6. Black Holes or Black Eyes?
Any big-picture structure can get created with broad strokes and should therefore not be all that complicated to discuss. Simple questions can get asked about the whole. One such question is whether the whole is somehow a unified whole with everything based on a not yet known single principle, or whether the parts are to some extent always independent — with as conclusion that an ultimately unified result cannot exist. This question and its answer can make us change the way we view Black Holes.
It is a fundamental question, and though we can want and eat our cake indeed, we can never eat it two times. At the overall level, the answer to this question is either a single principle or multiple self-based parts; we cannot have both. With separation as a universal aspect for time, space, and matter, the answer can only be that our universe is like the egg that was broken to bake the omelet. This answer applies to the immaterialized aspects of our universe as well; with a material universe separated in essence, the immaterialized realities cannot simply make up for the disconnect and make the egg whole again.
Once accepted, it is fairly simple to see that matter in our universe behaves in two distinct ways that cannot be combined into a single action. With the Big Bang or Big Whisper, all matter is seen as floating outwardly. And yet, at the local level, we see grouping as the natural state. A galaxy is the largest example of such grouping.
Matter has divergent and convergent action occurring at the same time. Our universe cannot be based on unified principles and deliver two completely distinct behaviors for one and the same subject matter.
Separation is a universal fact. Grouping is a universal fact.
In this blog, the answer about the whole being diverse in nature is placed directly in front of us. Discussed is how this essential separation applies to ourselves, and particularly what this means for our thinking.
The mirror of our thoughts is presented in this blog together with the altered state.
The homonym of whole, which is hole, also comes into view because another simple question can get asked about Black Holes: To end up with such a tremendous level of gravity must matter be present in that singular spot? Or is this center of gravity simply established by the surrounding galactic stars and planets and is therefore a synergistic gravitational phenomenon?
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Do our thoughts belong to a single overall structure?
Of course, each of us is an individual, so we can conclude that our thoughts can always be brought back to one (1), ourselves. Yet, like a wallet sometimes not containing any money, there are also spots within our thoughts that declare we do not know something. It is possible to consciously know of not-knowing (0), and the option of having all thoughts belonging to one overall structure is then not available.
Within the diverse whole, there is space for unification. Though seven and a half billion people are not tied to each others’ hips, it is easy to state that we have united ourselves through language, money, and religion — just to name a few. We can even call ourselves by one name: Mankind.
When looking for Unity, it is readily found. But no language, no currency, and no religion is the one and only kind on our planet, no matter how much each desires to be the only one. The word mankind does not point to a united reality.
Fundamentally different structures exist in our reality that are based on their own concepts. Where a numeric system, for instance, can continue into infinity, our ABCs look rather limited; one system is used to count, the other delivers 26 building blocks for spelling words. Using emoticons is yet another way of communicating, and as a concept it is equally distinct from counting and the alphabet. These simple examples show that there is no singular overall structure on which all our thoughts are built.
Like the only certainty being uncertainty, we can have absolute answers at the overall level. But we can make that statement only after we accept that separation is essential to everything and that Unity exists, albeit one level lower than the largest of levels.
This means we may be able to get absolute answers to general questions. At the detailed level, singular absolute answers of the general kind are not available and are always subject and context specific. It is a complicated field, because the human mind can trick us, for instance, to apply absolute certainty to the general level, and consider it an actual outcome.
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To know oneself, each of us must use some kind of mirror to peek at oneself. By reflecting on what happened, a greater understanding can occur about the situations we find ourselves in. Yet when reflecting on life, do we correctly reflect on how we reflect on life, too?
The slippery slope of the mirror must be mentioned here as a warning not to fall into Alice’s rabbit hole. A decent mirror reflects only once, yet when we take a second mirror to look at the larger mirror, an infinity can potentially get created between both mirrors and we can get sucked into the vortex. The warning is therefore: stay clear of the maelstrom, keep your feet on the ground.
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The mirror is an excellent metaphor for duality, even when one part of the picture may not really be there. Consider a picture taken of a single person in front of a mirror; because of the mirror two people are captured in the photographic result, when one is viewed from the back, the ‘other’ is viewed from the front.
What should surprise us, but is considered quite normal, is that the left side and right side of a person — facing us in real life — swap places compared to our own left and right side. As a greeting ritual, we may cross our right hands in between our bodies and shake hands with one another. For us, the other person’s right hand is on our left. Yet for the individual facing us in the mirror, the right hand remains on that right side. For all individuals, those in the mirror and those real and standing in front of us, up remains up, and down remains down.
