abolitionmedia

2025-07-13 16:00:51

3 Postscripts 3 IV.- Of Cats and Boxes

A paradox of Schrödinger’s paradox

Erwin Schrödinger (Austria-Ireland. 1887-1966), who seems to have been not very fond of house cats, proposed a theoretical exercise for quantum physics.

The approach is simple, although its implications are very complex. A cat has been placed inside a box. The box has a device that, with no definite time, releases a sort of lethal mechanism and the cat will die. Since the box is airtight, it is not known whether the cat is still alive or has already perished. Once the box is opened, one possibility or the other is proven. The previous moment, when we do not know if it is alive or dead, suggests that there are two worlds or two simultaneous universes. In one the cat is already dead, in the other it is still alive. A mortal mechanism activated and not activated; a cat alive and dead at the same time; a superposition of states according to quantum physics.

Let’s leave aside, for now, the references to comic book multiverses and the consequences in quantum physics. Let us also leave aside Don Schördinger’s animosity towards cats, and that he obviously did not know much about those felines (anyone who has dealt with them knows that they would not let themselves be caught, much less allow themselves to be locked up, without protesting and without defending themselves -even more so if it is a… cat-dog-). Let’s also not take too much notice that the cat is imprisoned and condemned to death, unless someone sees fit to open the box when the lethal mechanism has not been activated, and the cat jumps out and frees itself from the prison.

This theoretical exercise is supposed to be a basis for showing that worlds in several universes are possible, that is, in a multiverse (although it is also to show that the laws of quantum physics do not apply in everyday life).

As far as my limited knowledge of comics allows me, I understand that, in those diverse worlds, the individual still prevails, but in different versions. In one world, Sheldon Cooper (TV series “The Big Bang Theory”), is a scientist with social problems. In another, he is an irredeemable womanizer. In another, he is a “popular” judge in Mexico’s judicial system (oh, I know, my perversity is sublime).

And this digression that, I hope, is perplexing, comes to the topic, or point supposedly that even with the imaginative capacity to raise the simultaneous existence of the living cat and the dead cat, the possibility (or the universe) of there being one or several cats that refuse to enter the box is not raised. And perhaps with the aggravating factor that the supposed cat is actually a cat-dog.

In pointing out some possibilities, others are omitted.

When talking about the capitalist system, the different proposals refer to what they can do to improve the conditions of the cat locked in the trap, to lengthen its life (or its chances of life), or to “humanize” the lethal device.

It is, shall we say, what progressivism is all about. Definition of progressivism? Well, those who are leftists until the eve of taking office and having a position, office, pay, well, then. Then they stop being leftist, they become the establishment, and disguise their pragmatism (which leads them to ally and join their enemies of the eve -and to distance themselves from their social past-), as “political realism.” It is, then, a capital-friendly left. That is to say, a “cool”, pretty, demure and blushing right wing.

In this case, progressivism promises, on the eve of the event, to free the cat from its prison. Then, because he cannot or will not do it, he “changes” his proposal: “I will make you more comfortable”; “I will get better conditions for your death”; “I will fight so that the lethal mechanism does not activate too quickly.” Or, he may instead urge the prisoner to hang on, since he has a 50% chance of temporarily surviving. Imprisoned, yes, but alive.

-*-

The capitalist system is that box. Inside it, multitudes wait, without knowing it, for the murderous mechanism to be activated. Wars, famines, “natural” catastrophes, violent assaults, assassinations, governmental arbitrariness, destructions that will have to solve the enigma: “to live or to die.”

In the box there are those who have the crime of being a woman, boy or girl, young, old, other, dark-skinned, native, with a foreign language in their own land, and so on. No matter their condition, gender, race, ideology, religion, manner, stature, physical complexion: that person is inside the box and is subject to those deadly laws.

Not only without the possibility of getting out, but also without even imagining that another world exists out there.

The option to delay death or improve the conditions of condemnation is submission and acceptance to be part of the showcase of “weird things” that the system exhibits for its own amusement. Woman, Non-binary person, Native, Race, Neighborhood, Nationality, every “oddity” has its place in the curiosity store if it behaves “well.” If not, well, the “invisible hand of the market” will pull the exterminating lever.

Example: the crime of being born, growing up and fighting in Palestinian lands is not to accept being part of the showcase of capital. And to resist and rebel against the machine. The machine wants a recreational center in Gaza and Palestinian civilization is in its way, the Palestinian people are fighting for a land to live in.

Palestine is the best example of the terminal crisis of the so called “Nation States” and their governments. They do not command, they only obey at convenience. They are incapable of presenting an independent, dignified and consistent foreign policy.

And in the ongoing mass murder, the complicity and neglect of the governments of the planet (with a few exceptions), is pathetic. The police of the different European and American governments repressing the demonstrations for the cessation of the genocide in Palestine, are the best oratory about Western “humanism”.

In the world above, European governments are the idle and useless court of the reigning king, Russia and China are the counts and dukes conspiring for regicide, and offering an alternate monarch. The rest of the national governments in the world, except for those who have clearly spoken out against it, are the busy pages, stressed by the continuous demands and harassments of the royal family.

Who are those that contemplate, operate, have fun and make bets on what happens in the box? The big financial, commercial, industrial and, now, digital and aerospace capital.

The governments of the world, for the most part, are just the ticket-takers of the bets, the “brokers” on the stock exchanges where the wars are always up, and life below… down. And, as the Mileis of the world are and will be, they are the ones who are sent to buy and serve the wine that will preside over the monarchic banquets (the chainsaw is an autochthonous detail).

-*-

However, there are those who consider another possibility: not to enter the box or to get out of it.

Moreover, there are those who question the box itself, its eternal and omnipotent existence; and its claim to be the only universe that tolerates the existence, within itself, of diversity, of several universes or multiverses… domesticated.

Those people who are posing that are what we Zapatistas call “resistance and rebellion.” Resistance to enter the box or, if you are inside, Rebellion to fight to get out.

Resistance and Rebellion that proposes the destruction of the box, of the logic that created it and of the belief that “something else” is not possible.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain
July 2025.

Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on July 7th, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.

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#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

3 posdatas 3 IV.- DE GATOS Y CAJAS. (oh, lo sé.  Había dicho que eran 3 posdatas 3, pero… ¿no eran 4 los Tres Mosqueteros? … ok, ok, ok, mentí: no son 3, son …)

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