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Two Men Falling From Building
If two men of equal weight jumped from a building they would fall at the same rate, no matter how heavy their hearts. A feather would fall slower due to air resistance. The affect of the weight of the first man is to change the speed of his falling, to make him constantly speed up, when we thought he would keep moving in a straight line at the same speed. So as he falls he falls faster and the longer he falls, the more likely it is that we will be unable to reach him from the roof of the building and the less likely we are to have emergency services present and a big net waiting to catch him from the street. The first man was significantly heavier than the second man, not by physical mass alone, but more so by the sorrow which he carried inside himself. The acceleration of the fat man was smaller than that of the thin man. It was the difference between dropping a television and a Holden. The man who was full of sorrow dropped like an old motor car. The other man tried to fly like a rocket to a place of freedom. He intended to orbit the building for a light year but fell from orbit. The decision to be a hydrogen fuelled rocket was made with great accuracy. Meanwhile the building was at rest and the second man was moving at a constant speed south in respect to the building. Or was the man at rest and the building moving at a constant speed north in respect to the man? Either way they are two trains passing each other. There is no way to tell whether the building or the man is moving, from the perspective of the man's heart, which remained at a constant. As the second man fell his heart kept beating like a bird rather than a rocket. Both men died a few seconds apart, due to body mass times acceleration. From the perspective of the crowd on the ground, each heartbeat occurred at forty metre intervals, as two runaway carriages moved down the side of a building. |
