In Medias Res and the Speed of Biological Systems

You're born into this world thinking that "your" life begins. But people are being born and dying into this world, with a million things going on around at every moment, every day. We are born into the middle of things as they are. And things as they are, here and now, change with infinite frequency. Perhaps "now" has been scientifically defined as some irreducible instant of time at which subatomic particles appear motionless, though I assume its value would be relative to the observer (and, in another corner, Zeno's paradox comes to mind).

Homeric epic and modern cinematic "epics" such as Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan accentuate this awareness of being dropped smack into the middle of things. The classical Latin term for it in epic is "in medias res": in the middle of things.

For life this awareness provokes questions about the ontology of responsibility: if I am born into the middle of a contingent world over which whose rules and state I have no control, what is responsibility? Is it anything more than convention, a socially and legally defined "aura," that's got me at its center? Locke. Locke talked about the tacit social contract between people in society and addressed the issue of responsibility and consent for the newborn of this world.

Paul McCartney's new album is pretty good. I bought it at Best Buy the day it came out. I listen to it now and then. It's got some very good songs worth repeated listening for the music and, at times, the lyrics.

Life happens at a certain speed. For us, 24 frames per second, the speed of motion film, is fast enough to trick us into thinking we're seeing live action -- our visual systems seem to get by at a rather slow sampling rate. A fly might see things differently. I think it does. 24 frames per second would look like slow motion snapshots slowly clicking by. For a slug, if it could see, 24 frames per hour might be too much information. "How can you catch the sparrow?" as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young asked. Life is long or short, depending on your current perspective.