I should be here more frequently trying to solidify my thoughts about so many things. Lately, though, a steady diet of news from multiple sources, has me flying in all directions. So many practical things to be done before the bifurcation. I fear the coming elections may be the trigger point. Our whole experience of daily life is in danger of a system collapse/explosion. And as Prigogene points out, there is no way to know what the resulting new system will be. If I believed in prayer, I would hope that most of us don't become just a pile of bones that future scientists and scholars pick through trying to figure out who we were and how we lived. Thousands of distinct civilizations have disappeared. What makes this one so special?

To decompress from the buffeting that comes from being immersed in a straining economic/geographical/racial/age/social standing/intellectual/physical reality, I have been turning to a book I'm reading (struggling through is more like it). It's titled "The Big Picture" by Dr. Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology among other things (author, speaker, awards, memberships, etc.)

Up until Dr. Carroll arrived on the scene, the man who best brought understanding of "the universe out there" to millions of people was Dr. Carl Sagan with his presentation of "Cosmos." It laid out how insignificant we are as physical entities in an astounding universe.

So far, Carroll seems to be the Sagan of our day but with a far heavier task. Where poor Carl Sagan was limited to tying together the realities of the universe, Sean Carroll and his ilk are ferreting out what lies beneath all that stuff. (So far I've been led down a path to where particles like electrons and protons and neutrons are manifestations of fields that are interacting at those points. I think.)

After getting through that stuff (book is as much yellow highlighter as white so far), he is now in the process of linking what lies below our perception of reality to how life itself manifests.

It's stupifying stuff really. Luckily, Dr. Carroll is an excellent explainer. Hard slogging but seems to be worth the effort.

I'm sure there will be more to come.

Meanwhile, I have to worry about the state of our political system, economic system, social system, education system. So many systems to juggle.