With the act of reflecting on reflection, one should keep in mind that some parts are swapped compared to reality, and other parts are not.
Comparing one side correctly against the other, one can obtain important or at least interesting information. By comparing languages such as English to Dutch, one can notice differences in structure and word use.
One interesting example is that there is no word in Dutch that states fewer. In Dutch, the word used is our lesser. By comparing both Germanic languages, it is possible to detect an awkwardness that would perhaps otherwise not come to light. Let’s reflect on the word fewer further, because if we take the opposite of few — in this case, many — then in English we do not say manier as the opposite of fewer. Through reflection, one can declare fewer a well-understood but surprising word.
In our minds, one can build images, forms and constructs that have helped us better understand the specific level.
What construct should be used for the overall level?
Can general constructs as discovered in real life be used? For example, can we replicate the construct of the entire human body or of the federal government to come to a universal construct? How about international capitalism, the global environment, or all-consuming love? How do we capture the whole in our minds?
And how would changing that overall construct change the way we construct something as specific as Black Holes?
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Things are not always what they seem, and mirrors can help us see more, but they can also trick us. In some restaurants infinity mirrors are found with lights along the side that are reflected tenfold inside the mirror. The trick is that the lights are sandwiched between two mirrors, with the first being a one-way mirror. The eyes are tricked to believe that an enormous depth exists.
In science, there is a strong fascination with infinity, as if it were an entity. The treacherous trick about infinity is that eventually there is no longer a there there. Consider the following setup: if we halve an apple, and next halve one of the halves, and then continue to halve one of the two outcomes a few additional times, we end up with not much more than a flavoring if we ate the resulting thin slice. Imagine the more than 7 billion people on this world sharing a single apple. It would be a miracle if anyone had any clue about what was given to them.
Infinity is a trick word about nothing much left in the end. In our minds we can hold the mirror’s mirroring image as a continuing and factually infinite outcome instead of seeing it as the truly hollowed-out image it becomes sooner rather than later.
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Similar tricks may occur to our brain when viewing two-dimensional pictures. When looking at a black and white silhouette our brain can actually see the trick sometimes. One rather famous example is the black and white Vase and Two Faces by structural philosopher Edgar J. Rubin, in which one object can be seen as the background color for the others, and vice versa.
The spinning dancer is another example how the brain can have a hard time correctly observing two-dimensions, even when there is movement. I have been told that some folks, when seeing the dancer spin one way, can never see the dancer spin the other way. Fortunately, there is an easy way to help reverse the spin: cover the entire image with your hand, except for the reflection of her feet. The brain will have a hard time determining what’s going on; that’s the chance to view the dancer spin in the opposite direction. Slowly move your hand up, concentrating on the spin seen with the reflection. The dancer can truly reverse direction.
The importance of this mental and visual exercise is to show that we can all get stuck seeing information one way, and one way only. It is of course no fun being confused about what is in front of us, so there is a fundamental reason to be adamant about what we observe. Yet for understanding the Structure of Everything it is important to recognize a fundamental duality that exists at the overall level. The trick is to recognize this with our brain, even when our physical instruments such as our eyes cannot observe it well.
Imagine how difficult it would be to accept that a different overall perspective exists that is equally possible to the one we believe is true.
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Floating in a dinghy we may encounter a maelstrom that is strong enough to pull the boat and its contents under water. It does not matter if the maelstrom drains clockwise or counter-clockwise. Sometimes we are simply dragged under by a maelstrom occurrence in life, pulling us down to a depressed state. The opposite can also occur when a tornado occurs in our personal life; it can lift us up, and make us feel light like a feather, excited.
We do not always control everything in life; the goal is to recognize the altered state for what it is, and float back to the surface or to land softly back on our feet after a stormy event. It is unhealthy to remain stuck in the other reality. One example that may be fitting here: some brilliant minds have stepped in front of traffic, getting killed, simply because they remained in an altered state of mind while being outdoors in traffic. A more common example is how cell phones can place us in an altered state of mind (and in similarly dangerous situations).
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Science is based on repeatable results, but we can start seeing reality in an altered state if not all is correctly structured at the big-picture level.
