I've been listening to a biography of Albert Einstein for the past few weeks as I walk to work. It is interesting to me that after introducing the theories that gave rise to quantum physics, Mr. Einstein distanced himself from the implications as the uncertainty at the heart of it made him uneasy. He called it "spooky" and frequently commented that "God would not play dice with the universe."
I'm no physicist, obviously, but as I understand it, at the core of his concern is the Uncertainty Principle which is (more or less) that we cannot know the precise attributes of sub-atomic particles at any particular moment. All we know are the probabilities. A particle is likely to be here or there. That is all we can know.
But it actually goes even deeper. You see, at least as far as I've understood the discussion as presented in the book, the reason we can't know is that the particles aren't actually anywhere until we observe them. There is no objective reality until we observe it. Einstein rejected this, based on logic, but contrary to evidence.
I kind of love it. I find it beautiful and, in a way, empowering. I can create reality. As a man of religion, I wonder about the meaning of faith in light of a universe in which our will apparently can interact dynamically with the reality around us.
When asked whether he was religious, Einstein said he believed in an impersonal God that organized the universe. Despite his reservations about quantum physics, he rested this believe, in part, on the field's implied requirement that something must observe the universe in order to give it form. He called that observer God. Well, so do I. I also believe that He is personal.
Then I got thinking about family council. Our family life has become much happier since we started consistent family councils on Sunday afternoons. The events that happen in our families have no meaning. They are formless. They are like unobserved electrons. Then we come together and discuss the events. We observe them formally which gives them shape and meaning. And we get to choose the shape and the meaning by how we observe them.
No, we don't reinvent. It is more subtle. We can shape the meaning of events by formally discussing them and by proactively assigning positive meaning. This is also the value of journal writing. This is also the value of goal setting. We create the shape of our reality. We invent the future. We take the infinite quantum probabilities and make them finite realities by exercising our free will.
But when we are passive, when we haven't any goals, we are but random electrons in no particular place at no particular time, reacting randomly to the universe.
