “but it’s worth it.” Freud said “Love and work…work and love, that's all there is…love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles said that love and strife were the primary moving factors not just for humans but also for the whole universe. I’m single again and dating, thinking about what it takes to make a couple. And I’m also still part of a research team working on the emergence of life from non-life (the field is simply called “emergence.”). Between these two activities I find myself agreeing with Freud and Empedocles.   Love and work are the cornerstones of humanness but they’re universal too.  If you’ll work with me, I think I can explain the connection. Things, living and otherwise have their habits, the behaviors they spontaneously produce. A billiard ball on a table will just keep sitting there.  A ball rolling down an incline will keep rolling.  As singles, Meg does yoga after work; Mark practices guitar at night. Those are their habits independent of new outside influences. In Meg and Mark’s case we’d say they do those things because they love them. In our emergence research we’re calling this “orthograde” behavior.  Ortho- means straight and -grade means incline. It’s what things are inclined to do if they do what is normal or “straight” for them.  Orthograde behavior is spontaneous or internally-generated behavior. Things with different spontaneous habits or orthogrades come into contact.  The rolling ball hits the stationary ball. Meg and Mark meet and move in with each other. In interaction the balls change each other’s behavior.  The formerly-stationary ball moves; the rolling ball’s path changes.  Likewise, when Meg and Mark move in together, they change each other’s behavior too.  Behavior under a new influence is called “non-spontaneous.”  It’s not that it’s un-natural.  After all, interaction is natural.  But it’s non-spontaneous with respect to what the balls or people did before interaction. We emergentists call the interaction between two orthogrades a “contragrade.” Contra-, of course means against. Contragrade interactions change behavior. In fact, that’s the physical science definition of work. Work shifts behavior from spontaneous to non-spontaneous, from what things would do on their own to what they do under each other’s influences. If, one morning you noticed that your parked car had a new dent in it, you would not think that the car had