Everything’s Relative

If there’s one thing I took away from Physics 11 in high school, it’s that statement. Oh, and also Newton’s three laws of physics, which I explored in a short film entitled Newton’s Three Laws of Physics, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Sir Isaac Newton. Oh, and also that one time when the teacher put a slab of wood on his stomach and let this guy hit it with a sledgehammer. That was pretty awesome . . .

Huh? Right – everything’s relative.

In physics, this meant that when you were measuring motion, you had to keep your frame of reference in mind. Like, if the frame of reference is the room where you are right now, then you aren’t moving. Expand that frame of reference to the solar system, and suddenly you’re a spot on a basketball that some Harlem Globetrotter is spinning on one finger and circling around his baffled opponent’s head. Um, and that spot on the basketball is simultaneously spinning and circling through space, and if we expand our frame of reference to the galaxy, well, there’s another level of axial rotation and orbiting and then up it again to the university and that spot is rotating on its own axis and the Earth’s axis and a galactic axis around the centre of the universe and then there’s the layers of relative orbits and shit, where’s Stephen Hawking when you need him, no, not just him but Johnnie Walker too?

It’s not just in physics, though – everything’s relative. I never felt like a tree-hugging hippie until I moved to bureaucracy central, where smoking pot is a political statement against the establishment, like, that’s right, The Man, we’re sticking it (inhale . . . hold it! . . . exhale . . . ) to ya! As opposed to the coast, where it’s what you do with The Man, and then you split a pizza.

Seriously, though, when Easterners (and this means everything past Manitoba, because that shit’s all east relative to Victoria which is practically falling off the edge of this country) get all up in my face, yo, about how they don’t agree with the “marijuana lifestyle” (smoke a joint, eat a baby?) or how they could never do that to their bodies (this said by someone who had just consumed the majority of a two-four of Blue), I like to tell the story of New Year’s 2000 wherein a bunch of us went down to the BC Legislature lawn to watch fire works and what not, and behind us a group of fortysomethings in tweeds and plaids were passing around a couple of joints, and then the cops came over, and were all “Excuse me, could you move off the grass? Because it’s starting to rain, and we don’t want the lawn to get ruined” and the group were all, sure officers, and went and toked up on the sidewalk and boy, I bet those were the best fireworks EVER.

So Ontario’s a little more conservative than the coast - it sure makes for amusing moments when someone who’s a die-hard Ontario big L Liberal thinks that means they’re a little l liberal too. Like that time when I worked summer camps and a fellow counselor, some football player from Toronto, tries to tell me that his high school was so left-wing and politically active, because they had, like, food drives, and I’m all, man, when I was in grade seven, two girls from my class volunteered to participate during a school assembly featuring two guys from Quebec dressed up as bûcherons who were presenting French Canadian culture and used that moment to protest against clear-cutting; maybe you were left-wing for a suburban Toronto school, but don’t think that means you can compete in the Big Leagues, son, ‘cause you’d get your Nike-wearing, SUV-driving, fiscally-conservative-policy-endorsing ass torn apart.

Relativity’s getting more and more important in this self-obsessed century, too. Talk shows, books, magazines, they’re all going to “make you a better person”, “make you happier”, “make you buy this crap we’re selling in the vain hope that it will fill the gaping hole in your being that’s a result of our shallow, materialistic society that devalues human relationships in favor of the unsustainable production of consumer goods, all the while telling you that the latter can be as meaningful and fulfilling as the former”, and so on.

But there is some truth in there – we’re always changing, relative to ourselves. I’m not the person I was 20, 10 or two years ago. I’m not even the person I was five minutes ago, ‘cause that person was much, much hungrier and had a granola bar in her purse.

For real, though, as recently as grade 10, I was a staunch believer in the death penalty, only to have my carefully-crafted and life-experience-based belief turned upside down by a particularly compelling episode of The X-Files, back when that show rocked, which was through even the Mulder/Doggett switch of the eighth season, which should have been a show killer except for Mulder’s increasing weirdness/annoyingness and the subtle and effective “Scully as believer” motif, and which point it seems the creative staff went, hey, let’s try replacing the other one too!, and brought in Agent Whatsherface who was a terrible, terrible character, even if you don’t compare her to the divine Miss Scully.

One last time then – everything’s relative. It’s a little something I try to keep in mind; it helps me keep my sanity when the Conservatives go up in the polls, and I can tell myself, well, at least it’s not these guys. Or [shudder ] this guy.