Stable and Unstable Equilibriums
In case you’re not a sports fan or have been living under a rock free from the barrage of popular culture, let me say that the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles will be playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday. Now, this year’s football season has been pretty interesting with teams like the Steelers and the Packers doing incredibly well and surprising people. In the end, though, the two teams that everyone thought would play each other before the first week are now playing each other. This year’s football season was a stable equilibrium.
A Marble in a Valley
Most things in life are stable equilibriums. You can try to hit that marble out of place, but like the boulder of Sisyphus, it will return to its resting place. Every day you get up and go to work. It takes a lot to disrupt that routine. A late train might divert you for a few minutes, a sickness might for a day, a vacation might for a week, but in the end, life brings you back to the job.
A Marble on a Hill
Often referred to as the Butterfly Effect, this is the idea that single moments can drastically affect the outcome of people’s lives. The marble is hit and it moves away from the resting place at a faster and faster rate. Though dwelled on extensively in time-traveling movies, there actually seems to be few of these in real life. What college you choose or meeting the woman you marry might be a couple, but, for the most part, very few choices in life have long-lasting effects. I might drink the last glass of milk in the carton today or maybe I will tomorrow, but in the end, it’ll be drunk and I’ll be going to the grocery store
A Marble on the Hill in the Valley
There was this great Superman comic I read once called Speeding Bullets in which a universe existed identical to the normal universe except for a single piece of dust in space. Superman’s rocket hits this piece of dust and it slows his trip just slightly. Over many light years, the difference is enough for the child Superman to not land on Kansas, but instead near Gotham City. The young boy in adopted not by Jonathon and Martha Kent, but by Thomas and Martha Wayne who raise him as Bruce Wayne. Once a young man, he walks down the alley with his parents, sees them murdered and becomes Batman…but with superpowers. Anyway, a bunch of other stuff happens including Lois Lane moving to Gotham and Lex Luther becoming the Joker, but in the end the events of the story lead Batman to realize that his powers cannot be used just for vengeance, but for good and he chooses to become Superman. The point being that no matter where the young Krytonian landed, he would become Superman. Based on what he was born with, he had a destiny.
Of course, none of us have such an important destiny as Superman. Still, our destinies may be set, some perhaps even from birth, because our valleys are far too deep to knock the marble out of. Perhaps that’s why so many people know where they’ll be in five years and why “the Up Series” seems to show kids growing into the adults we all expected them to be. The economist in me knows that over the long term, error terms go to zero. How amazingly frightening stability is.
On the bright side, valleys are escapable with enough foresight to see them and enough effort to rise from them. Still, even if we do escape various valleys in life, there’s still that one big inescapable valley of equalization at the end of life. King or pauper, all men come to the same ends.
A Marble in a Valley
Most things in life are stable equilibriums. You can try to hit that marble out of place, but like the boulder of Sisyphus, it will return to its resting place. Every day you get up and go to work. It takes a lot to disrupt that routine. A late train might divert you for a few minutes, a sickness might for a day, a vacation might for a week, but in the end, life brings you back to the job.
A Marble on a Hill
Often referred to as the Butterfly Effect, this is the idea that single moments can drastically affect the outcome of people’s lives. The marble is hit and it moves away from the resting place at a faster and faster rate. Though dwelled on extensively in time-traveling movies, there actually seems to be few of these in real life. What college you choose or meeting the woman you marry might be a couple, but, for the most part, very few choices in life have long-lasting effects. I might drink the last glass of milk in the carton today or maybe I will tomorrow, but in the end, it’ll be drunk and I’ll be going to the grocery store
A Marble on the Hill in the Valley
There was this great Superman comic I read once called Speeding Bullets in which a universe existed identical to the normal universe except for a single piece of dust in space. Superman’s rocket hits this piece of dust and it slows his trip just slightly. Over many light years, the difference is enough for the child Superman to not land on Kansas, but instead near Gotham City. The young boy in adopted not by Jonathon and Martha Kent, but by Thomas and Martha Wayne who raise him as Bruce Wayne. Once a young man, he walks down the alley with his parents, sees them murdered and becomes Batman…but with superpowers. Anyway, a bunch of other stuff happens including Lois Lane moving to Gotham and Lex Luther becoming the Joker, but in the end the events of the story lead Batman to realize that his powers cannot be used just for vengeance, but for good and he chooses to become Superman. The point being that no matter where the young Krytonian landed, he would become Superman. Based on what he was born with, he had a destiny.
Of course, none of us have such an important destiny as Superman. Still, our destinies may be set, some perhaps even from birth, because our valleys are far too deep to knock the marble out of. Perhaps that’s why so many people know where they’ll be in five years and why “the Up Series” seems to show kids growing into the adults we all expected them to be. The economist in me knows that over the long term, error terms go to zero. How amazingly frightening stability is.
On the bright side, valleys are escapable with enough foresight to see them and enough effort to rise from them. Still, even if we do escape various valleys in life, there’s still that one big inescapable valley of equalization at the end of life. King or pauper, all men come to the same ends.
posted by American Dilettante at
4:50 PM
2 Comments:
I thought about the equilibria/equilbriums thing as well and looked it up. It seemed "ums" was used more often than "a". In retrospect, though, I lement the use of "ums" simply because I like being a snobby a latin-using dick.
By
American Dilettante, at 9:47 AM
My brother, sister and I got almost the exact same SAT scores and ended up going to comparable universities. Genetics? Environment? Of course. Free will? Well, we don't even know if that exists.
By
American Dilettante, at 10:21 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home