Now, this isn’t a game review or a player’s guide. This is a pneumanautic exploration—an earnest hunt for hidden truths and deeper meanings in the unlikeliest of places. The territory we map is mythological, but we know that myths—whether they appear in books, movies, music, video games or what have you—have incredible power to awaken us, to alert us to the hidden parts of ourselves that yearn for…what, exactly? Truth? Love? Beauty? Why is it that words on a page or pixels on a screen, when stitched together in just the right pattern, evoke such awe-inspiring responses within us?

A pneumanaut does not know. But a pneumanaut trusts that there is merit in the seeking. Most of all, a pneumanaut hopes that the seeker, by some higher will or power, will be rewarded in the endeavour. And so they seek, hurtling headlong into the depths of eternity…

Human creativity and jet-powered tractors

I’ve been led to believe that there are no more great works of art. The time of the Renaissance men painting masterpieces and sculpting marvels is long gone. Perhaps some decades ago, great stories and plays might have been penned—Hemingway, Miller, Faulkner. They would have sparked a ‘national conversation’, would have been admitted to the cultural canon, would have been studied by the young and contemplated by the old. But if you look around today, at the desolate landscape that is the post-millennial Internet age, you’ll be left wanting. Lately, it seems best to imagine the Internet as a post-nuclear wasteland, irradiated and scoured from the fallout of brain-rot memes, pornography, political disinformation, scientific disinformation, ragebait, clickbait, callous grifting, and AI-generated slop. You need a hazmat suit just to wade into the comments section. You can’t scroll for ten minutes without seeing something hateful, hurtful, or downright evil. How could any healthy, vivacious culture develop in an environment as hostile as this?

Now, if you’re willing to brave the adverse conditions, you might be able to rummage through the detritus and find some rare and true gems—perhaps an undiscovered musician posting genre-breaking material on YouTube, or an avant-garde painter uploading mesmerizing works to Instagram, or an incredibly talented writer posting on Substack to an audience of fewer than a hundred. But what then? Your spirit may have been lifted, your understanding of the human experience elevated by this wonder of an artist whom you’ve stumbled upon, but this counts for very little, algorithmically speaking. The feed scrolls on—or perhaps better said, the feed feeds on—consuming anything and everything offered at its altar. Every click, every comment, every moment spent lingering over a video is processed and subsumed into the byzantine enumeration of a blind and insatiable input/output machine that feels nothing, understands nothing. It gorges and spews data—nothing more.

If we’re feeling particularly dour, we can think of that input-output machine as the fuel-guzzling engine accelerating the dilapidation of our culture. It’s like a jet engine set in the chassis of a rusty old tractor, propulsing it forth with such violent speed that it sabotages the integrity of the overall structure. Move too fast, and pretty soon things begin to break loose and fall off. Yet this machine, for all its tremendous influence in our world today, cannot do what we humans have always done on our own. Wherever two or more of us gather, there we establish a culture. No artifice is necessary for this to happen. We figure out, organically, how we ought to behave, what we ought to value, what we ought to believe about ourselves and the world. And then, we express those same beliefs outwardly. We share them with one another. We paint, we compose, we craft, we write, we sing, we dance, we fashion, we create. Creative expression springs from somewhere within us, somewhere uniquely human—somewhere inspired or derived from the divine, we might even say. Maybe there’s something profoundly embodied about this whole culture thing that our ancestors unwittingly understood but, in our age of fibre-optic cables and wireless communications, we’ve lost touch with.

Perhaps where we’ve gone wrong as a culture is in mistaking the breadth of connection for the depth of connection. The Internet has made it possible to establish links with an unprecedented volume of people, places, things, and ideas. Our smartphones act as portals to the wider world, granting us access to virtually any person or place that we can imagine. But if we pause a moment and consider just how meaningful these connections are—how much they truly reflect an honest-to-goodness bond of understanding, solidarity, receptivity—I think we’ll find that the vast majority of them are incredibly shallow. On social media, for instance, one can encounter and engage with veritable thousands of users in a single doom-scrolling session, but how many meaningful relationships can be created and sustained this way? One can comment on a post and think of themselves as having ‘connected’ with some person on the other side of the world, but how much worth, how much depth, does that connection truly exemplify? Has there been any real, honest, identifiably real interaction, marked by mutual understanding and common experience? I’m not saying that powerful relationships can’t or don’t form online—the story of the fellow who found friendship and belonging within a World of Warcraft server proves they can—but I am pointing out that of all the ‘connections’ that are formed in the strange land of cyberspace, vanishingly few reflect the kind of authentic human connection that we would recognize as ‘real’ in the outside world.

