Every now and then, my dad delves into a mix of science/theology/philosophy discussions over the dinner table. In the past, it's been resurrection over ramen and Star Trek over sushi, and last night's was another interesting one.
Somewhere in the midst of the evening's conversation, the topic turned to the current news broadcast and how prevailingly negative it is: people killing each other, political conspiracy theories, and the usual slew of petty crime that gets onto the local Bay Area news. My dad began explaining what seemed to start off as the usual stream of Asian-dad cynicism, but his thoughts became became more and more interesting as I listened. The following is as much as I can remember of his mealtime musings (probably with some butchering of physics terminology):
The world that we currently live in glorifies two aspects of a person's life: money and reputation. Having one or the other, or ideally both, is what makes a person well known and received, and the path to success is often defined by one's accumulation of these two things. This sort of society is shallow and materialistic- one that continually insists on placing the wrong types of people on pedestals that they buy with the excess wealth of their own gilded wallets.
Imagine now another world in which the two highlighted aspects are wisdom and personality. Unlike money that glimmers and reputation that shines, wisdom and personality are things that are generally invisible in our current society. Those that have done nothing but possess wealth and fame are greatly publicized, while many that do good go largely unnoticed, while . But, what if these two positive traits were just as visible as money and reputation? In this other world, wisdom and personality are expressed as two overlapping halos that emit light based on the amount that the owner possesses. The wiser, or better of a person you are, the brighter your respective lights are. With these two being so visible to the public, and thus being what most prized by society, it then becomes more important to accumulate these, rather than money and reputation.
Why are these two traits suddenly visible in this alternate world ? Because the whole world operates on a different frequency scale. Whereas our current world has our familiar spectrum of colors, sounds, etc that are apparent to the senses, there are also many frequencies that are undetectable by humans alone but only with the help of machines (ultraviolet, x-rays, etc). What if there exists another range of frequencies that are still undiscovered- frequencies that display such things like the vital traits of wisdom and personality as visible light ?
Even in our current world, individuals that have complementary levels of wisdom or personality naturally tend to get along quite well. The currently indescribable and inaccurate "science" of "vibes" and "vibing" well with others would finally turn tangible in this alternate world of frequencies, just as the science of sound, light, radio, etc has become an established science here. Constructive interference would occur among those that possess the desired traits of wisdom and personality, and destructive interference (or even discordance) would occur between those that are poorly matched.
In this very tangible way, the positive traits are continually encouraged, and communities are built up based on the cumulative wisdom and personality of their participants.
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