I’ve been called an iconoclast, mostly by my buddy Herm, but by others too. And only Herm meant it in a nice way. The rest spit the word. I have to say, the double ‘kuh’ sounds can be pretty nasty. And since I hadn’t looked it up before, I did. I looked up ‘inadvertent’ too. This is what Merriram-Webster (LINK) has on-line.
Iconoclast
1: a person who destroys religious images or opposes their veneration
Now I sure don’t want to destroy anyone else’s icons or Buddhas or statues of Christ or anyone. They’re just statues. They’re not going to whack me over the head or kick my dog. There’s no point in me going at them with sledgehammer. So that definition didn’t fit.
2: a person who attacks settled beliefs or institutions
This is the one that matched better. I did question the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) guys about Time. I did say that the whole Time-as-the-fourth-dimension was a bunch of hooey. And I did say some un-nice things about Einstein and Hawking and their fixations. And I didn’t back down about Time being a count. So in my way, I did attack. I just figured most people knew about Time already.
Nope.
It’s Relativity all the way. You go against it, and stick to your views, and the names, and in some cases worse, start being hurled. I have the scars to prove it.
Inadvertent
1. not focusing the mind on a matter
2. unintentional
As far as becoming an iconoclast is concerned, both definitions fit. I didn’t try. I didn’t think about rebelling. I didn’t even think about losing weight or getting a job, and I did both. They were what’s called bi-products of Time.
I will say this–when Time got stuck in my craw, and I went road-tripping to Boulder with Herm and Susy Liu Anne, I didn’t call anyone a name. I didn’t go on the attack. I just wanted to know why so many people are so stuck on this fourth-dimension snake oil. So I asked questions, and poked around, and I kept poking around and reading.
And I’m having a hard time stopping. Because Time is still in my craw. Heisenberg is there now too. And quantum mechanics. It’s a very full craw. And all the thoughts just fester and twist, and every so often they need a release.
Not such a good idea.
Without getting into the whole conspiracy side of the equation, which is still going strong unfortunately, people don’t seem to like someone blurting out ideas that splat up against all of the ones they already have. I know. I was attacked more than a few times, by sky-sniffing folks who have no problem calling names, sometimes hateful names, or will go on a five minute rant insulting my dog, which is way worse.
So now I understood first hand what iconoclast means. I can’t imagine being Copernicus or Galileo back when they put you in prison for saying the unpopular thing. But no matter how nasty people are now, it’s nothing compared to being stoned or imprisoned, or put to death even.
I Won’t Back Down
Even though I’m still breathing, life would sure be a heck of a lot easier if I just kept my mouth shut. For someone who talks as little as I do, normally, I’m surprised I can’t. I tried for a month to shut up. I even used tape once. But then I’d be sitting in the library and someone would get all snooty and pedantic (I love that word) and start talking Relativity like some professor, and my tongue would slip. I wouldn’t yell. I’d just ask them why NIST says that Time is defined as a count of seconds. Because backing down to the Relativity sheep, to the shouters who believe that Time is some mystical dimension without which we’d all die, is not an option. It’s just not.
A Kinder and Friendlier Iconoclast
I’ve made a couple decisions. I will try to be kinder to Einstein and Hawking. They were brilliant and did a lot great things for physics. And as I find out more about quantum mechanics, I’m realizing Einstein had some pretty cool ideas there too, like with Planck. Einstein’s the one who locked Planck’s ideas in.
The part that’s ironic (a word I’m not sure I’ll ever figure out) is that Einstein was an iconoclast in his way. He threw Newton under the bus. He probably didn’t call him a loon, but he basically said Newton was wrong, and that classical mechanics was wrong, and the old idea of gravity was wrong. And now, Relativity and spacetime have become the theory that the traditionalists and stuck cucumbers use as the accepted principle. And they use it to shout people down and spit out nastiness. And they’re all over the place.
If there’s one thing my reading has taught me, it’s that when the crowd starts having fits and shouting, then sure as the earth’s revolving around the sun, the crowd is wrong.
So I’m sticking with it: