I love force, resistance, gravity, motion, physics even, although it doesn’t take much to leave me behind and “whoosh” over the top of my head. I love the physical world and how it relates to the spiritual, and all integrates to become a part of the human experience.
In people we can pretty much sum up our behavior as either the act of resisting or yielding. Force and motion. It’s a simplistic explanation, a bit like X’s and O’s on a computer, but that is pretty much what we do, we resist or we yield, to ideas, thoughts, forces of nature, and other people. We say yes or no. X or O.
I’m a bit lazy, so I prefer the yielding. Sure, we can probably figure out how to make water run uphill, but why? Isn’t it easier to just go with the flow? Shouldn’t we just work within nature, respect those forces and allow them to propel us forward? It’s a perspective that tends to lean more towards the female side of things.
There is still a time and place for resisting however, nor am I particularly compliant about, well, much of anything. What fascinates me however is that so much of our human nature seems to involve resisting the good things, the beneficial things, the positive. We’ll yield to the bad, cling to them fiercely even. In general however, what we tend to resist the most, is the good things. I have no idea why.
I do this frequently myself. For instance, I love to take a walk twice a day. It’s healthy, it’s pleasant, it keeps me in shape, it gives me time to myself. The moment I go to do it however, inertia strikes! Talk about resistance lining up against me, both within and without. While I am busy trying to talk myself out of doing something I enjoy, someone will have hidden my shoes and the phone will ring. Seriously, no joke here, trying to get out of my house can be a major challenge. It is as if the entire universe has conspired against me and unleashed some physical forces I haven’t even heard of.
For those who don’t know, inertia is “the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion, including changes to its speed and direction. It is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at constant velocity.”
It is the bane of my existence.
Also, “velocity” doesn’t necessarily mean speed, as in fast, it’s simply a measurement of something moving and what direction it is traveling in. A turtle or snail creeping along could be said to have a velocity, I suppose, although that does sound a bit ridiculous.
Inertia really drives me crazy, in myself and in other people. We tend to like to stay the course, even subconsciously, even when we know it doesn’t work. They like to say the definition of insanity is doing the same darn thing over and over again and expecting different results, and yet that is frequently the very nature of human beings.
Sometimes it is a simple matter of, “since you now have a head ache, perhaps you should just stop banging your head on that wall?” Nothing is ever that simple however, not if it has to do with people. We are often just too smart for our own good.
And sometimes, if we bang our heads on that brick wall long enough, it does indeed come tumbling down. God willing.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
I think the reason we have so much resistance toward the good things, is because most good things in life take effort.
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Good point. Most good things take some effort š
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Like a lot of concepts, inertia can be used for good or bad when it comes to behaviour. For instance when you get going in the direction of God, you tend to continue in that direction without any thought or reason. This can be a good thing. In fact we have been constructed to get positive feedback when we are doing the correct physical things – i.e. our bodies produce serotonin when we exert energy regularly and for extended periods of time. Serotonin is a runners high – it produces euphoria and is addictive. What better motivator to do what is right for your body than to get a natural high?
When I was the Safety Director of a fuel tanker company, we used to train new drivers for about 4 weeks with an experienced driver who was chosen for his skill and teaching ability (and desire to train). Aside from teaching skills, the main thrust was to teach good habits – habits that had been described by the industry over decades of accident and incident analysis. the purpose of those habits was to make sure that should anything unexpected happen that the resultant damage and injuries were minimized. As an example, it was a habit to remain next to the shut off valves when fuel was unloading. The valves are spring loaded and constructed so that one tap on the lever shuts the valve completely and instantaneously. 999 times out of 1,000 there was no emergency – but that 1 time out of 1,000 the driver had to shut down the flow immediately. We had a trainer, Barry, who was excellent with the trainees. he stressed good habits and quickly corrected any trainee who wandered from strict adherence to good habits. He would fail any driver who could not catch on. One otherwise unremarkable day, Barry was delivering at a local gas station with his trainee. They had a new tanker (which are worth about $250,000 each – so one would expect quality construction) and were unloading when a pipe gasket burst spraying gasoline across the parking lot. Barry was standing right beside the valve and struck it and it slammed closed. He had the spill containment material out quickly and stopped the gas from going into a nearby sewer (a really, really bad thing as explosive fumes can surface in residences). to make a long story shorter, he did everything exactly right and had the option to do so because he was standing exactly where he was trained to stand. Good habits.
And so it is, I find, with God. Do what you are supposed to do and make it a habit and inertia will work in your favor. So when asked why you do what you do, the answer is simply because it is what i do.
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Hey Paul
Love some of the things you said as you put them in ways that just caused them to make sense. inertia does indeed to apply to our spiritual lives as well as physical bodies. And that analogy to workplace habits was right on. I am a Lead Trainer for a Satellite TV provider and all that I and my trainers do is geared towards developing habits that the guys don’t even have to think about; they are, as you said, just what they do.
Service to God is….just what we should do. It shouldn’t even be part of our thought process. I know in houses across the nation, people actually get up on Sunday morning and ask, “Hey..we going to church today?” Nobody would even think to ask that in our house, as it would be an absurd question. It is just what we do.
Conversely and sadly, bad habits can have inertia also, as once the train of finding excuses to not serve gets rolling, it is almost impossible to stop.
