Archimedes famously stated that with a fixed fulcrum and a lever long enough he could move the world. That’s a brilliant illustration of a true mechanical principle. Unfortunately, like other fine abstract truths, it can be misused when extended beyond its meaning.
For example some people try to see an immovable fulcrum as their “centering” or core purpose. They think of their actions as the lever. And the really fuzzy part is the “world” which becomes not so much an object to be moved as a system to be changed
Obviously it seems useful to have a “center.” Of course, some centers are wrong or evil. And far from being immovable, they can vanish in an instant or mutate into something else entirely different. Religious meditation, a Pandora’s box of ways to find and solidify a “true” center, are available. They all usually fail. None are necessarily “correct” .
Action as a lever is just as helpless. It is no longer just pushing down on some defined goal. You can act sideways, smoothly, with a jerk, or even stop and have unpredictable effects. The illusion of the metaphor no longer holds .
And as for the world – how does one change a complex system? Even a single consciousness – our own – is infinitely and ineffably vast. What could a lever do anyway, except maybe break it ?
This essay is a simple diversion, but I mean it to cast suspicion on any similar tropes which try to extend the artificial universes of math and mechanics into our messy and chaotic human existence .
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 