Irreversible Changes

This article presents an extremely interesting concept. I'll let it speak for itself:

"Physicists call it entanglement, and it describes the state of two or more particles once they have interacted with one another. From then on, irrespective of time and space, a correlation will always exist between them. What happens to one will affect the other - even if they are now at opposite ends of the universe.

The word entanglement is really a misnomer. Some scientists use "non-separability" to describe the same condition. And the difference is significant. For if matter emerged from energy in the singularity of the big bang, it would seem to follow that all the particles of which it consists are in that state of correlation. They have not become entangled, but at the fundamental level they have never been - and can never be - separate."

What does this mean? I guess this would be a scientific interpretation of the idea that when people interact, a part of themselves is imprinted onto the other, and is carried on in that way. I've always held to the idea that you are the change you see in others. Basically, when you influence somone, and change them, they carry a piece of you with them. So, when you die, you are in fact carried on by all the people who remember you.

I used this when talking about the end of Blade Runner. At the end of the film, Roy bares his soul to Deckard, and it's almost like a piece of him moves into Deckard and lives on in Deckard's new understanding of the world, and the change he makes in his own life when he decides to be with Rachael and run away from the city. The concept was talked about jokingly in Seinfeld, when Jerry says (in reference to Susan), "She's not really dead if we find a way to remember her," leading to the creation of the Susan Ross foundation.

But, joking aside, I really believe that concept to be true. If you change someone's life, they carry a piece of you with them, and that's exactly what that article is talking about, the idea that each time we interact with someone, we become connected, and that connection never disappears. The whole of humanity is a web of connected people. We move through space and time, and make new connections, and when we die, those connections don't go away, since any interaction you have with people, changes both you and the other person.