Many answers have been provided through the scientific approach, and all of us can certainly be happy about the answers that these wonderful men and women discovered. Yet scientific information can also trigger an altered state that needs to be understood.
Through applying science to the chicken or egg question, we can end up with a scientific answer.
A good scientific approach would be to place 100 chickens and 100 eggs in two different rooms. The scientists returning to the rooms 24 hours later find the same outcome in the room with still 100 eggs in it. In the room with 100 chickens, however, they find 100 chickens plus a couple of eggs. With both rooms controlled at room temperature, it was proven that the chicken was there first, before the egg, and not the other way around.
Not only must a good scientist realize there are two subject matters, chicken and egg that, despite their very obvious differences, should be considered one and the same. But it must be realized also that the question which one came first is not meant to receive an answer. The chicken and the egg are two outcomes that have a lot in common. The essential component of the question should not lead to factual scientific knowledge, but to understanding the context of the presented facts.
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After reviewing religious structures, we may end up realizing that one specific structure is not used much. Next to monotheism and polytheism, there is plenty of space for duo-theism, the belief in two gods in total. It is quite surprising how few people believe in two gods, particularly since most of us were raised by two people, a mother and a father. It is also believed that half of the stars in our universe are found in binary star systems. So, why are not more people believers in two gods?
Most of our dual systems are peculiar. Think of left and right, and it can be understood that something is missing, because anything with a left and a right must have other aspects as well: front and back, top and bottom. In another example, next to male and female, there is young and old, alive and not-alive. This last pair of aspects is the simplest form of a duality, basically an entity coupled with the denial of that entity. Other examples of this kind are true and not-true, coffee and not-coffee, God and not-god.
Dualities can be self-based, but their ups and downs are not always grounded. Good and bad, for instance, can be used to show the yin and yang character of dualities, because what is good for one is not necessarily good for someone else. Getting some rain in Phoenix, Arizona, is good, but rain in Washington’s Seattle is not welcomed with the same enthusiasm. The context helps declare how appreciative folks are about the contents.
Contradictions occur in life because of dualities, and particularly where additional levels are involved we can sometimes get stuck and end up incorporating these contradictions without further review. In the United States, for instance, murder is simply not allowed. Yet some states sentence heinous criminals to death. The physician will write homicide on the death certificate, a nice way of saying murder. Seemingly, people have no problem accepting a general truth that subsequently is ignored in specific cases. The altered state is used to explain why murder is sometimes allowed.
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Scientific data has been collected for centuries, most of it no longer through pure observations with the naked eye, but through better and stronger instrumentation. Though more information about almost anything is now available, much of it exists at a two-dimensional level, such as with a picture. After capturing the dark side of the moon, we got the much anticipated additional look at our satellite. But no human instrument has reached another solar system yet. Information about the far-off universe is pretty much captured from close proximity to home, astronomically speaking.
An example of entities located far away from us, captured solely by instruments, are Black Holes. Our instruments take moving two-dimensional pictures like the spinning dancer of galaxies far away.
With Black Holes, scientists envision a center that is gravitationally so strong that even light cannot escape it. There is clear evidence for the gravitational entity, but the conclusion is that a material entity of tremendous stature must therefore exist at its center. Yet where the chicken is declared, scientists owe it to themselves to also investigate the egg.
The alternate view is that a Black Hole can be seen as a gravitational Eye without matter inside.
Consider a hurricane or a tropical cyclone that can form over large bodies of warm water. Its winds are the fastest known on our planet, yet most spectacularly there is no wind at the heart of a cyclone. At the center, blue skies exist overhead. One could light a Cuban cigar in the eye of the storm. Imagine scientists declaring that there is an invisible object in the center that controls the wind, with a core so strong that not even the strongest wind can escape it. Naturally, we would not be listening to such scientists for long, because we know what we know.
Currently, there is an a priori within the investigation of Black Holes, and while a gravitational monster may indeed be the correct answer, it can also be the infinity mirror in the two-dimensional scientific theory that is doing the talking. The horizon is real, but the step beyond the horizon can be plain fantasy.
One reason for having a Black Hole (instead of considering a Black Eye) could be that scientists are collapsing distinct parts at the overall level. Similar to combining the electric and the magnetic force into one, scientists would then combine all forces into a singularity, something that would conflict with a Structure of Everything based on duality.
