Fear of Physics and fear of physicists (as in, people)

What is it? Well, a book with such a title sounds like it is for a general audience. And it is, and I am glad it is. But it’s not just for a general audience. In case you haven’t noticed, physicists are perpetually perplexed about a variety of things (quantum gravity, cosmology, clothing, showering regularly, and so on). So the book is for us too! Indeed, Krauss really made an effort to write a book about how physics is done. For example, his opening chapter is a discussion about simplifying approximations and how central they are to the way physics is done. A later chapter, “Creative Plagiarism,” discusses creativity in physics and how even the most creative minds/ideas borrow heavily from those who have come before them.

I encourage any student thinking about a career in physics (or really any of the sciences) to get a copy of this book and read it! I also encouarge educators to suggest this reading to their students. I wish I had seen it when I was in college! Fear is a lovely delineation of the rationale behind physics as an area of study.

Book number two is on the face of it … wildly different from the first. Kurt Cobain’s Journals are 1. something probably most of us never expected to read and 2. not something that we’d expect to see discussed in the same breath as a book about physics. However, I think Journals provide a nice counterpoint to Fear of Physics (although that’s not why I am reading them nor why I am bringing them up here). Where Krauss focuses on the beauty in the simplicity of the rules that seem to rule our complex world and the miracle of being able to deduce them, what Cobain struggled with were some of the uglier rules of human affairs or rather the chaos of social injustice. I find his commentary insightful and simultaneously organic. The grounded feeling is a great reminder that we can all, in our own way, be insightfu commentators on the world … And connect over things like …

As Cobain writes in a letter that opens the paperback edition of Journals, “FUCK, I’m in High School AGAIN!”

I really identify with this feeling on a regular basis. Although, I actually had a decent high school experience, I suspect I got lucky: as a high achiever in a school where being a high achiever was cool, I rarely felt out of place. There were exceptions, of course. Notably, being the sole member of the Class of 1999 to be admitted to Harvard garnered many congratulations and more than one comment to my face that I had only gotten in because I am Black. And these comments were actually my first taste of the profound way in which people politics can be alienating and bizarre, I think in the way that Kurt Cobain talks a lot about in his journal entries. And maybe his inability to cope with this aspect of human behaviour is what lead to his inability to cope without drugs. He wouldn’t be the first who wanted to escape from the ugly bits.

As I have gone on in the academy, I have found that no matter how many people around me once experienced the trauma of being the odd one out in high school, they never fail to want to make others feel like the freak in the room now that they aren’t it. A lot of physicists like to make people feel stupid because it makes them feel like part of a special clique. I continue to find that more than a few of my white peers, especially those raised in Europe, take a certain pride in being obscenely insensitive to racial minorities. Thankfully many people aren’t like this, but the point is that at the end of the day, it all feels like immature high school behaviour that seems impactful, no matter how hard I work toward immunity.

But before I beat the racism stick more than I really need or want to (at the moment), I should go back to the more general point I wanted to make. I once asked an ex-boyfriend who was in a fraternity at MIT whether being a nerd and slight outcast in high school made him empathetic to the people who are rejected by his frat. He said, “No, it made me want to find somewhere where I would be accepted.” I think that statement kind of encapsulates the fact that high school never ends for a lot of people, no matter whether you are on the bottom or top during or after.

Okay, so this is one of the themes that shows up in Journals — how petty, fake, and lacking in empathy people can be. I guess it makes sense — how else has America managed to stomach US foreign policy in Latin America since 1898? But Cobain also turns out to be a bit surprising in seemingly random ways. A story well-told in James Spooner’s Afro-Punk Documentary discusses the way in which, despite their early contributions to its innovation, Blacks have been excluded from popular rock music success. On one page of his Journal (which of course I can’t find right now), Cobain ruminates on the tragedy that is America’s failure to remember the people who started rock n’ roll, both with regard to the music itself and social equity.

In another entry, he discusses, many years before 9/11, why he thinks “censorship is VERY American.” (p. 111) And America would do well, as they wonder about all of their teenagers who think that violent school rampages are the answer, to note the intensity and rawness and seriousness and painfulness of the feelings expressed here. Part of Kurt’s genius was that he was able to distill the particular emotional pain of what intellectually-inclined people would call the post-modern world. (ref: Satoshi Kon’s anime series Paranoia Agent) A world where people could hate America and Americans enough to die crashing planes into a building. Relevant 9/11 conspiracy theory aside, you oppress/piss off/mess with people and drive them insane, and they will answer your inhumanity with their own. (If you’re unconvinced, look at what cutting Palestinians off from proper food, education, and health care has done for bringing Israel closer to peace …) In the end, the cosmos seem to grow toward disorder, even in the simplicity of the laws that order them …

“I’m far beyond the point of sitting down and casually complaining about this problem to the Right wing control freaks who are the main offender of destroying Art. I wont calmly and Literally complain to you. Im going to fucking Kill. Im going to fucking Destroy your macho, sadistic, sick Right wing, religiously abusive opinions on how we as a whole should operate according to your conditions. before I die many will die with me and they will deserve it. see you in hell. love, kurt” (Journals, p. 121)

Albums listened to during the composition of this entry: Graduation and Late Registration by Kanye West.