Between Waking And Dreaming

On the unreality of reality and the power of dreams

Schrödinger’s Cat, via Discovery

We look down on the superstitions of the past, and ignore the superpositions of the present. Modern living means holding many contradictory positions at once. Violence is bad, unless it’s in the movies, in which cases it’s great. Celebrities are madonnas in Vogue and whores in the tabloids. We’re both empowered citizens who must have an opinion about everything, and powerless plebes who can’t do anything.

DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them — George Orwell

I say superposition because of the idea of quantum superposition. An effective religious belief based on how much any of us understand it, metaphorically mangled for whatever position we want to. In the vague quantum sense it means you don’t know a particle’s position until you observe it, like a cockroach it’s fucking everywhere until you flick on the lights. In the classic thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive if you keep it in the same box as a (potentially) deadly subatomic event.

Such is the state of the modern mind, by turns bloodthirsty and bloodless depending on when you ask. In…