Of cats and boxes: A paradox of Schrödinger’s paradox

From Chiapas, thoughts on the refusal to walk into traps—and the rebellion to fight our way out

~  ͶÀTIꟼAƆ ⅃Ǝ  ~

Erwin Schrödinger (Austria-Ireland, 1887-1966), who apparently wasn’t very fond of house cats, proposed a theoretical exercise for quantum physics.

The approach is simple, although its implications are very complex. A cat has been placed inside a box. The box has a device that, in an undefined moment, releases a sort of lethal mechanism, and the cat will die. Since the box is airtight, it is unknown whether the cat is still alive or has already perished. One or the other possibility can’t be confirmed, until the box is opened. The moment before, when we don’t know whether the cat is alive or dead, suggests that there are two worlds or two simultaneous universes. In one, the cat is already dead; in the other, it is still alive. A lethal mechanism activated and not activated; a dead cat and alive at the same time; a superposition of states according to quantum physics.

Let’s leave aside, for now, the references to comic book multiverses and their implications for quantum physics. Let’s also leave aside Mr. Schördinger’s animosity toward cats, who clearly didn’t know much about them (anyone who has dealt with them knows they wouldn’t let themselves be caught, much less allowed to be locked up, without protest or defence—especially if it’s a… cat-dog). Let’s also not dwell on the fact that the cat is imprisoned and condemned to death, unless someone sees fit to open the box before the death mechanism has been activated, and the cat jumps out and frees itself from its prison.

This theoretical exercise is supposed to be a basis for showing that worlds in multiple universes are possible, that is, in a multiverse (although it is also to show that the laws of quantum physics don’t apply in everyday life).

To the best of my limited knowledge of comics, I understand that, in these diverse worlds, the individual still prevails, but in different versions. In one world, Sheldon Cooper (TV’s “The Big Bang Theory”) is a scientist with social problems. In another, he’s a hopeless womanizer. In yet another, he’s a “popular” judge in the Mexican judicial system (oh, I know, my perversity is sublime).

And this digression, which I hope is disconcerting, is relevant, or something, depending on the case, because even with the imaginative capacity to propose the simultaneous existence of the live cat and the dead cat, the possibility (or the universe) of one or more cats refusing to enter the box isn’t considered. And perhaps with the aggravating circumstance that the supposed cat is actually a cat-dog.

By pointing out some possibilities, others are omitted.

When talking about the capitalist system, the different proposals refer to what can be done to improve the conditions of the cat trapped in the trap, to extend its life (or its chances of life), or to “humanize” the deadly device.

This is, let’s say, what progressivism proposes. Definition of progressivism? Well, those who are leftist until the eve of becoming the government and holding a position, a job, a pay-check. Then they stop being leftist, they become official, and they disguise their pragmatism (which leads them to ally and unite with their enemies of the day before—and to distance themselves from their social past) as “political realism”. It is, then, a left which pleases capital. That is, a “cool”, pretty, demure, and blushing right.

In this case, progressivism promises, on the eve of the event, to free the cat from its prison. Then, since it can’t or won’t do so, it “changes” its proposal: “I’m going to make you more comfortable”; “I’m going to get better conditions for your death”; “I’m going to fight so that the death mechanism doesn’t activate too quickly”. Or, it can, instead, urge the prisoner to endure, since it has a 50% chance of surviving temporarily. Imprisoned, yes, but alive.

* * *

The capitalist system is that box. Inside it, multitudes wait, unknowingly, for the murderous mechanism to be activated. Wars, famines, “natural” disasters, violent assaults, murders, government arbitrariness, destruction that will solve the enigma: “to live or to die”?

In the box are those who commit the crime of being a woman, a boy or a girl, young, old, ‘otroa’, of dark skin, with an indigenous mode of having a foreign language in their own land, and so on. Their condition, gender, race, ideology, religion, manner, height, or physical build doesn’t matter: that person is inside the box and subject to those deadly laws.

Not only without the possibility of escape, but also without even imagining that another world exists out there.

The option to delay death or improve the conditions of one’s sentence is submission and acceptance of being part of the showcase of “strange things” that the system displays for its own amusement. Woman, ‘Otroa’, Indigenous, Race, Neighbourhood, Nationality, every “oddity” has its place in the curiosity shop, if it behaves “well”. If not, well, the “invisible hand of the market” will pull the extermination lever.

Example: the crime of being born, growing up, and fighting in Palestinian lands is to refuse to be part of capital’s showcase. And to resist and rebel against the machine. The machine wants a recreational centre in Gaza and is hindered by Palestinian civilisation; the Palestinian people fight for a land to live in.

Palestine is the best example of the terminal crisis of the so-called “Nation States” and their governments. They don’t command; they only obey at their convenience. They are incapable of presenting an independent, dignified, and consistent foreign policy.

And in the ongoing mass murder, the complicity and inaction of the world’s governments (with a few exceptions) is pathetic. The police forces of various European and American governments repressing demonstrations calling for an end to the genocide in Palestine, are the best discourse on Western “humanism”.

In the world up above, European governments are the idle and useless court of the reigning king. Russia and China are the counts and dukes plotting regicide and offering an alternate monarch. The rest of the world’s national governments, except for those who have clearly spoken out against it, are busy pages, stressed by the constant demands and harassment of the royal family.

Who are the ones watching, operating, being entertained, and placing bets on what happens in the box? Big financial, commercial, industrial, and, now, digital and aerospace capitals.

The world’s governments, for the most part, are merely the betting ticket takers, the “brokers” in the stock exchanges where wars are always on the rise, and life down below… on decline. And, as the Mileis that are and will be around the world, they are the ones who are sent to buy and serve the wine that will preside over monarchical banquets (the chainsaw is an autochthonous lining).

* * *

However, there are those who consider another possibility: not entering the box or leaving it.

Furthermore, there are those who question the box itself, its eternal and omnipotent existence; and its claim to be the only universe that tolerates the existence, within it, of diversity, of various universes or multiverses… domesticated.

Those people who question that are what we Zapatistas call “resistance and rebellion”. Resistance to enter the box or, if one is inside, Rebellion to fight to get out.

Resistance and rebellion that aims at the destruction of the box, the logic that created it, and the belief that “nothing else” is possible.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Image: rawpixel.com CC0 1.0

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