I had a TIL-style realization recently that keeps unfolding the more I sit with it, or it sits with me (after a long Wikipedia-binge). I can barely wrap my head around it, but I’m paraphrasing…
What we call a “human body” — or any “body,” any “object” — doesn’t really exist as a single, standalone thing. It exists simultaneously in multiple “fields.” ‘Fermion’ fields (electrons, quarks). ‘Gauge’ fields (electromagnetic, strong). The ‘Higgs’ field. ‘Gravity’ too, if we want to call it a field at all. An “individual” isn’t an essence or a core object so much as a structure — a stable, self-maintaining ‘pattern’ that happens to persist across shared fields.
And then there’s space. Or rather, the lack of it as a “thing.”
Space isn’t a ‘substance’ or a ‘container’ “everything” sits inside. Spacetime is better understood as a ‘relational’ structure — the framework in which fields are defined, and which itself evolves. It can curve, stretch, ripple. It isn’t separate from physics because it’s part of what physics describes. Gravity, in that sense, isn’t a force acting within spacetime. Gravity is spacetime responding to mass–energy. The geometry itself changing. That still feels radical every time I think about it.
Taken together, it means humans — like all objects — are temporary, self-maintaining patterns of excitation in multiple fields that exist everywhere spacetime exists. Reality isn’t embedded in something deeper; it’s relational. Identity isn’t a fixed thing either. It’s a pattern of relations holding together over time.
This is where a lot of the old intuitions fall apart (like I guess all things eventually).
There’s no ‘absolute’ motion, only motion ‘relative’ to something else. No absolute position, only relative position. Time doesn’t pass at a single universal rate — it depends on velocity and gravity. Energy depends on reference frame. Temperature only makes sense when systems are in equilibrium (which is not “nothing is happening” — it’s “nothing is changing overall.”). Even particles aren’t isolated little objects with intrinsic essence. A particle is the observable response of a quantum field to a specific interaction — a probe. It’s a repeatable behavior in interaction, not a thing waiting patiently to be seen.
Observation itself isn’t neutral. To observe is to interact. There is no detached, external vantage point. Knowledge always costs energy. Measurement always participates.
Every observer moves along a different spacetime path, interacts with different fields, carries different histories. Each samples reality from a genuinely unique perspective. Relativity didn’t just ‘tell’ us that time dilates or lengths contract, it ‘told’ us there is no privileged frame hiding behind the scenes. No universal reference point that gets to declare itself “the real one.”
And that’s where the thought that keeps sticking with me comes in.
Reality is kind of anarchist as fuck.
Not in the sense of chaos or anything-goes subjectivity, but in a structural sense. There’s no cosmic authority. No preferred viewpoint. No intrinsic hierarchy. The laws of physics don’t “rule” — they ‘constrain’ and ‘coordinate’. They’re more like compatibility rules than rulers. Translation between perspectives matters more than obedience to any single frame.
Order emerges without command. Structure persists without a central planner. Coordination happens locally, relationally, everywhere at once.
The universe works because nothing is in charge.
No wonder reality feels subjective sometimes. It isn’t arbitrary, it’s relational.