Eternalism and Observation

The Greeks and Romans utilized tales about the three fates, Clotho, the spinner, Lachesis, the alloter, and Atropos, the unturning, to conceptualize existense, more or less. One's life was a yarn spun as a small part of a much larger tapestry. Clotho spins the yarn, Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts it.

I suppose the first thing to say about this arrangement is that all of it is outside the control of the mortal, the human being. He doesn't decide to be born. He doesn't pick his parents, nor his genetics, nor his nationality. He just finds himself composed a certain way and thrust into it. Everything gets set in motion by Clotho, and one's starting point determines the range of his choices.

Then Lachesis measures out the length of his life and allots him what he gets. What roles will he play? Is this guy going to be a layabout, and this guy is going to work as a senator? All of that is Lachesis doing her work of allotment. People might be tempted to think that this is where some measure of control is alloted, too, but take note that Lachesis is doing all of it. I can't choose to become a senator any more than I can choose to sprout wings and fly. Rather, I think, it is within certain roles we are alloted role-specific options, and most of those are chosen by our unconscious brains, and we are only made aware of the choice after it has already been made.

I was struck by how this all unfolds just a few days ago when I was searching for lunch. Sometimes I just know what I'd like to eat, and other times nothing sounds all that good. I was with a friend, and we cruised past a very busy buffet restaurant that touted its barbeque, and I thought, I haven't had good barbeque in a while. I could go for that. At least two factors emerged here that I consciously considered, all of which emerged from my unconscious brain. First of all, I don't like buffets as a general rule. I tend to overeat a mishmash of everything because I'm very open when it comes to food. I want to try new things. Secondly, I had a model for a good barbeque buffet because there are a couple of good ones in Memphis, so anything not close to that model would get rejected. We stopped at the barbeque place and I did a walk through before we paid, and indeed, it didn't pass muster, so we got back in the car and continued our search.

In this scenario, what did I decide? I didn't decide to have a prior model. That was already there and set in stone. Nor did I decide that I'm ill-disposed to buffets in the first place. Nor did I decide that I am open to a buffet if it looks particularly good. Nor did I decide that this particular buffet didn't meet any of those criteria. It didn't meet the prior model, nor did it look particularly good. Nor did I decide that my friend would agree with me and would be willing to keep looking because had he decided this looked good enough, I wasn't going to put up a fight. I was hungry, after all. What this ends up being is just a data-collection mission, an act of observation.

For the record, we decided barbeque was too heavy on such a hot day, and something lighter and cooler was more our speed. We ended up at Rock-n-Roll Sushi, which was okay-ish. If you've had really good sushi, this ain't it, but it wasn't terrible. Like pretty much all Sushi places, though, it was ridiculously over-priced for what you get, a rant for another time. The mission to avoid feeling weighted down by a heavy lunch was accomplished, nevertheless.

What emerges is that we were always going to end up at Rock-n-Roll sushi, and it took a stroll throught a mediocre barbeque buffet to get us there. It looks exactly like that in hindsight, and if it looks like that in hindsight, I'm arguing here that it can also look like that in the present as one takes those steps toward something, especially if one is mindful about it. That yarn is being measured out a mere miliseconds ahead of us, and it goes quickly, sure, but it is perceptible if one makes the attempt.

With regard to all these little choices that aren't really choices at all, but observations, what I think is closer to the truth is that we can choose to endure it all in a particular way. One has a fundamental consideration to apply here: One can choose to make his will align with the gods or he can choose to set it against the gods. This is a black and white choice. The contrast is stark. One one hand, the man who chooses to align his will with the gods stands a good chance of making himself invulnerable because he wants everything that happens to him to happen exactly as it happens. On the other hand, if one chooses to oppose the gods, he will almost certainly have a wreched and miserable existence because he has chosen a fight he can never win.

Lastly, Atropos, the unturning, the unwavering, cuts the yarn and that is death, the end, and everyone's story ends exactly in this way. No one can appeal to her, and everyone is standing in line and awaiting his turn.

This way of conceptualizing things highlights a process that, as I said, is almost entirely outside of anyone's control. One's existence will compose a portion of the larger tapestry, and that part can be big or small, long or short, but it all composes the same tapestry. Also, the tapestry is itself outside of the realm of human influence. No human can pull a thread, and no one can unravel it. Once one is woven into the tapestry, his thread remains there forever.

Let's update our metaphors. Let's take Einstein's insight about spacetime and let's imagine that the entirety of spacetime, the tapestry of the universe itself, is a thing like a big beach ball-like orb, or even a vinyl record. Let's go with the vinyl record. Before the big bang there's no record at all. It has to be poured first. The machinery pours the hot liquid vinyl. What had been nothing expands quickly and takes its shape. It cools enough to accept the stamp of grooves that are the information and established physics, the music itself and under which condidtions it will play, and then it hardens. To get the music to play, it must be turned in one direction, and only in one direction. The stylii that rides inside the grooves must be to certain specifications, and the record must spin at a specific frequency. For a metaphor that encapsulates our predicament in this universe, one could do a lot worse, wouldn't you agree?

Let's say that one wants to hear a particular song. He can, with care, place the stylus in a particular place on the record and hear that song, skipping the others, but only the gods have the option to do this. Then that song ends and another begins, always in the order of the original pressing. All of it is of a piece. And all of it has already been decided. The notes themselves, if they are alloted awareness, hear the music as it is played, and it seems to them as though they are generating the next notes and then the next notes in a ever unfolding symphony.

I don't know if I ever have seen it put quite like this: To those notes that were alloted some measure of awareness of the music, who can comment on it and observe it consciously as it plays, those same conscious notes are also aware that there exist other notes that are playing without any awareness at all. Those notes, those parts, perhaps the repetitive bass line, isn't aware at all. It plays on automatic, obviously making no choices in the matter, and yet contributing to the symphony nonetheless.

In our real universe, does not a squirrel have a big impact on things? Doesn't it bury its acorns in a place and then forget about it, or otherwise finds itself unable to recover those nuts, and don't those nuts then sprout into a new oak tree capable of furnishing habitat, exhaling oxygen into the atmosphere, or eventually becoming a nice cherry-stained armoir?

Perhaps Clotho buys the record. Perhaps Lachesis dusts it off and sets the stylus into the groove and turns it on. Perhaps Atropos knows when she's had enough of it and turns it off. But then she takes it off the turntable, dusts if off again, and then she returns it to it's mylar sleeve and shelves it in ideal climate-controlled conditions in a deep and impenetrable vault which no one can break.

Past, present, future, are all just constructs that result from the music we are making and to us it seems like we are making the present unfold into the future, but in reality it is has all already been programmed and decided. I think this is a crucial realization for one to make if he or she wants to be in alignment with the gods. Put another way, no one is deciding anything, but is instead merely acting a role that has already been written, and the choices one thinks he makes are an illusion generated by the process itself. All anyone gets to do is observe it. That's it. People observe reality as it unfolds, and any notions one has that he is deciding how it unfolds is an illusion, or if I'm being generous about it, he's picking from multiple choice, from options given, and no option would be given if it had any impact on how it all turns out.

In this way, one can take heart: He lives forever on his little thread, his little groove, his little slice of reality. It can never be erased, and it exists protected by the gods themselves. Furthermore, he can with all his heart give everything over to the gods because it is the gods who are making this thing, whatever it is. It serves their purposes, whatever they happen to be. He doesn't have to worry. He just has to observe it as it unfolds, get out of its way, and do what he can to make the best of it.