You Are Codependent

Metaphysics is the study of philosophy from the point of view of an ethereal hippie. 

Quantum physics is the study of minutiae from the point of view of a fanatical mathematician. 

            And yet, even they agree, you are codependent. 
            The reason is because in either field all of reality is made up of the same two components: the observer and the observed.  You can’t have one without the other. Without an observer, nothing can be perceived. Without something to do the perceiving, there is nothing to observe.

Exhibit A: Cat being perceived versus a cat not being perceived.

Now you might suggest that you don’t need to observe something to exist, “I think therefore I am, “ right? 
            But what would you think about if nothing had ever existed? How would you know you existed if there was nothing to perceive, nothing to measure that existence by? No mirror. No others to interact with. Not even a body for you to occupy or language for you to think in. Just consciousness and infinite nothingness. What exactly would you be conscious of?
            That’s the metaphysics way of seeing things. 
            And yet, you might also say that even without an observer, things are still there. But alas this is not true. Only possibilities exist until there is the consciousness present create reality.
            That’s the quantum physics way of seeing things. 

Exhibit B: Shrödinger’s cat. 

A quantum physicist named Erwin Shrödinger told a tale of a cat inside a sealed box (assume air could get in). Inside the box with the cat was a delicious poison pellet. If the cat ate the pellet it would be dead. If it didn’t, it would be alive. The question was, is that cat in that box alive or dead? 
            The answer is both. The cat is a sensitive vampire, forever young and forever misunderstood, craving to know what true love feels like. Just kidding. But the answer really is both. Until someone opens that box, and perceives the cat, both possibilities exist as equal probability. 
            This equation of probability is what all the atoms that no one is observing are doing right now. The electrons are not actually zipping around their nuclei, forming a cloud or shell. There is simply the possibility that a given electron may be in a certain location around the central nucleus should someone with the right equipment observe it. Once scientists do observe these atoms at the quantum level, they have found that the atoms do not behave in a predicable pattern, but rather behave in a way biased by the way they are being observed. From the observer comes the reality of the observed. Without the observer, the observed is not actually doing anything, but rather exists as the infinite possibilities of where those electrons might be.
            In your life, your are both the observer and the observed. You are the observer, making sense of the world based on the biases of your experiences. 

Exhibit C: Adorable companion versus blood-thirsty maniac 

To a dog person, dogs are adorable and loyal. To cat person, dogs might be vicious, needy savages. Both people are right and both people are wrong. They are right based on their own biases and they are wrong based on the biases of the other person. Two different realities based on the same criteria of observing dogs. Maybe the dog lover grew up with a dog that was his or her best friend. Maybe the dog hater was once attacked by a dog. Now when either human encounters such a creature, they experience two completely different realities.
            You can extend this concept to yourself. As the observer, the world is all the things around you, with your consciousness filtering out things that are less important and emphasizing things that are more important. For example, when a crowd of people walks by and you don’t particularly notice anyone. But then, within that crowd, someone you find really attractive passes by. Suddenly, your eyes are involuntarily drawn to them, so much so that it takes actual conscious effort to look away and not pay attention the way you were before.
            You perceive the entire world like this in varying degrees. From foods you may like (that someone else may not) to smells that give you nightmarish flashbacks to some incident in middle school.  In actuality, all of these things are objective, nonexistent possibilities that you turn into the subjective reality of your own personal narrative. A human being becomes a human being you happen to be attracted to. An ordinary smell becomes a visceral reminder a traumatic childhood experience involving an overturned outhouse, because some random person happens to be wearing the same perfume that your favorite aunt was wearing that same day. In either case, you create reality from the infinite possibilities of what a person or aroma can mean to someone. 

Exhibit D: You

Here’s another way of looking at it. With absolute certainty, you might be the most amazing person to ever live to your parents, but at the same time, with equal certainty, you might be the biggest %$!#* to the person you just cut off on the freeway. Add to that the fact that you may have cut them off by accident or that they may have been in the wrong. Neither of those things actually matters. In their mind, you are still the biggest %$!#* ever to drive a car and clearly you did what you did on purpose. Later, they will convey this story to all their friends, thus rendering you, the observed, an even bigger you-know-what to a wider swath of humanity. And yet, in your mind you might still be someone who didn’t realize his or her turn signal wasn’t working, who changed lanes while someone who was speeding swerved into your blind spot.
            Who you are changes from person-to-person and everyone you know is in someway a different person to you than they are to everyone else. At all times, you are both the observed and the observer. Your entire existence is based on your own biases and who you are outside yourself is entirely based on the biases of every single person or thing you have any sort of interaction with.

Your own perception of yourself may even be off. 

Perhaps you are someone who gives great advice and is very helpful. You think this makes you a giver and the people you always help are the receivers. But…if your self-worth is based on how good you feel because you are helping people, then wouldn’t that make the people you are helping the givers, because their act of listening validates your existence?
            As the observer, you are the giver of ideas. As the observed, you are the receiver of validation because some other observer considers your ideas wisdom. 
            In this codependent life, we are in a constant volley of being the observer and the observed. Like the two ways of looking at that dog, a smart kid in school may be a precocious sweetheart to a teacher, but a vicious attacker to a less astute jock, who feels like a failure every time that smart kid receives an accolade for something that he, the jock could never have come up with. Yet in gym class, those perceptions might be reversed.
            In this binary existence of observers and observed, you are nothing but infinite possibilities until you are observed. Then, once you are observed, whether by yourself (I think therefore I am) or others, you become not just one of those possibilities, but many. You are the electron that could be occupying any point around the nucleus of the atom. Which point you actually are occupying is based entirely on who is observing you. What this means is that at the same point in time, you are doing what would seem impossible, which is occupying more than one position at the same time, existing in multiple realities at once.
            But it is not impossible. Each reality is a projection of the biases of one person’s consciousness, meaning there are as many realities as there are consciousnesses perceiving.

In summary, without anything to observe, you cannot exist. 

Without your consciousness to do the observing, all the %$!#* drivers, dog lovers, cat haters and electron clouds around the atoms that make your life cannot exist.
            Sometimes you are the observer. Sometimes you are the observed. Always you are codependent.

And on that, I leave you with a 21 year-old article from The Onion that brilliantly illustrates how the observer creates his or her own reality from how they observe.