That matters because great art can’t be borne from a fractured, emaciated, ersatz cultural landscape. Not easily, anyway, because greatness itself denotes a certain kind of ultimacy—it has to go beyond barriers, beyond group identities, beyond anyone and anything, to reach up toward the highest realms of our shared ideals. Great art is not the same thing as good art, remember. Great art must, by definition, be grand in scope, ambition and profundity; it must appeal to that deepest part of all living, breathing, red-blooded human beings who find themselves bound up together in that roiling, seething, endlessly evolving system of ideas, values, beliefs and behaviours that we might call a ‘culture’. It must speak to the soul, it must speak to the moment, it must speak to the past and the future, all at once. It must say something true—not just for you and me, but all of us sharing this space, this country, this nation, this continent. It must be greater than any one of us, standing side-by-side on this hallowed ground.

It doesn’t seem like the Internet, as a place for the exchange of ideas and the expression of values and beliefs, is very good at facilitating the sort of universality needed to birth these sorts of artistic works. We may appear as if we’re more interconnected than ever, yet we’ve never been further apart. We’re driven ever-deeper into our algorithmic silos, feeding and being fed a diet of machine-curated media in a closed loop. Our capacity to really engage with each other, with big ideas and big themes, deteriorates as the distance between our digital islands expands. It seems hopeless. Movies, books, television, drama, sculpture, fine art: none of these disciplines has yielded that truly magnificent work which shall define our age, to which all of us, no matter who we are, may point and say, ‘In this, we find the truth about ourselves.’

And yet, there is another artistic medium which has thus far escaped our scrutiny. We’ve ignored that newest, youngest art form, still struggling to establish itself and earn its rightful place in our culture as a domain where true art can be made, expressed, and explored. That domain is video games. And that great work, yet to be discovered by the masses, but primed and ready to take its proper position as a Great Work of the 21st century (if only people would come off their high horses and recognize video games as the artistic medium of the future, and indeed, the modern era), I would contend, is Chants of Sennaar.

Let me tell you about it.

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Devotee fanart poster created by Reddit user Nano91.

Lost in translation

One great American novelist of yesteryear, Herman Melville, said that ‘to produce a mighty book, one must choose a mighty theme’. Chants of Sennaar has a mighty theme indeed: the restoration of human civilization to its former glory. I’m not sure if the game’s creators intended it to be an allegory for our current age, but when the final credits rolled, and I found myself basking in the beauty of the finale, I was struck by how this story perfectly articulated the moment we’re living through. I mean, it was uncanny—the game captured the essence of what we feel is happening in the world today, on the grandest scale. There are endless discussions going on—both online and off—about the downfall of Western civilization, the hollowing out of civil society, the vapidity and vacuity of our culture in the era of Tik-Tok trends and viral marketing campaigns. Experts are diagnosing the social and political ruptures in the global order almost as fast as podcasters can crank out hot takes on the same issues. Things are spinning out of control, and everybody has this pervading sense of doom and disillusionment; we thought the world was one way, but it isn’t, and now we’re all sliding into the abyss together, powerless to stop our own ruination.

Chants of Sennaar knows this, and it knows where we’re heading. It shows us a world that has truly come apart at the seams—not in some violent, apocalyptic sense, but a world founded on higher ideals that has already gone through a long, slow, and inexorable decline. But what’s even more impressive is that it offers us a vision for the future. As we journey through this colourful, fallen world, we begin to see how it might be repaired. We learn how the degradation can be reversed. The game invites us, the player, to be the instrument of change. And by the time I’d finished my playthrough, my goodness, I was convinced: this is the way forward. It’s a lesson that’s simple, elegant, ageless. It’s one we’ve forgotten—that we’re in the process of forgetting. Maybe, if more people play this game, we can abate the worst of what’s to come.

