Reality is actually a verb….

“A particle doesn’t exist: it is the act of measuring that makes it a real object.”

Heisenberg and Bohr established the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics a little under 100 years ago. Heisenberg was like a boss level genius, and Einstein hated the guy but found no flaw in his work.

One of the most legit minds in all of science came to the conclusion, at the very fundamental level of nature, that physics ought not to concern itself with REALITY, but rather with what we can SAY about reality.

Heisenberg explained elementary particles are not things, but possibilities. The transition from the “possible” to the “real” only occurred during the act of observation and measurement.

“When we speak of the science of our era,” Heisenberg explained, “we are talking about our relationship with nature, not as objective, detached observers, but as actors in a game between man and the world.”

When I read all this in Benjamin Labutut’s brilliant and disturbing book, “When We Cease To Understand The World” it snapped something in my mind.

In our lives we desperately want objective-based certainty – we want to know there is a PURE version of reality/success/relationships/wealth/health – these elementary particles of a life-well-lived formally exist – and all we have to do is set up our clean room experiments and scientifically, methodically, disassociate and detach ourselves from the observation and application of the work, to get to the objective view from nowhere.

The Copenhagen Interpretation says this is all bass-akwards. And if we take the statement above and apply it to other things it starts to make sense at our level of observability.

• Businesses don’t exist, the act of measuring makes it a real business.
• Love doesn’t exist, the act of measuring it makes it real love.
• etc. etc. etc.

The point is, what if it isn’t what gets measured gets managed – but what gets measured, gets MANIFESTED? According to quantum theory, how could it not be?

Somewhere along the road we supplanted the most advanced interpretation of reality, (that we are active participants and reality is attainable only through subjective means and applied measurement) arrived at by the most intense and powerful minds of history, with an ancient and out-of-touch belief that there is a cold truth, on any and every subject, away from our warm and fuzzy bodies.

Read the book – apply this idea where you want, how you want – but it is a concept worthy of your time, as we try to figure out the next certain steps…

“Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else. Traveler, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk.” — Antonio Machado