And So It Begins

Rewinding to my college days as a fine arts student, I recall a moment when my painting professor told the class that we may have moments — even decades — of no artistic activity. My initial thought at the time was that he had lost his mind; there would never be a time in my life that I would go without any artistic activity.

Fast forward to this moment, and it is apparent that not only was he correct, but painfully accurate in the full context of his statement some 29 years ago. When the brush touches the canvas, or the pen applies the first mark on the papyrus, it is activating a narrative that should be grounded in thought and reflection. The time needed to reflect and think before an act of expression is often equal to the impact one believes their expression should have on the audience. I guess it is fair to say the magnitude of my time in between this moment was necessary, given the impact I intend to make from my contribution through this medium.

An Examination of Social and Economic Inertia

For too long, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners have attempted to study and remedy the limitations of social and economic mobility in America. The dangerous assumption, in my opinion, centers on the belief that organic growth of progress happens when one small aspect (normally elevated through pilot programs) of the larger problem is altered or redesigned. This assumption typically fails on two critical fronts that limit any notion of intentional or organic improvement: replication and sustainability.

My contributions through this medium — no pun intended- will focus on the factors of inertial that better explain why our conversations appear at times to be circular and repetitive, and how future solutions may be applied to the challenge of mobility through a different set of assumptions. I could provide some examples to offer more context to my statement above, but it may be easier for you to think about the different advances in policy and programming to address economic and social mobility, and recognize the counter responses that often render progress null and void.

To take it to another level of bizarre in my opening post, I found the statement below from James F. Woodward (1998) from California State-Fullerton to be a good example of how I intend to examine inertia in social and economic mobility.

You may be inclined to think that this is some sort of trick question intended to set you up somehow. It’s actually a very serious, rather profound problem. Inertial reaction forces are instantaneous; there’s no doubt whatsoever about that. When you push on something, it pushes back on you immediately. If they’re caused chiefly by the most distant matter in the universe, how can that be?

Only three answers to this question seem to be available:

1. Relativity notwithstanding, the force really is propagated instantaneously. The occurrence of so-called “non-local” interactions in quantum phenomena (reported even in the popular press of late) might make such a scheme seem plausible.

2. Some sort of a local field, maybe not our A field, is really the cause of inertia.

3. When you push on an object a gravitational disturbance goes propagating off into either the past or the future. Out there in the past or future the disturbance makes the distant matter in the universe wiggle. The wiggling stuff out there makes up the currents that cause disturbances to propagate from the past or the future back to the object. They all arrive from the past or future just in time to produce the inertial reaction force you feel.

I look forward to this new journey.

References

Woodward, J. F., & Mahood, T. (1999). What is the Cause of Inertia?. Foundations of physics, 29(6), 899–930.