Complex Numbers

Change

From South Point, we head north to visit the volcano responsible for building the island. Kilauea has been continuously erupting for the past 36 years. We board a small boat and motor to the place where the lava spills into the ocean, boiling the water and erupting steam into the air. The lava flows are slow and deceptively innocent, but their power to destroy is great and we are careful not to get too close. Our guide reminds us, however, that equal to the lava’s power to destroy is its power to create.

In your blog today, share something unexpected. Have you been surprised by someone or something recently?

No.

Well, sort of. Speaking of Hawai'i. I mentioned my friend on Maui in yesterday's entry. Well, he's not there anymore.

I mean, it was never going to be a permanent gig for him, but he left earlier than he'd originally planned. Upside: more money. Downside: Not Maui.

It's unfortunate, because I was kind of hoping I'd get to visit there one more time, but alas, if I do, I'm going to have to pay tourist prices everywhere.

So, a bit surprising, but nothing earth-shattering like, say, a volcano.

I've observed an erupting volcano, as well, but not in Hawai'i. The one I saw was on Montserrat, in the Caribbean. No lava flows; lots of ash. By the time I saw it, it had been spewing ash for several years, ash that had buried both the island's airport and its primary town, each on opposite sides of the cone. The population of the island had been reduced from something like 13,000 to closer to 3,000, with the refugees mostly having been relocated to the US and the UK, with some going to nearby islands.

"Equal to the lava’s power to destroy is its power to create." One of the most important realizations I've ever come to was the understanding that creation and destruction are really the same thing. Not opposites; not "two sides of the same coin," but the same thing, depending on how we look at it. Someone tosses a coin, and you call heads or tails, right? You desire a particular outcome: heads, or tails. Then the coin comes up one or the other, which is either the one you wanted or the one you didn't want. Whether we call something "creation" or "destruction" depends entirely on the value we put on one or the other.

You're cold, so you want a fire. So you burn some firewood. That destroys the wood, but at that moment, what you value more is the heat of the flame. To make the firewood, you, or someone, had to destroy a log. That log could, perhaps, have been used for fenceposts or a house; but at that moment, the more valuable use was firewood. To make the log, one had to destroy a tree, which was providing shade, oxygen, maybe a home for creatures; if the tree was already dead, it was still contributing to the ecosystem. And so on.

Drop a nuclear bomb on something, and you destroy it, right? Well, sure, but you are also creating something at the same time. A crater, radiation, a shock wave, etc.

It's a matter of perspective, and perspective alone. Sure, an argument can be made that it might take a year to create, say, a skyscraper, while it only takes minutes to tear it down, but what we call "destruction" can take time as well, so that's not a pure distinction.

Rome wasn't built in a day, or so they say, but neither was the Roman Empire fractured in a 24-hour period.

Sure, you can get into the philosophical argument (backed up to some extent by science) that nothing is created or destroyed, just transformed, but that's not my point - form can be created or destroyed. Or, as I'd argue, both at the same time.

Hawai'i - the Big Island - is the newest of that particular chain, but it won't always be. The Earth's crust there is sliding over a geological hot spot. A while back, that hotspot created Haleakala and the rest of Maui. Before that, it built Oahu. And down the line, to Kauai and beyond. And right now, off the coast of the big island, the next Hawaiian island is being formed.

Even on geological timescales, change is the only constant.