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cycles.html
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Cycles</title>
<meta name="description" content="And their interplay">
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<body>
<h3>Cycles</h3>
<p>We are in the midst of cycles, varying in frequencies.</p>
<p>
Each day our body cycles through the Circadian rhythm. A day being the time it
took Earth to complete one revolution. Our bodies evolved to this beat, and now
the processes inside dance to this rhythm.
</p>
<p>
By the time the Moon revolves around the Earth twelve times, the Earth has
revolved around the Sun once. We call this a year.
</p>
<p>
Many social cycles are based around a year, and it also illustrates that not
only does the frequency but the phase matters; seasons are but phase shifts.
</p>
<p>
A cycle within a cycle is just two cycles whose phases happen to coincide at
zero crossings. They're common within music. A guitarist soloes around the
fretboard to reach the bass note at the same time as the bass player, the
arrival at both coinciding with the drummer's kick drum.
</p>
<p>
You might think two cycles are not enough, but they are. The Chinese label each
year using two interlocked cycles – a cycle of 12 animals, and a cycle of 5
elements. Both run independently, but the two are enough to label uniquely label
each year in roughly a human lifetime, 60 years. Most people will live to see
most combinations only once, and not more than twice, making each year in their
life have a memorable name, and a tint of its own.
</p>
<p>
By the way, this year's is the year of the Wood Snake: A year to shed old
patterns, embrace new possibilities, and foster resilience in the face of
challenges.
</p>
<p>
A human lifetime is but one in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth that we
experience according to the Hindu tradition. Not just people though; the
universe itself cycles through <em>Kalpa</em>s. Each kalpa is the universe
getting created, hanging around for a while, and then being destroyed, similar
to the theories of cyclic exapansion and contraction that some astronomers
believe our universe follows.
</p>
<p>
This similarity is not a coincidence, because there eventually are only three
options. Either things have a start and an end; or only a start; or are timeless
– and in the latter two cases, cycles are to be expected. Nothing prevents it
from being the first case too, but it certainly would seem a bit ad-hoc if it
really was as isolated occurence, happening once, and <em>only</em> once, in the
void of nothingness.
</p>
<hr>
<p>
Whether or not the universe cycles through kalpas, even within the realm of a
single kalpa, cycles still abound. They're what make each day, each year, each
lifetime unique. With just a few cycles we experience each moment as a unique
creation, and with so many cycles going on in the same time, it's no wonder
Heraclitus was not able to step in the same river twice, or why the Japanese
have a word <i>ichigo ichie</i> to refer to the uniqueness of each cup of tea:
the host is different, the guest is different, the place is different, the water
is different, sometimes so is the tea, the season is different, and the sun is
in a different place in the sky.
</p>
<p>
If God is running a procedural map generator, he certainly doesn't need too many
cycles to interplay for making each run of the game a different one.
</p>
<footer>
<p>
<small><i>
Manav Rathi<br>
Feb 2025
</i></small>
</p>
<p><small>
I also wrote about the <a href="/complex-exponentials">math</a> of cycles.
</small></p>
</footer>
</body>
</html>