Braintenance: Nature Abhors a Vacuum, et. cetera

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Braintenance: Nature Abhors a Vacuum, et. cetera

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

Dear Friends:

I am fond of the aphorism, actually based on physical fact, that "Nature abhors a vacuum."

It's silly, but I am also fond about the word "abhors," used to personify Nature...just because the word "abhors" sounds so darned funny. But I deviate from my purpose in writing this.

Of course, a vacuum, in practical terms, is an empty space (whether cosmologically or intracranially) which is, in its fashion, an attractant for something [anything] to fill it. It is inanimate, but yet this basic tenet of the Laws of Physics, unlike the "Inalienable" Rights once defended in the Constitution of the United States, almost appears to have an osmotic "drive" to rectify itself. It is not unlike the owner of a vacant motel screaming for guests -- in fact, for any specie of guests bearing any type of credit card; he's not particular...he's desperate.

It is as if the vacuum were sentient, and that it hungered for occupancy.

In the young, uneducated, impressionable minds of society, and in the case of the feeble minds of society, the intracranial vacuum (absent knowledge, standards, ethics, principles and other "occupants" normally placed there through education and experience) "sucks in" whatever it is offered, regardless of how untenable, stupid or downright dangerous. Minds must be given nutrition -- lest they scrounge around for garbage to fill the hungry void.

Seen in these terms, we realize:

how important education truly is;
why some people will believe any propaganda delivered by the media;
the manner in which ghettos, poverty and violence perpetuate themselves, generation after generation;
the mechanism through which knowledgeable persons take advantage of the uninformed;
the way in which learning is so different from most matter/energy experiences -- while a black hole of superdense matter and gravity in space will absorb everything (even photons, which probably don't taste that good) and keep it foerever, the vacuum of a mind doesn't steal anything...it absorbs without theft.

Knowledge, when used to fill the intracranial vacuum, continues to exist at its source. If you teach me something, I can learn it -- yet, you will still know it. This is, in a special way, miraculous. Think of the possibility of giving a gift of something to someone, and yet still having it. Now, visualize this potential exponentially.

In nature, knowledge behaves like a virus - except it benefits and improves both the carrier and the host, and all of those whom are blessed to come into contact with either that carrier or that host.

The mind's hunger must be fed, generation after generation, with knowledge if society is to ever evolve to a new level of peace and prosperity. Education is a virus that preserves civilization. It requires compassion, vision, and does not entail any sacrifice.

Think about this. Please.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle