By Vance Socci
I had no choice but to write this . . .
Are all the events in the universe pre-determined, including our lives and choices, constituting an immense but finite “four-dimensional” space-time structure? Are we mere spectators, viewers of a pre-written movie with no real power to choose?
You Only Live Once?
Unless you believe the entire universe and every event in it can happen once and only once, and existence stops existing after the whole thing is finished (cue laugh track), then the actual structure consists of any and all the possibilities, be they infinite or just a very, very huge number of finite possibilities. This network of possibilities is determined according to the initial conditions/state of the universe.
Small variations in the parameters at the start of a universe generate a completely different set of possibilities every “time”, even though each set may be fixed in nature.
Consider the Possibilities
Given enough possibilities, and enough universes of those possibilities, and you can see that some of the sets of possibilities are almost completely parallel. Thus, in some number of universes, someone nearly or completely identical to myself and the state of my memories will be sitting here writing this article, for example. This realization brings you back to the primacy of consciousness. Which one of these authors am I? Consciousness/existence then is provided multiple possibilities at each moment of time by jumping universes at “points of choice”.
This choice is driven from beyond the entirety of the universe/multiverse system in which the choice happens. Otherwise, it wasn’t really a choice!
Destiny Derailed?
So much for pre-determination. You’d have to argue the impossibility of more than one universe ever existing, either serially or in parallel. You’d have to argue that every person’s life events are utterly unique, and can never be repeated no matter how many universes that life appears in. This is a very difficult position to defend.
The Paradox of Choice, and the Choice of Paradox
Each moment of choice is actually a paradox, where multiple “truths” of what is to come, can be true at once. It gets worse: the past is just as subject to multiple possibilities given any particular state of consciousness.
Know Future?
Do precognitions generate paradoxes, since the percipient sees “the future”, but avoids it with his knowledge of it, invalidating that future?
In a pre-destination model, no action that a precog can take, whether as a response to a precognition experience or not, can change the future. The validity of the experience has no connection to the “foreseen” future event either – the experience was pre-determined at the very start of the universe and there is no law that dictates that such experiences must be connected with the events that they seem to portray.
Someone MEST with my free will . . .
In a pre-determined system, there is no allowance for any intelligence outside of the MEST (matter energy space time) universe – materialism, basically.
So, any precognition in a being limited by the MEST universe is useless, possibly correlated with an upcoming event or not, and you can’t change what’s coming.
On the other hand, in a universe with a possibly unimaginable but existent intelligence beyond the MEST universe, as I said above, choice is possible by the “part of you” that isn’t limited by the MEST universe; connections between precognitive events and actual events in the future are possible because mechanisms beyond the mere material, localized interactions of the universe can come into play.
Precognition can come from outside of the system and using that information you can choose another pathway. This assumes that the non-MEST part of your being has the ability to perceive an overview of the possible time/spacelines available to you and generated a warning precognition event.
Choice’s Source
Free will and choice would seem to be the source of order in a universe that science tells us is constantly tending towards disorder – the 2nd law of thermodynamics. (That the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time). Since at the least our ideas and implementation thereof seem to be a counter-example, isn’t it logical that our system therefore is not isolated?
I’ll make a bold statement: the source of all order in the universe comes from beyond the MEST physical universe, including our thoughts, dreams, and motivation to make them reality. This would make free will intertwined with a world beyond, perhaps Plato’s world of ideas and Jung’s realm of archetypes.
The Choice not to Choose?
The question comes to mind: can a being choose to deprive itself of choice? Choose a multiverse in which there are no other multiverses or choices, just one brain-dead simple start-to-finish 4d solid? Can infinity choose to be finite?
Perhaps those who choose to ignore all but materialistic concerns, what some would call “un-awakened”, live in such a universe and their being and existence is totally annihilated when their physical life is done.
Check out Vance’s other article on Gnostic themes in the Wizard of Oz.
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