Let’s Go Play!

As some of you might know, I had plans to become a physicist once I finished my career in Computer Science. If you have read my post, My Visit to Ananda Village, you must know that by now that option is discarded, having given way to much more immediate plans to go to India. Reflecting on that, however, I have come to ask myself the question: “Do you regret this decision?” and my answer has been, “No”.

Besides of the fact that I love Physical Science, the reason I wanted to get into it was to try and put my grain of sand to help humanity grow, as a researcher. Again, a question: “Is this really that important?” By looking around me, I had to admit my sincere response was, again, “No”.

To justify these answers, a brief look into my past is required.

When I was a child, I discovered in myself a love for most every area of knowledge and art, and for sports in particular (soccer most of all). For diverse reasons, as I grew up I came to discard all of the other options until only four were left on the table: scientist, musician, writer, and programmer. By the age of twelve or so, I had already decided to go into the lattest: I wanted to create computer games! Games were my main form of entertainment during all of my childhood and early youth, since I was too shy to do anything else, let alone sports (which I liked, and still do, above everything else); it was just natural that I selected this option. I liked to create, and to create games seemed good enough.

I managed to satisfy this wish to an extent by modding for Baldur’s Gate 2 when I was between 15 and 17, and I enjoyed it a lot. During the same period, however, I got into the “branched” part of high school, in which I chose Scientific – Math and Physics; there and then I discovered the latent love for Math and Physics that was in me. I even noticed I liked it more than programming! However, I still wanted to create computer games, and when I had to choose my career in College (first in Uruguay, then in Quebec when we moved), I went for that.

Once in the CEGEP, I had the opportunity for the first time to do what I had always thought I wanted to do: Computer Science. To my great disappointment, however, I found out that I didn’t enjoy most of the courses, except those that were aboud coding and programming: the others seemed too “square”, too man-made for my liking. And, unfortunately, even those courses I enjoyed proved to be the same later on.

The world of programming, once I went deep into it, was disappointing to me as the rest of the Computer Science courses: too man-made! Having known math and physics, I now struggled to keep myself from despairing at the dumbness and lack of smoothness with which the “man-made rules” for every aspect of Computer Science worked. It was ridiculous! Here is a clear demonstration (to me, anyway) that there is indeed an intelligence much higher than man’s.

The “coup de grace” was given, however, when I suddenly lost all my interest in computer games altogether. One day, little more than a year ago, I asked myself: “Who am I helping by playing games?” The response: “No one.” Then, another question: “Am I even helping myself at all by playing games?” The response: “Most of the time, no.” Then I realized I wouldn’t be helping anybody by making computer games and, in many cases (provided the games I worked on were good), I would be helping to create people who waste their time away in games.

That was enough. I only needed the slightest “push” after that, and I abandoned the idea of being a game maker forever: I would, instead, be a physicist. A physicist at least has the potential of helping humanity through his discoveries; moreover, I loved Physical Science, and I loved knowledge. It was decided, then, I would be a physicist!

And that was my idea until less than a month ago.

Since I already told the story of how I abandoned that plan as well, I will skip it. Instead, I will go back to the questions I asked at the beginning of the post, or, rather, to their answers. “Do I regret the decision?” No. “Do I think it is important? (to be a physicist)” As of right now, no. But… Why?

The response to my first question goes, I guess, a bit with my nature: I love the prospect of change and adventure. I can’t help to get thrilled about it. Imagining that I lived alone and I didn’t have anyone to support in any way, I would be as thrilled to be told I won a million dollars as I would be if I was told I would have to live in the streets. I would be nervous, yes, in both cases, but I would be looking forward to what it would mean and how to comfront it. I have not lost the sense of adventure of a child, and I am grateful for it.

A broader and more accurate justification to my “No” to the first question, however, goes along the same lines that propeled the change of career choices: the ability to help other people with my chosen mode of life. To become a monk, go to India, and help form a self-sufficient community. How does this help anyone? one might ask. The response goes a bit into the territory of the other question, but, indeed, they are interrelated.

