Matter is a great word. It can be both a noun or a verb, and not just any run of the mill noun or verb. It is a very strong noun and and just as strong as a verb. As a “matter” of fact, there may not be another word with as much weight as matter, Even though matter is, of course, weightless. But it does carry a lot of weight.
Matter, as a noun, has a variety of meanings and uses. First and foremost, it is the definition of everything. Now, that’s pretty important. As we have been told, everything in the universe is made up of “matter”, but even more so, everything that is not composed of matter is actually made up of an anti-matter or dark matter, that does not have the same material existence as matter, but, even still, matters just as much.
If you are looking for a more personal relationship with the word, it can also be used to mean something that is troubling you, or “on your mind”. “What’s the matter?” signifies that something -the matter- is not sitting right with you and is, in fact, causing you enough consternation that it has become a “matter”, i.e. something that is wrong. In fact, as pertains to this usage of the word, matter is always used to describe something negative; the matter at hand is usually, if not always, something conflictive and dangerous, not a matter of positivity and good.
It’s hard to escape the moral judgement that our traditional usage of language implies. Brightness, goodness and positivity vs. darkness, wickedness and negativity. If something is the matter, it’s a troubling thing. But in thee world of science, matter just is. It has no value, real or perceived. Or does it? What about all this “dark matter” that is supposedly out there interspersed with, yet separate from, the regular matter? Is it dark because we can’t see it, or is it dark in a sinister, shadowy, invisible way, like cancer or lead poisoning?
Governments, corporations and scientists have spent billions of dollars constructing massive machines whose intent is to detect the most minuscule evidence of the presence and essential qualities of dark matter, so it must be pretty important. Miles of pipes infused with tiny ultra sensitive sensors in order to detect a trace of something that is there but isn’t.
Dark is such matter, as is the night. Some ancient peoples believed that when night fell, it actually did fall down from the sky and envelop them in a frighteningly pernicious veil that you must protect yourself from, hence the term nightfall. I don’t know if the night has gotten any safer, but neither has the daytime. There always seems to be something the matter.
Many people have been saying lately that dark matter isn’t really something that matters, but that black lives have not seemed to matter much and that is something that needs to change. For them, the people that we have paid and entrusted with keeping us safe in the night, from the night, have in fact been agents of danger and imposers of harm themselves.
Black Lives Matter, as a name for a group or organized movement, is, unfortunately, but not that importantly, grammatically incorrect. For, as black is the adjective that describes the lives, what the phrase textually means is that lives that are black matter, rather than that the lives of Black people matter. What is a black life, if we take it not to mean the life of a Black person? Which brings up an interesting question. Does matter live? And, if so, does it even matter?
Perhaps beings live and matter just is. But how can something that makes up everything, makes it something that can be alive, not be alive itself? Thus, the intersection of science and philosophy, and perhaps cosmology and theology, not to mention geology since rocks really do matter more than you think, brings to light these questions that perhaps are not meant to be answered but simply pondered. Ponder matter, and we become nothing more than matterponderers, and what good does that do us?
Suffice it to say that within each biome, micro and macro, and throughout the megabiome that is made up of all the biomes, matter is there to make the whole thing a thing. Whether this matters or not is for each person to decide, or, more often than not, not to ponder at all. Essentially, if something matters to us, it seems a very difficult task to make it not matter, and vice versa, many people give their all in making something matter to others that previously went unnoticed or had no importance to them. Perhaps, as such, we should leave the matter alone. Our hearts don’t need supercolliders to tell us what matters, or what matter does, or how it reacts. Unless those machines can tell us how some things come to matter and some things don’t.
I mean, if there are any scientists left after the next budget gets passed, and they do conclusively prove the existence and import of dark matter. is that something that will really matter to you? Maybe in understanding the Big Bang, but what about understanding right now? Perhaps there is a correlation between the scientific inquiry into this subject and the sociological changes occurring currently. The interest and progress in exploring dark matter has coincided with the progress in placing equal value on everybody’s life, i.e. black, brown, gay, trans, etc. Perhaps the connection is that 1. there is an anti-matter which isn’t exactly anti at all, because it’s actually been doing the work all along. It makes possible a little thing called existence. And 2. People that are not straight white males, meaning previously subservient creatures, hell they’ve been doing all the work this whole time too! They’re even full-fledged people too, just like Bob over there.
Whatever the connection, what I hope can come out of all this, perhaps, is a name change for everything that matters. No more light matter, dark matter, black lives, blue lives, etc. It’s time to take the judgmental connotations out of the color scale. For if this anti-matter has been hidden, it doesn’t mean that it’s dark, it just means that maybee you weren’t looking for it the right way. And as a matter of fact, everybody has a life and they should be valued equally and that’s what matters. Just because it’s white doesn’t mean it sparkles and shines. And just because it’s dark doesn’t mean it’s evil and sinister. That’s what matters.
THE MOSSY BOG 