"What's the title of a Goncharov
novel, 5 letters?" - "Oblom"
"Oblom", literally "breakage" - a
state of melancholy and general
disinclination for action.
(Russian slang, one of the meanings)
We consider here a model of life which describes such common spiritual
phenomena as "oblom" (lack of desire to act) and the general "life
sucks" feeling. Our present consideration is non-relativistic since our
life goes much slower than the speed of light, but we shall see that the
main equation of the theory is almost Lorentz-invariant.
Let x be a coordinate on the manifold of a person's life activities. We
will simply say that x is an activity of life. The fundamental fields of
our model are the non-oblom field n(x,t) and the sucking field s(x,t).
For a given activity x, the value of n(x,t) represents the amount of
non-oblom the person feels towards doing x at time t, and s(x,t) is,
roughly speaking, how much the activity x sucks. (Under "x sucks" we mean,
as it is convenient for our consideration, that the person feels bad about
the state of affairs with the activity x, where things are not satisfactory
at least in part because of the person's own mistakes or non-action; like
in the expression "life sucks".)
Now we can say that the "direction" of sucking is defined by the sucking
current vector
W := - Grad s(x,t).
(We denote vectors by capital lettering, and write `d' in partial
derivatives.)
The fundamental proposition of our theory of oblom sucking is that all
sucking activities suck non-oblom. This means that the amount of
non-oblom for an activity x changes with time as it is being sucked by
other nearby activities which signal trouble ("suck"). The mathematical
expression of this law is
dn
-- = - div W
dt
We define the oblom field
b(x,t) := - n(x,t),
and write the fundamental relation of oblom sucking as a conservation
law:
db
-- - div W = 0
dt
To make the dynamics of the system self-contained we need a second
relation between oblom and sucking, which should determine how the
amount of non-oblom one feels about doing an activity x influences the
state of affairs with this activity. We describe the evolution of s(x,t) by
the equation
ds
-- = b(x,t) + c(x,t)
dt
where we have introduced the "misfortune", or the "c'est la vie" function
c(x,t) which specifies how unfavorable the circumstances of life for an
activity x at time t are. If the person felt zero oblom (which is total
indifference) towards the activity x, then, as time passes, x would suck
more or less depending on the sign of c(x,t). The amount of misfortune
c(x,t) is likely to slowly fluctuate around zero, and is usually positive.
Now we have a closed system of equations, and solving for s(x,t) we get:
2
d s dc(x,t)
--- - div Grad s = ------- .
2 dt
dt
This is an inhomogeneous wave equation, and it can be solved for given
initial conditions and any source function c(x,t). This equation means that
the source of the sucking field is the misfortune function c(x,t) ("c'est
la vie"). We notice that the left-hand side of this equation is a Lorentz
invariant quantity. The right-hand side however contains an explicit time
derivative and is not Lorentz invariant. Essentially this expresses the
fact that one's misfortune doesn't seem the same if viewed from another
inertial viewpoint. But, as we will mention below, the function c(x,t)
varies slowly with time, so its time derivative can be sometimes neglected.
We will now consider some interesting integral characteristics of the
solutions of our dynamical equations. Firstly, we note that the manifold of
life activities of a given person is compact, so by the Gauss's theorem
/
| div Grad s dx = 0 .
/
It follows that
/
d | ds
-- | ( -- - c(x,t) ) dx = 0
dt | dt
/
and therefore we get a constant of motion
/
| ds /
| ( -- - c(x,t) ) dx = | b(x,t) dx = B = const .
| dt /
/
The quantity B, an integral of motion, is readily interpreted as the
total amount of oblom one feels in life. We see that this quantity is
constant throughout one's life and is determined by the initial conditions.
It is independent of, for instance, the "misfortune" function c(x,t).
Finally, we consider the total amount of sucking as a function of time
("how much one's life sucks"):
/
S(t) = | s(x,t) dx .
/
We easily obtain an equation for this function:
dS /
-- = B + | c(x,t) dx
dt /
If the "misfortune" function is approximately independent of time,
c(x,t) = c(x), we can solve this approximately to get
/
S(t) = ( B + | c(x) dx ) t + S(0) .
/
(The misfortune function c(x,t) has the same dimension as the oblom
function b(x,t), and is negligible in comparison with b(x,t) in most cases
of interest.)
We conclude that life sucks approximately linearly in time, increasing or
decreasing depending on the individual's total oblom B and to some
extent on one's total misfortune. Since our sensory system employs the
logarithmic scale, the subjective feeling of how life sucks is defined by
ln S(t) and is changing much slower than S(t).
An interesting effect is observed when the value of S(t) becomes negative
and is changing with time for example like this:
S(t) = - const * t .
Since the value of the logarithm of a negative number is complex, we can
say that the individual constantly experiences imaginary sensations which
are independent of time:
ln S(t) = ln |S(t)| + i * Pi ;
Im ln S(t) = const .
Moreover, if we look at the dynamics of the real part of one's subjective
feeling, we will notice that it grows with time, even though one's life
actually sucks less and less! This is, however, to be expected, since the
person's imaginary feelings are constantly interfering with her or his
perception of the situation.
I would like to express my gratitude to my friends: to Alexei Bogdanov, a
paragon of oblom, for initial inspiration and to Michael Domrachev, Igor
Manuilskiy, and Victor Lenderman for useful discussions.
