intensity

originally written February 28, 2025

imagine an infinitely long hallway in zero gravity. near one end is a floating hyperdense ball of water. the air in the hallway is perfectly dry. through diffusion, water begins to evaporate off of the ball and spread out into the hallway, making its way toward the opposite end. one could map this diffusion; we’d see an emanating gradient, most intense at the origin and decreasing with further distance.

with a molecular model of the air, the gradation is never perfect. i want a perfect gradient. so i smooth out the air — i clash the molecules together — the flour becomes a smooth paste even before touching water — and the air achieves perfect consistency.

smooth air means no space for the in between. where does the water go? through the air, still, it goes. the two are thoroughly blended.

a troubling question coarises with the blending of water and air, namely, must the water not instantaneously reach the other end of the hallway? the question arises because we recreate a (bastardized) version of zeno’s paradox in this situation. if the water is allowed an intermediate point x at any slice of time t, then the presence of a boundary (between water and not-water) is implied. in the atomic world, this poses no problem, but in the smooth world, any rigid boundary is a cosmic threat. one can zoom in forever and forever and there will always be a smooth transition from one point to the next. therefore, there can never be intermediate points at intermediate times.

have i discovered that which is faster than light: water? have i discovered instantaneous communication? no. we must accept the troubling answer to the troubling question: the water was everywhere in the hallway, occupying an always, starting from Already and ending at Never.

and yet the air is still perfectly dry.

the paradoxes of the stoics’ cosmos are heart-wrenchingly beautiful. water, water everywhere, yet perfect dryness.

the paradox becomes weirder yet at the boundary between the ball of water and air around it. (i’m looking at a frozen picture of the hallway before the diffusion starts.) although there is no theoretical issue with the waterball being totally separate from its surrounding environment, for non-atomistic smoothness can still be maintained in a world where distinct entities face one another in opposition, this cosmos of separates is depressing, stale, and smells overwhelmingly of death (but not of decay). if the water stood opposite the air, then i am only ever your acquaintance and never your friend; the magic of gradients and transitions never takes hold; all bodies are Bodies and all Bodies are bodies and it’s all just so boring. there is still the possibility for movement, even action, but never intimacy. decay and diffusion, arising and ceasing — these facilitate the magic of things. thus, the boundary between ball and air is also a gradient. yet, if it is a gradient, then how could the air possibly be dry? this is the paradox.

the air can be dry if we stop considering water as an element and start considering it as a form. the air contains the channels necessary for the movement of water, but ones which are not channels in the way pipes are channels, namely, channels by shape or capacity, nor in the way that blood is a channel for nutrients, namely, a channel by medium, but in the way that a pond is a channel for ripples or a stadium crowd is a channel for the “wave” of raised arms, namely a channel of material. stoic material is never to be confused with the formless matter of aristotle or the primary substance of spinoza, locke, and so on. the form is the water.

there are, instead of substance or matter, elements. these elements are that which permeate all corners of the globe in perfect smoothness. and it is true that the element is separate from the aforementioned “form” (like that of water — or rather, like water). but we have done more than perform a simple arithmetic operation on aristotelian form and matter, pushing them underground with a basic transformation. while form is distinct from element, the relationship between elements is not one of opposition, but one of mixture or blending.

in other words, form is not imposed on the elements. the elements, in their arrangements and mixtures, blends and states of affairs, give rise to form — and form is substance.

water is the formal expression of a certain blend of elements. somewhere — but not at some point — between the gradient boundary of ball of water and the air around it, the mixture of elements stops being considered water. and the air beyond that somewhere — but not beyond any point — is therefore dry.

these wave-channels immanently permeate the air. unfreezing our picture, we get the water beginning to diffuse outwards. what a pretty sight it is.

i used to think that the stoics thought of bodies as a swirling mixture of opposing entities whose size approached the infinitely small and whose behaviors approached the infinitesimally minute. in the same way that for functional purposes, a mathematical limit can often be treated as the value it approaches, i assumed that with such a swirling mixture, it functionally served as a thorough blending of bodies. but it does not. if bodies are allowed to oppose each other and create borders, the magic falls apart. a single body cannot be allowed form; its being must be formless. the distinction between force and matter must not be allowed to surface, for if it does, we lose the generative power of bodies and we return matter to its dark coffin. the canonical stoic bodies — the four elements (fire, water, earth, air), a few forces, and whatnot — are present everywhere and nowhere. they are as much force as they are matter. only this way can simultaneous movement across the cosmos be possible. (and it must be possible, for bodies do not cause effects on one another and instead participate in some metacoordinated universal dance.)

* * *

the arising and ceasing of phenomena to our consciousness leads freud to believe that there is a large and latent part of our psyche underwater. in this part, Tendency and Memory dwell. how else could new (conscious) phenomena spring up in ways that are consistent with past ones? the latent storehouse surfaces subtle activity at all times, while abovewater effects constantly move out of the field of view and back down below. but i’m inclined to think there is no such thing as the subconscious. the first clue to this is that, in the practice of sati (skt. smrti, “mindfulness”) an experienced meditator is able to direct their awareness at every dhamma-moment (skt. dharma) without missing a single one, such that there is no difference between the present and the conscious present and no subconscious tendency escapes unnoticed.

as in the yogacara alaya-vijñana (skt., “warehouse consciousness”), the store of karmic seeds is not “within” any psyche. as ontologically imprecise as the phrase is, owing to its reifying of an inner/outer distinction, i find it better to say that the seeds are “out there”. any “subconscious” effects playing out in the present moment are not subconscious at all, but merely low-intensity phenomena, and the subject has not developed their awareness enough to recognize them.

the subject’s field of view is speckled with gradients of intensity. some points, like a tv playing or a tree swaying in the strong winds, might draw the attention more, their intensities higher, with more singularities of sense coalescing at those points, whereas other points, like the cup of drying drink sitting on the side table, might lose the attention, if ever the attention was there at all.

these intensities are entirely immanent within the objects and do not necessarily correspond with the intensities of mixtures of elements present within the object, although i am very curious about the relation and do not have a satisfying answer yet. a raging fire certainly has an intense presence of the fire element, and is also sure to capture anyone’s attention. but a cup of water often goes unnoticed. these karmic intensities are deleuzean through and through. while all material — all being — speaks in one and the same voice, differentiating itself only through changes in blending (i.e., mixture), all consciousness speaks in an infinity of voices, each completely different in kind yet somehow blending into the next without any problem.

consciousness tosses the univocal responsibility to being so that it can be free. in a way, it feels wrong even to say that conscious intensities manifest in an infinity of kinds, because kind implies a level of substantiality; and the quasi-causes have none. they are so far at the limit of non-being that it takes all of one’s energy to not call them a pure zero. yet it’s the infinitesimal Stuff that’s left over that grants the world and all its inhabitants life.