The Optimus Current
Navigating the probabilistic nature of reality via perspective: optimism as a law of nature and a driving force to existence
“The possible ranks higher than the actual”
- Martin Heidegger
Impulsum In Potentia
As the universe expands and complexifies, we ride the embers of every particle collision that we enact, knowing that fortunes fade quick and that stability always defers to volatility.
We’re eventually, in one way or another, forced to concede that decay and chaos are as elemental a part to existence as growth and peace.
And while perspective doesn't necessary guard against the tribulations, it’s nonetheless a necessary function of measurement - measurement which allows us to discern our way through reality.
Optimism is a term that has become saturated in the unchanged oils of psychological scrutiny but, in practical terms, it can be considered much more a tool than a frame of mind.
An engine in the pursuit of potential.
And from a standpoint of physics or biology, optimism can be regarded as a universal function akin to optimization - one that helps to carve out greater possibilities for whatever agency chooses to seize them.
For organisms both biotic and abiotic, optimism expands potential - it optimizes existence and pulsates as a rhythm coursing through all things.
And the universe seems to nurture such an expansion, as everything within it aspires to explore its own potential and optimize its own course.
Planets to Particles
The expanding nature of the universe itself is a naturally optimistic characteristic, offering a fractal algorithm that seems to underlie all processes.
The very fabric of reality is conductive to growth and emergence - entropy demands it, and our environment seems governed by laws that invite exploration.
The energy efficiency of our thermodynamic environment requires an optimization of energy flow; nature pursues the optimal and is designed towards fostering perfection via progression.
We see this with the birth and death cycles of stars, planets and nebulae. The expansion of our cosmos is, in itself, an optimal kind of scenario for everything within it.
Under a microscope, things are no different.
The whole idea of superposition reveals a reality where particles exist in multiple states simultaneously, as nature’s quantum structure regards an optimistic pursuit of its inherent possibilities.
The observer effect collapses possibilities, discerning upwards from the suboptimal, within a reality that’s relational and shaped by interactions; our choices and observations shape outcomes, and greater optimism equates to a greater scope of those outcomes.
It isn’t just abstract math - it’s the process that moves reality from states of potential to states of actuality.
Situated between the above and below, we ourselves ride the incremental adaptations of natural selection that optimize our survival through space and time; we, like everything else in nature, explore the variations and pursue those which enhance existence.
And we seem to be absurdly good at it.
Chaos, Complexity and Consciousness
The most demonstrable exercise of optimism in nature may emanate from the workings of our own consciousness.
We have the bewildering ability to order the chaotic frenzy of disorder from which we’ve evolved out of.
Through our sensory experience, we pattern the nonsense and interact with the information around us to better navigate space and time, able to manipulate matter and leverage the physics that allow for our continued existence.
How much more of an optimal situation can be hoped for?
Events and possibilities through time bifurcate endlessly amidst the entropic complexity of reality, but within all the exponentiating content and matter is the meaningful coefficient of our own perception and intent.
In the way we not only identify possibilities and variations but pursue them; in the way that we discern our way through the noise and brutality of existence to, somehow and by some miracle, draw small bits of meaning out of it all.
To the desolate and cynical, none of this really means all that much.
But to those who choose to view their glasses as half full and cast their nets as wide as possible, this means absolutely everything.
