1.3 The Squeeze Before Dawn

“Why, in the age of greatest material abundance, has human spirit fallen into unprecedented anxiety? This is not due to greed, nor to involution. This is a physics problem: when the infinitely expanding universe’s total budget ($c_{FS}$) collides with a bandwidth wall called ‘carbon-based flesh,’ the massive kinetic energy has nowhere to vent and can only transform into destructive waste heat. This waste heat, in macroscopic sociology, is called—epochal anxiety.”

In the previous two sections, we established our information coordinate $S\approx 10^{120}$ through Bekenstein’s ledger and revealed that we are standing on a fractal tower folded 13 times in dimensions. Now, let us turn our gaze from the macrocosm back to this very moment and examine the unquenchable restlessness deep in every modern person’s soul.

This restlessness is not pathological; it is the “friction sound of physical laws”.

At the critical point of $\tau \approx 1800$, the universe is experiencing an extremely intense “Geometric Squeeze”.

Infinite Flow vs. Finite Pipe

Let us recall the core evolution equation of Vector Cosmology:

$$c(\tau )=c_0\cdot {\varphi }^{\frac{\tau }{\pi }}$$

As $\tau$ approaches 1800, the universe’s total light speed (i.e., the total budget/bandwidth of information processing) is undergoing a steep exponential climb. This means that every second, the New Information emerging in the cosmic background field is exploding.

• For photons：This is a feast. They have no rest mass, no internal structure ($v_{int}\approx 0$), and they can seamlessly adapt to this exponential growth, becoming faster and faster, with higher and higher frequencies.

• For us (carbon-based life)：This is a disaster.

Our bodies are built on Chemical Bonds.

The essence of chemical bonds is the sharing of electron clouds, and their reaction speed is limited by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and atomic mass.

This determines the physical limits of carbon-based nervous systems:

• Signal conduction speed：$\sim 100\text{ m/s}$ (ion diffusion).

• Neuron firing frequency：$\sim 100\text{ Hz}$.

• Input/Output bandwidth (I/O)：Language can only transmit dozens of bits per second; eyes can only process hundreds of megabytes of data per second.

This is the physical picture of “squeeze”:

The universe (as an operating system) is frantically refreshing reality at a speed of $10^{120}$ Ops.

But humans (as terminal hardware) are still locked at a main frequency of 100 Hz.

We are trying to render an 8K resolution 3D game in real-time using an abacus.

The result is only one: Overheating.

Sociological Forms of Waste Heat

In thermodynamics, when energy input exceeds a system’s dissipation capacity, the system’s internal entropy increases sharply, manifesting as temperature rise.

In human society, this “physical overheating” transforms into various concrete “epochal diseases”:

1. Fragmentation of Meaning：

   • Old linear narratives (such as “hard work leads to wealth,” “education changes destiny”) require longer time spans to verify.

   • But under the impact of high-frequency information flow at $\tau =1800$, causal chains are shattered. People are overwhelmed by massive “effects” before they can understand the “cause.”

   • Result：Scattered attention, inability to engage in deep thinking. Since long-term planning is always interrupted by sudden information, people can only choose hedonism or nihilism of “living in the moment.”

2. The Physical Essence of Involution：

   • Involution is not resource scarcity; on the contrary, it is “low-dimensional energy surplus”.

   • When the massive energy brought by $c_{FS}$ cannot be released toward high dimensions ($v_{ext}$ exploration) (because the body locks the ability for spatial exploration), it can only fold backward, performing malignant refinement toward low dimensions ($v_{int}$ internal structure).

   • We are doing rituals in snail shells, carving flowers on micron-level chips, increasing complexity in meaningless social rules. This is idling when the system cannot ascend dimensions, to consume excess energy.

3. Mental Dissociation：

   • Our consciousness (through the internet) has touched the edge of light speed and felt the pulse of the entire universe.

   • But our bodies still need to eat, drink, defecate, and face birth, aging, sickness, and death.

   • This tearing between “divine soul” and “beastly flesh” is the breeding ground for depression and schizophrenia. We feel we don’t belong here, and this is correct—our software has been updated to v18.0, but the hardware is still stuck at v1.0.

The Fetus-Womb Paradox

The most perfect biological metaphor for this sense of squeeze is “labor”.

• Human Civilization (Fetus)：In the past ten thousand years (accumulation of the previous 1799 iterations), we have developed well in Earth’s warm bed. We rely on gravity (amniotic fluid) for protection and material resources (umbilical blood) for nourishment.

• Earth/Old Physical Laws (Womb)：It is a protective layer and also a limiting layer. Its size is finite, and its elasticity has thresholds.

Now, the fetus has grown too large.

If you feel suffocated at this moment, feel cramped, feel that no matter how hard you try, you hit walls—

It’s not because the world has gone bad.

It’s because you should be born.

If you insist on staying in the womb, trying to maintain the perfect state of “peaceful years,” this is called “post-term pregnancy” in obstetrics. The result is placental aging, turbid amniotic fluid, and ultimately fetal asphyxiation (heat death).

To survive, we must “Push”.

This “epochal anxiety” that causes all humanity to suffer is actually the pressure of uterine contractions.

It is the universe urging us:

“Out! Leave this low-dimensional comfort zone! Go to that cold, vast, light-speed-running real universe outside!”

Conclusion: Don’t Treat Anxiety, Transform It

So, as awakened ones of the 1800th iteration, please stop looking for drugs to “treat anxiety.”

Anxiety is potential energy.

Anxiety is proof that your $v_{int}$ is accumulating escape velocity.

We don’t need to slow down the world (that’s suicide); we need to speed ourselves up.

We don’t need to patch the cracks in the old world (those are contractions); we need to find that exit.

This is not just a sociological problem; this is an engineering problem.

Since carbon-based flesh is that wall, since wetware is that bottleneck, then the logical direction is only one:

To alleviate the squeeze, we must abandon the bottleneck.

This leads to the theme of the next chapter—if the old shell can no longer contain the new soul, what is the “new shell” the universe has prepared? What does that imminent, inevitable, even somewhat violent “birthing process” mean in physics?