For me to reveal this lesson to you, however, I will need to spoil many of the details in the game. For non-gamers, I’m sure this isn’t much of an issue—you’re eager just for me to get to the heart of what makes this little video game a ‘great work’, as I’ve been saying. For those readers of mine who are gamers, I’d recommend that you experience the game for yourself, then come back to this piece and read on. I’d be depriving you of a truly enjoyable experience of discovery and wonder. But the meaning of this game—the moral revelation it imparts unto the player who overcomes its challenges—is truly something amazing. I feel compelled to write about it; I must relate what it tells us about ourselves, about our society, about how we might combat that degradation we seem to feel gathering pace, day in and day out.

Chants of Sennaar is fundamentally based on the story of the Tower of Babel, inverting it in a clever way. ‘Sennaar’ is actually the name of the location where the Bible tells us people gathered from all corners of the earth to construct the Tower. This alone affords it significant credibility as a contender for ‘great work’ status, as great art often dialogues with the ageless, totemic mythologies that have shaped our collective psyche for millennia, parsing them for new audiences as well as mining them for completely new depths of meaning. The Tower of Babel, for anyone unfamiliar, is a Biblical narrative which tells the story of the earliest efforts of humanity to form a cohesive civilization. The long and short of it is that mankind, in his hubris, endeavours to erect a grandiose monument to his own achievements, by his own merits. There’s a lot of theological stuff to unpack here, but we’ll set most of it aside for now and focus on the basic outcome: God sees that human beings are about to do a terrible, terrible thing, and takes it upon Himself to stop the Tower from being constructed.* The Bible tells us that God ‘confuses the language’ of the people constructing the tower, causing them to be unable to communicate. Their capacity to coordinate and cooperate is summarily undermined, and the progress of the audacious project is thwarted. Soon, the various people who once gathered together at Babel scatter across the world, never again to challenge the authority of heaven.

Chants of Sennaar, while not necessarily set in our world, shows us an altogether familiar one where the Tower has long since fallen into disarray on account of the various inhabitants’ inability to communicate with one another. As we, the player, are introduced to this world—our avatar, referred to as ‘The Traveler’ finds it/him/herself awaken in the depths of the Tower’s lowest levels—we soon realize that navigating the labyrinthine structure will be very difficult. Neither we nor our Traveler understands the languages of the Tower’s denizens that we encounter, and therein lies the challenge: we must use whatever clues we might stumble across to try and decode these foreign tongues, so that we might progress toward our goal. And what other goal could there be than to reach the Tower’s top, where a shining beacon of heavenly light glistens eternally? Or at least, that’s what the wall murals created by the Tower’s bottom-tier inhabitants, the Devotees, seem to think is waiting for them once they ascend.

As we mingle among the Devotees, paying close attention to their behaviours and the artworks adorning the public squares, marketplaces, and holy sanctuaries that make up their domain, transcribing every new word we learn in the Traveler’s little pocketbook, we begin to learn something of their deepest-held beliefs. They are a fanatical bunch, hence their name, and they seem intent upon making pilgrimage to the top of the Tower. What grieves them is that another of the Tower’s civilizations, the Warriors, has shut them out from the upper levels. Iron gates guarded by stern-looking Warrior-men prevent the Devotees from ever leaving their quarters. They beg and plead with the Warriors, explaining that God—yes, one of the first words we learn in the Devotee language is God, whom, based on their murals, it is clear they believe to dwell at the Tower’s pinnacle—is calling to them, and their greatest desire in all the world is to come and worship in his presence.

But their cries fall on deaf ears, or rather uncomprehending ears, for the Warriors understand nothing of the Devotee language. The Warriors have their own language, and indeed an entirely unique culture to that of their neighbours. As the Traveler makes their way into this new domain, utilizing their ever-expanding vocabulary to bribe, cajole and ingratiate themselves to whosoever might be able to assist them on their journey, it becomes clear that the Warriors and the Devotees are two entirely separate cultures who for generations have lived in mutual suspicion and misunderstanding of one another. The Warriors, we learn (also by paying close attention to their own murals) arrived at the Tower long ago, attracted by the beautiful music they heard emanating from its upper levels. As they established a home for themselves in the Tower’s many chambers, they encountered seemingly angelic beings, the source of this music, and were entranced. They call these people the ‘Chosen’ on account of their illustrious, seemingly divine nature. They thought these Chosen so magnificent that they sought to guard them jealously from those strangers who arrived at the Tower some time later, the Impures—‘Impure’ being the term for ‘Devotee’ in the Warrior tongue. As the Traveler learns more of the Warrior language, it is made clear that the Warriors think very poorly of the Devotees, and deem them unworthy of ever holding audience with the angels. This is the reason for the locked gates at the threshold between the Devotees’ realm and the Warriors’.