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Thanks Wally. What you say is very true – bad habits also have inertia. You know when we hired experienced fuel drivers, it presented w hole slew of different problems – breaking them of bad habits became an issue. It was an issue because the regular trainers did not feel comfortable downgrading experienced fuel drivers who they had worked with for years (it was a small community – about 120 drivers hauling from Ottawa). A lot of the strength was gained from the sharing of information between drivers and the trainers did not want to jeopardize that by “ratting out” experienced drivers who joined us. For that reason i would do ride-alongs randomly with new hires to check their habits and do follow up if it was deemed necessary. Still, you are exactly right Wally – bad habits are a problem and their inertia is hard to change – both in the physical and spiritual worlds.
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In the military, we put it this way: we fight the way we train. Hence, to win we need realistic and frequent training. Of course, when the politicians want to cut the budget, where do you think they want to start?
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Oh yeah, Tom, that was a constant battle – because everyone sees training as just a cost so it is the first to go. They quickly forget the incidents like Barry’s where the training likely meant saving a million dollar claim (if the gas had gotten into the sewer, the whole area would have had to have been evacuated for fear that the fumes would permeate the residences and our insurance would have been on the hook even though we did not cause the problem). You know this whole thing of placing value only on revenue generation has an insidious side – it becomes so ingrained that we don’t even notice when we give training and safety a second place until something blows up (perhaps literally). It is a race where safety is always trying to play catch up. I had a very operations oriented boss ( good guy – just very revenue focused). We used to get into some dandy arguments and, as the Safety Director, i was always fighting to maintain ground. We had a tanker that had one safety valve broken in the open position. These valves are seated just inside the tank and are hard to access. they are designed to be maintenance free, so when one broke it had to be replaced, it couldn’t be fixed. This meant taking the tanker out of service, then using a special service to remove any hint of gas fumes from the compartment (expensive and time consuming) and then lowering a mechanic down inside the tank to replace the valve (the mechanics least favorite thing to do). Anyway, this valve doesn’t interfere with operations, and is designed to protect the tank in case a car or fixed object cuts off the piping that leads to the delivery valve. Anyway, all the driver complaints used to come to me and this had been reported a number of times and never seemed to get fixed. It was the mechanics’ job to remove the trailers from service for repair. So I went to see them and asked why this issue was not being addressed. They explained that my boss had told them to let it go as the trailer was still operational – although not safe in case of an accident. I tromped into my boss’s office and lit into him. I accused him of putting safety second – which he denied. I then told him that if the trailer valve had been broken closed, which would be an operational issue as the tank could not be unloaded, but not a safety issue – he would have had the trailer off the road and repaired within a day. But because the valve was broken open – then it was safety issue and not an operational issue and now the trailer had gone a full week on his authority without being repaired. Obviously operations was more important than safety. He took the trailer off the road and had it fixed.
It is that insidious acceptance of the inertia of daily activities as being “what we have always done”, that is physically dangerous and spiritually dangerous. And reducing training and good habit formation is a fool’s errand.
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I really like this, both because it relates to physics and spirituality, and also because it relates to my own state of motion, or more precisely lack of motion. Inertia, or in human case forgetfulness of the good, is everyday struggle, including walking. But I also find fascinating that everything I see in physics I also see its counterpart in metaphysics. What keeps me in the state of The Fall, like any other object, is the force of inertia. From a metaphysical point of view we humans contain within us the totality of cosmos, the good and the evil; we can easily fall under our inertia, but we can also transcend that inertia and become more like God. The inert object cannot do that. Inertia in physics has to do with the mass of objects; in our case it has to do with the ego and its desire to be at the center of the universe in abundant comfort. The more we cut off from this ego, the less massive we become, and hence the less inertia we have, and thus the easier to transcend the state of fall. We’re born on the ceiling and we fall onto our death, but who is to learn flying in midair?
There is this Indian myth about the this bird called Homa; they say it lives really really high in the sky and hatches its eggs up there (on the clouds!) When the baby birds break out of the egg they fall down toward the earth; they have to learn flying before they hit the ground to their demise. This story always reminds me of human condition and its spiritual destiny. Well, I can talk the talk, but walking the walk? Beats me; I could hit the ground at any moment. God forbid š
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Well said. I love the myth about the birds. It is like that, isn’t it? Good point about the mass of ego, too. That made me laugh, it puts a new spin on the frequent need to lighten up. When we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we don’t get weighed down in too much ego. That’s kind of important if you’re trying to fly! š
I’ve actually been pondering the fall and paradise, paradise lost. It’s not really “lost,” it’s right there within reach, at least somewhat, and yet so many people resist. Pulling closer to God brings it within sight at least, even when poorly done.
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Very interesting…..
Thanks for sharing š
My only additional comment is that we have to learn when to resist, and when to “go with the flow”. Sometimes the time will be right for one or the other and we need lots of discernment from above to know how to find the balance, and how to respond correctly, because our response really does count.
Our mission used to have a logo that portrayed a salmon going upstream and it read “Go against the flow”. I liked that.
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The terminology ‘good’ or ‘bad’ asks (no; screams!) for a definition. It suggests that these are well-defined catagories. In fact they get their definition from whomever gives it to them. In this case the indirect suggestion is that the bible gives the correct definition of them. That disturbs me a bit, for it seems a bit assuming to me.
About the inertia: that is strongly recognizable on this side: I literally can’t get my limbs moving (like a kind of mental epilepsy takes over). I don’t know if that is what you mean.
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Ah, the key words. I’m afraid to admit that I tend to be on the inertia side – but not always. I was resisting against going to Bible study last night, but after 3 text messages, I agreed and got ready to go. I’m very glad that I did.
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