Note how all considered parts can indeed be correct, yet the overall structure in which the melding occurs is then incorrect. It would be like saying that different people create a family, but then stating that a family is ultimately one and the same person. Of course, no one in their right mind would declare such nonsense.
There is mathematical information that singularities are never real.
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If it weren’t for light, a camera could not capture the outside world, and without light our eyes would not see any objects. The light photons are said to have no mass, and objects are in general needed to make us realize the photons are really there. Despite being without mass, it has been said that gravity can bend light.
Next to the objects that generate the photons, our sun and the stars, we need reflection to see the other objects. Our moon shines in the night sky, the solar photons reflecting on its surface. The bottom line is that we only see the photons that hit the moon; all other solar photons are invisible to us. Still, we know they are everywhere in the night sky. Everywhere, except where the earth blocks the passage of the solar photons; every now and then, a lunar eclipse shows us the exact location of earth’s umbra, with the moon disappearing from sight. We only see what we can see.
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The more gravity there is, the rounder an object becomes. Comets may have interesting shapes, but larger objects such as moons and planets are by definition round (although this can occur in somewhat imperfect manners). The stronger the gravity, the more we should see an environment that inclines to be round. Our Milky Way is not round in all directions; it’s rather flat-like. Naturally, the involved speeds help to flatten out the result. Yet a galaxy should be rounder in all respects if gravity is as strong as claimed.
As shown in the pyramid in the previous blog, gravity is proposed to be a synergistic, dependent force, not a force that exists by itself. In that light, a galaxy can be said to have a collective gravitational field that holds all its matter together. Contrast this galactic construct with that of our simple solar system, a system in which the sun, a material entity, coincides indeed with the gravitational center.
Solar systems and galaxies do not have the same gravitational structure.
Imagine a binary star system, its gravitational center coinciding with neither star, but found at the center of its mass, sitting in plain sight between both stars. How quickly would we ignore the scientist claiming that every binary star system contains a third, invisible and heavy entity at the center of movements, coordinating the two stars? Very quickly.
There are two material stars and three gravitational centers: two individual centers with the stars and one collective center.
Similar to the gravitational center of a binary star system, a galaxy will have a collective gravitational center. And its collective nature means that it does not need to coincide with an actual material mass. If we have a galaxy with a gravitational field, the center would be like the eye of the storm, basically empty.
The gravitational eye would be so strong that not even light can follow a straight path through it. What we would see (if we could see it) would be a black eye:
None of the photons would reach us, a ring of photons come toward us.
Originating from diverse backgrounds, all photons reaching the Eye are pushed sideways. The ring visible to us shows all photons pushed in our direction by that collective gravitational force.
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In this blog we not only looked into the mirror, but investigated the mirror itself. Mirrors can create infinities when paired and held at the right angles. Unless it is recognized that a visualized infinity is nothing but a puzzling amusement occurring in a two-dimensional setup, we may get sucked into the vortex towards the altered state.
This blog also discussed the possibility that our scientific data is to some extent two-dimensional, simply because we find ourselves identifying everything from a very specific spot in the universe, and not from every possible angle.
Combining all 2D information, with each part correct onto itself, as if fitting in one single structure would be an easy mistake to make; there should be two overall models. Next, using Occam’s razor, we pick the simplest explanation.
The professed Black Hole may in reality be a Black Eye, a structure currently not considered by scientists. The idea of a Black Hole appears to be a cyclopic structure, its singularity an imagination of the brain. A brain fart.
If correct, a Black Hole not containing a mass would be a Black Eye for science indeed. As such, the term Black Eye should then be used to capture how we can get blindsided when entertaining an incorrect overall structure.
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We count to ten because we have ten fingers. With fewer or more fingers, we likely would have had a different system as our main counting system. The binary system is the single underlying universal numeral system, but it is not the most workable system. The year, for instance, would have 101101101 days in binary language, a rather awkward way to state 365 days. Given the option, people prefer to work with the decimal system.
We see the world as having three dimensions. Yet in the next blog it will be discussed how this setup also became used because we prefer it over the other possibly more-correct options.
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This blog is part of the series The Big Picture — It’s Surprisingly Simple. Introduction:
- Bicycles and the Big Bang
- As Above, Not So Below
- Cyclopes and Pyramids
- God Almighty and the Big Bang
- Gravity and the Secret Inside the Pyramid
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Delivery based on The Proof of Nothing, published by Penta Publishing (2000) and In Search of a Cyclops (2003), internet publication.
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