"When I was a little kid I was scared of the dark, it just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength. It’s silly to be afraid of a lack of photons".- Elon Musk
Surely you have heard some variation of this over the years. Why be afraid of the dark, when it is just the absence of light. This thought occured to me whenever I ventured out to quench that midnight thirst and yet, shamefully, I could never not look out for that asian girl with hair over her face lurking in the corner. Maybe this unreasonable fear of the unknown is so hardwired into us, that we go to any length to find reason and logic in the world, to feel like we are in control of Universe's flashlight. But the sad truth is that we aren't and never will be in control, moreover all the ideas we so desperately hope can explain the stuff around us are also in the end, invented by us.
According to Greek mythology, in the beginning there was an infinite void, filled with darkness and uncertainty, called Chaos. Afterward Gaia, the Mother Earth, sprung out of Chaos. This is not too far from the truth. So basically all the matter in our reality wants to be as stable as possible, meaning it wants to dissipate its energy into its surroundings as much as possible. And a fundamental rule of our universe is that all order eternally moves toward chaos. However this chaos isn't exactly disorder but rather an evolved form of the original order, designed to maximize the energy dissipated. This leads to complex yet beautiful phenomena that arise from these extremely simple rules, my personal favourite being Fractals.
Snowflakes are the most beautiful natural manifestation of this concept. Nature figures out all on its own the shape it needs to build from the smaller ice particles to lose the maximum amount of energy. However fractals are virtually everywhere if you look close enough, from inside your lungs, to a cauliflower or even in this very device.
But let's not go off track. Chaos also demonstrates the extent to which nature is out of our control, and how even the tiniest and insignificant of things can affect unimaginably huge events. This is called Chaos Theory or Butterfly Effect, because a very common analogy used to explain it is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan can be the cause of a hurricane in the US. If this seems crazy allow me to phrase it differently.
This is Sophie Chotek, the Duchess of Hohenberg. She was the woman that Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, fell in love with and then married. She was just a duchess, not even actual royalty. This meant that she was not allowed to accompany the Archduke to any official royal ceremonies, which consumed most of his time. And although the Archduke was a dictator, his one redeeming quality was that he loved his wife boundlessly. At the time there existed one sole exception to the said rule, that if and when he was acting in a military capacity as the general of his army, he could have her by his side. So one fine day, as an excuse to be with her, he set out to inspect the Bosnian army in an open air car, to flaunt their public appearance together. Later that day a Serbian nationalist by the name of Gavrilo Princip ran up to the car and shot them both in point blank range.
Austria, understandably furious, demanded a public apology from Serbia, which denied this request as it had no official hand in the assassination. As a result Austria declared war on Serbia. Bounded by security treaties as allies, Russia and Germany were forced to come to the aid of Serbia and Austria respectively by declaring war on the other. Russia and Germany had their own allies that came to their rescue and well, set off a chain reaction which led to the death of 4 crore people. Long story short, a loving husband who just wanted to go on a romantic countryside ride with his wife was the butterfly, and World War I, the hurricane.
If only he knew Pyaar Ek Dhoka Hai