A cat, on an elevator...

"Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there!"
The debate between Professor McKean and Gorse on p. 102 of Whitehead's The Intuitionist seemed to touch on an idea which has been played with often in the realm of quantum mechanics.

The general idea is found in the thought question of Schrodinger's Cat. Suppose we had a cat. Said cat is in a shielded box with a can of deadly gas. The only other thing in the box is an atomic nucleus and a Geiger counter.
Now this nucleus is unstable, and has a 50% chance of decaying in an hour--which will set off the Geiger counter. The clincher is that said counter is hooked up to the deadly gas, and if the Geiger counter senses the nucleus' decay, well, the cat is dead.

Enter the heavy stuff. Schrodinger implies a question which is fundamental to quantum mechanics; can something have a mixture of states, and where do we (the scientist) draw the line for assuming something is both state a and b? One of the major problems in trying to study objects on the quantum level (i.e. uber-small, taken from the word "quanta" which is the smallest amount that energy can be in) is that they are often in two states, and very ambiguous. For example, electrons. Electrons circle an atom's nucleus at incredible speeds--so much so that early scientists thought atoms were little balls; what they really saw was the appearance of a shell caused by the electrons moving fast enough to look like a solid sphere. Anyway, it is an assumption by modern science that a person cannot know both the speed and location of an electron.
This concept rolls right into the rest of quantum mechanics. It implies that the electron has two discrete states, "location" and "speed." Just like our experiment's nucleus. It is at once "stable" and "decaying." It is this uncertainty which makes the scientist assume that because it is both of these states simultaneously, then the Geiger counter records *both*, and releases and doesn't release the poisonous gas.
So did Tiger make it through the experiment? Yes, and no. The idea is that the cat reflects the dual-state of the nucleus. Our kitty is at once alive and dead. Hence the t-shirt.
The big problem with this jump into theory is the observer. How does our intrepid scientist find out if the cat is dead or alive (assuming they are working on such a binary)? They open the shielded box. But doing so contaminates the inside of the box, rendering the experiment unusable. So the scientist, who merely assumes the cat is only alive or only dead, has no way of determining whether the cat is in kitty heaven or not.
Much like knowing whether the elevator is there or not.

How the (hell) does this apply to cultural theory?
We have spoken in class about the concept of an elevator as a symbol of socioeconomic and cultural/racial mobility. In modern society, there is a supposedly a way to transcend certain lower levels of inequality-created living via the existence of an installed machine. But execution of such ideas seem to have mixed results, as recent attempts haven't given all people the chance to reach the penthouse suite of society. But why is this? For the most part, the efforts of a government coerced into passing amendments and making more laws is only partially effective. It is akin to using people to find punishments to fit a crime. While yes, structural inequality must be resolved to ensure the the system is equally weighted to all people, what must also occur is a change of the minds behind such rift-making ideas. People need to be reached beyond the government and laws. It is akin to moving a group of students from extrinsic motivation to the intrinsic*.

And so what we are noticing in contemporary American society is an unique--quantum, if you will--uncertainty principle. For electrons, you cannot know both the location and speed at once. Likewise, for the disenfranchised, you cannot have success without becoming less of one's self. The non-western must become more "White" to be fully accepted by the modern US, especially if they are in the limelight. Conversely, one who is "White," although rich and respected, cannot assume a non-western culture and keep their once-respected place as a part of the dominant group.
Likewise, another take on a cultural uncertainty principle is that at one side we have the official stance of the government that there is a (broken) safety net and an ability to pull oneself up by his or her own bootstraps. But then we see a majority of people who, while they are quick to recognize racism is bad, do not know that racism is more than a word. The elevator, the mechanical system of government restructuring, is broken but workable. It is the question of whether the men and women at the door will let a person try the button. Therein lay the rub, and unlike Schrodinger's tongue-in-cheek approach to decrying the unresolved problems of physics, the modern activist is trying to work with the hardest mineral known to humankind; the mind.

As Stephen Hawking says, "When I hear of Schrodinger's cat, I reach for my gun."

*Lightly contextualizing the concept to my discipline. Blame T&L 325 for the Kohn.