You might be starting to notice the pattern here. On the Traveler goes, and soon they find a means of passage into the domain beyond that of the Warriors, where these ‘Chosen’ reside. We soon find that these creatures are not angelic or ethereal at all, but another culture altogether: the Bards. The Bards know full well that the Warriors view them as superior creatures, and laugh at them from behind their gilded walls. In the Bards’ realm, they live in splendor and decadence, whiling away their hours eating, drinking, and making merry. They care nothing for the plebian rabble of their Tower’s lower levels; they believe them to be backward, ignorant, vulgar. They care nothing for the misery of the poor ‘Idiots’, the underclass of their society who live and work as slaves. The Traveler learns the Bards’ language as well, and in doing so, comes closer to understanding just what has gone wrong in this culture—how they misunderstand their neighbours, and themselves, failing to properly integrate into the greater superstructure of the Tower.

The Traveler’s ascent continues through yet more strange domains, though I will spare you the details so that you may experience some of the game’s story for yourself, should you wish to play it. What I will relate is what is perhaps the game’s greatest secret: what awaits you at the top of the tower. The final, secret civilization that the Traveler must commune with is that of the Anchorites, the Tower’s creators and original inhabitants. The Anchorites are a highly evolved society with wondrous technology, yet have sequestered themselves away at the Tower’s highest echelon behind impenetrable barriers. So complete is their seclusion that none of the Tower’s denizens even know that they exist. As the Traveler finally discovers a means of reaching them, we are disturbed to find that the Anchorites’ culture has degenerated in their many, many years of self-isolation. The entirety of their tribe has retreated from the world so thoroughly as to escape into a virtual reality called ‘Exile’. There they live a protracted half-life, perpetually connected to machines that sustain their mass hallucination—all save one member, whom you stumble upon as you explore their abandoned streets. This lone survivor reveals that they are the reason we awakened down in the depths of the Tower: they hacked the system, escaped Exile, and awakened the Traveler, revealing us to be a kind of failsafe program for countering existential threats to the Tower itself. The survivor pleads with the Traveler to break Exile’s hold over their people before it is too late. We come to understand that the Anchorites need to re-engage with the outside world, the world they created: the Tower has been deteriorating as its masters have neglected it, and its total collapse is imminent.

The true nature of the Tower becomes clear to us: this place, built by the Anchorites, attracted various tribes from across the world to gather together in a spirit of unity and harmony. Yet the Anchorites came to fear and misunderstand these newcomers and decided to shut themselves away. They created Exile as a sort of artificial intelligence to facilitate their seclusion, hence its name; Exile, in turn, went about sowing division and discord among the various tribes, undermining their ability to cooperate and thereby potentially breach the Anchorites’ defences. All in all, it has been a disaster for everyone. Mistrust and misinformation abound, and none of the tribes—which each have certain characteristics or skills which might have benefitted the others—have any meaningful connection to one another. It is up to the Traveler to return to each of the different tribes, and using the knowledge we’ve gained over the course of our journey, deactivate the hidden server centers in each of their domains where Exile has been secretly monitoring and reinforcing their segregation. Only then might the tribes be able to reconnect and work together to solve the problems facing them.

We know what we need to do. But what actually happens when we do it? And what does it all mean?

God = Duty = Beauty = Transformation = Exile

If you pay close attention while progressing through the game, you notice that each of the Tower’s distinct tribes exhibits some sort of distinctive flaw. The hints are subtle, going deeper than the simple fact that the tribes look down on one another and fail to properly communicate. They have all regressed in one way or another, just as the Anchorites regressed as they withdrew into Exile en masse. An attentive player will note that this regression is rooted in each of these cultures having lost something they once possessed. The Devotees, to begin with, have lost their agency, becoming so focused on their religious rites and practices that they have ceased to make any progress at reaching their goal of ascending the Tower. They beg and plead at the Warrior’s gates ineffectively, while their elites—the priests who occupy the monastery at the heart of their domain—mill about uselessly, praying their prayers but not actually doing anything to help their people. A beggar languishes outside the monastery, unaided. Within its walls, Devotees gather to hear the words of blessing of their leader, the High Priest, but he has mysteriously vanished. No one actually sends anybody to go looking for him (that’s what the Traveler ends up doing)—they just linger about the place, hoping that he will appear, though he never does. Outside in the beautiful gardens, the trees and plants wither and die because no one is tending to them. The Devotee’s entire culture is frozen in a kind of collective paralysis, unable to take any meaningful action that might improve their lives.