Truth is, we are living in hard times; no one can deny it. A little, self-sufficient community goes a long way to help relieve the harshness of this day and age; moreover, it becomes a seed for the future, which will grow and, eventually, become a full-grown “future-plant”. Loneliness has been called the sickness of this age, and so have been a hundred things more; many, if not all of these are caused by the focus of modern society: on groups, and not on individuals (except the all important “I”), with all which that implies. An example of this that is very close to me, because I am a student, is the education system: it is designed to make of the student an efficient working machine; no more, no less.

How does the community fit into this? As I have seen by myself, many of these human pains are effaced in such an environment. People, in general, learn more by example than through intellect; well, a little community can give exactly that: an example. For most people, a society whose bases are harmony, trust, love, kindness, and so on is no more than an utopian dream; yet, I have been there and I have seen it become true! No one, however, except a brave few, will ever try to live by high ideals unless they are proved first that it is possible, and that it is worth it. How can they become convinced that it works? By example! Only for that, the creation of these communities is, in my eyes, worth the trouble; there are even stronger reasons, but these do not come to the subject of the post.

As for the second question, I think I might do well to reformulate it a bit: “In the immediate future, will the role of a physicist be too important?” I believe it will not.

I have mentioned before, we live in hard times. Tensions have been building up between human groups in every level: from little corporations to nations, or even rivalries between groups of nations. In the last century, tensions of similar kind have erupted into World Wars, which ravaged the world, but brought a post-war change with them. Now, I believe we might be nearing World War Three.

Everywhere in nature, including the human body (to have a concrete example), whenever disharmony appears and builds up, it is eliminated with an “expulsion” of some sort. If, for some reason, this “expulsion” does not happen, the disharmony keeps building up and slowly poisons the whole system in which it was manifested. In my experience with human groups (which, I admit, is very limited and small compared to other people’s; but, then again, this whole thing is only my opinion), the very same thing happens in a general context.

I have seen groups of people in which tensions start building up: often they are discharged slowly throughout time with “mini-eruptions”, we might say, and everything stays relatively balanced, at least for a time. However, there comes a time sometimes in which these “tensions” or disharmonies just keep building up inside the group, and we come to the same old situation: there is either an eruption, or the “blood stream” gets poisonous. In the first case, this “eruption” expulses most of the “poison” from the group’s “blood stream” in a very short time. In the second case, the expulsion of disharmonies comes very painfully and over a long period of time, and is not complete.

Looking around, it seems to me like the world is nearing boiling point, and I do honestly believe that World War Three would be a very much better alternative to Cold War Two: the explosion, vs the poisoned blood stream. People who know me, know that I do not say this because I want to see a war. I let people win in “body matches” in soccer because I don’t want to hurt them, I do not eat meat because I wouldn’t kill an animal, I do not kill the mosquitos who come for my blood, only blow them away. However, I do believe that an explosion is very much preferable to poison in the “blood of the world”, so as to let the “humanity system” clean itsself up, at least in part.

My opinion might or may not be shared by others, but no one can deny that tensions are high and that they are likely to bring something to the world: something not good.

And so we come back to the answer of the question I posed before. I do not think that being a scientist would help much in the immediate future, because in the immediate future I think there will be need of men to rebuild the world. Actual doers is what humanity needs (and mostly, will need, in my opinion; it is easier to build from zero than to remodel something already there) to help itself back up “from its ashes”, and little matters what career they chose to study.

In the end, real reforms, real changes, have come out of people, not of scientific discoveries, books, or whatever else. Moreover, it usually starts with a small amount of energetic people who do instead of only talking about doing. This is why it was for me so easy to give up a potentially big career on physics, even though I love it.

Now we are in a time and, most of all, we are coming to a time, where energy is needed to set things right, and each grain of sand counts and can make a difference. I have decided to give mine.

Joy to you!