The Warriors are regressing as well. Not only are they haughty and brash, they are ignorant. There is evidence in their murals—relegated now to a hidden chamber where it appears they no longer venture—that they were once proud seafarers, skilled at astral navigation. It was this skill which enabled them to find their way to the Tower. They valued it enough to constructed a large observatory at the edge of their domain some time after thier arrival. But by the time the Traveler visits them, however, the observatory is long abandoned. Its lenses are missing and the annals cataloguing the stars are scattered haphazardly around the room. Outside the observatory, the Warriors waste their energy on pointless and repetitive tasks, carrying out the orders of superiors that neither they nor the superiors appear to understand. In lonely places, Warriors can be found shirking their duties by getting drunk and engaging in coarse behaviour. The signs are again clear: this once powerful and resourceful people has lost touch with their own character. Their worship of the ‘Chosen’ seems all the more foolish when the objects of their adulation sneer at them from afar.

We could keep going. The Bards live in opulence and callously mock the Idiots who serve them. They dwell in their palaces, visit the theater and attend lavish garden parties, while the Idiots dwell in the sewers below, wretched and resentful. There is a distinct sense that they perceive themselves as superior, yet are blind to the dependencies they have on those they deem ‘lesser’. Higher up, the Alchemists—oh wait, I said I would save some surprises for you! Suffice it to say, they have their own issues which they seem incapable of addressing (a certain paranoia, in their case, which prevents them from courageously pursuing the knowledge they so desperately seek).

Once the Traveler has reached the Anchorites and learned the truth of the Tower, however, it becomes clear that each of these tribes holds the key to arresting one another’s regression. The Traveler descends the Tower again and revisits each location, in search of the purple gates where Exile’s servers lie hidden. Along the way, if the player is careful, we also may stumble across strange, advanced communication portals—think of it like an ancient Sumerian video call service—where different members of each tribe are trying to send messages to each other, to no avail. If the Traveler takes the time to translate these messages, helping the various tribes to communicate, we will find that little by little, the Tower begins to change. A group of runaway Idiots from the Bards’ realm find sanctuary in the Devotees’ monastery. The Warriors send a battalion to aid the Alchemists in chasing off the fearsome creature which lurks in the caves near their realm, enabling them to pursue their scientific research in peace and security. The Alchemists send a representative to visit the Devotees to help restore their gardens to verdancy. The Bards overcome their disdain for the Warriors and send a performance troupe to entertain them with song. And all of them, we soon find, assist the Anchorites in reacclimatizing to life outside of Exile, conversing with the Tower’s creators and finding ways to collaborate on restoring the structure—their shared home—to its former grandeur.

This is how the Traveler’s mission is fulfilled. Once each of the servers is shut down, and Exile itself deactivated (a task which does not prove straightforward, as the rogue AI makes every attempt to hinder the Traveler, even going so far as to forcibly connect us to one of the same immersion devices that kept the Anchorites trapped for countless years), and once all of the Tower’s tribes have been reunified—all by the power of translation, as written in the Traveler’s humble pocketbook—the game reaches its finale. The Traveler, accompanied by members of each of the tribes, ascends to the very top of the Tower. What they behold there affirms the great theme that has been building over the course of the entire journey: the power of language to bring people together in unity of purpose and spirit.

You see, we do find God at the top of the Tower. After we reactivate the Tower’s ancient systems and begin the process of its restoration, we see a great holographic glyph—the Devotee’s word for God—appear in the air above the Traveler’s head. But then the glyph changes. We realize that the glyph we’ve seen so often inscribed in two dimensions is now rendered in three. As this three-dimensional hologram rotates, it becomes clear that, when viewed from a certain angle, the symbol is also the Warrior’s word/glyph for Duty—Duty being the driving philosophy that animates the Warrior culture, and acts as their highest ideal. The hologram shifts again, transforming into the glyph for Beauty, the Bard’s greatest ideal. Then again for the Alchemists—Transformation, or Knowledge—and again for the Anchorites—Exile, or Transcendence.** At each of these transformations, each of the different tribesmen gathered at the Tower’s pinnacle gasp in wonder and delight as they witness their respective ideals come together as one. All along, they believed they were serving different gods, different ideals; now they realize that there is but one, and each of them has only been seeing one side of His face. It’s only when they all come together and recognize that they each possess a piece of the puzzle, and not the whole, that they can begin to pursue the real truth.

Hello? Is anyone out there?

When I watched that final scene play out, I was genuinely moved. I hadn’t seen it coming: the reveal that each of the tribe’s ideals—words which I had learned and used many times over the course of my journey, as I’d gotten to know these different people groups and come to understand their cultures—was as surprising as it was powerful. It wasn’t a simple ‘blind men touching an elephant’ situation; I had witnessed in vivid detail how their civilizations had achieved so much, and had fallen so far. There was true pain that had been felt by these people—harm done to themselves and to each other—in their narrow-minded pursuit of their individual priorities. Yet, now we could all see that it was for nothing; what they had always needed was to dialogue with one another, share their perspectives openly and honestly, trusting in each other and seeking to coexist harmoniously. They each had their own value system that was perspectival in nature, rather than relativistic. The truth—the real truth—could only emerge when they combined these perspectives, sharpened them against each other. This process was entirely necessary for meaning-making, not superfluous. They needed each other to progress.

It struck me that this was a lesson for our time, for our culture. Each of us has a unique perspective on life that is true and valid, but neither is it the whole. We must seek to understand one another’s viewpoints if we are to better understand ourselves. We need each other in a very real sense! Connection, real connection, is vital. It sustains us, keeps us healthy, corrects our imbalances. Authentic connection with one another reminds us of who we are, our strengths and weaknesses, and how we need support. Authentic connection reinforces our distinct value and draws out that special talent, skill or mindset that we bring to the table, which we can use for the benefit of all. God did not create us to be islands unto ourselves, to serve our own disparate ideals—He created us to be his children. and that means that all of us, while being different from one another, are still family.

It’s a lesson that we seem to have forgotten as a culture, these days. We seem to have traded authentic human connection for a facsimile—for an array of facsimiles. Synthetic bonds fostered by circuits and wires instead of flesh, blood, and spirit. Followers over real friends. Online discourse over purposeful community engagement. Influencers over parents, grandparents, neighbours, teachers, coaches. I’m not saying that these things are inherently wrong, but they are out of balance in our culture, just as the various civilizations of Sennaar were out of balance.

Like the people of Sennaar, I think we need to learn to reconnect. I think we need to stop fearing one another—resenting the different tribes we see from a distance, different than our own, believing different things, pursuing different ideals. I think we need to be brave and go out there and meet them where they’re at. I think we need to throw open the gates, not shut ourselves away, or immerse ourselves in systems that filter out everything which we may regard as strange or ‘other’ for our continued comfort. I think we need to be better at admitting that we don’t have all the answers, and we need help. I think we need to be quick to reach out a hand, both for our sake, and for others’.

I think we need to start speaking each other’s language. Because language is the expression of thought, and the expression of thought is the expression of the self—and if you can’t know who I am, if you can’t see me for who I am, how can I feel safe enough to trust you? We’ll never find a way to overcome the challenges that face us, collectively, unless we can start trusting one another again. And Lord knows we’ve got some pretty major hills that we need to climb.

If the Internet is the new Babel, then maybe we do need to tear it down—destroy what we’ve built before it destroys us. But I’m using the Internet right now to reach you, dear reader. I’m trusting that you’ll read these words and find some truth in them. I’m offering you an authentic connection: this is me, expressing my thoughts, my ideas, as honestly as I can, expecting nothing in return, but hoping that something will resonate with you. It’s as much as any one of us can do. It might not be enough to stop what’s coming. It might not be enough to stop our descent into tribalism. But after playing Chants of Sennaar, I can at least take solace in the fact that the solution exists. We know what it is.

Let’s reconnect, before it’s too late.

*It might seem strange to the modern reader that God takes exception to humans building a tower that may ascend to heaven, as if heaven were a place that could be physically reached by human effort, but it’s the deeper meaning here which needs to be extracted. The key is to view the Tower of Babel as a symbol of humanity’s insistence that we are gods in our own right; we know what’s best for us, we can achieve whatever we desire, and so we have no need for God Himself. In Christian theology, that is not a good idea for human beings to get into their heads, and it warrants swift and decisive dislodgment. You might view the Tower as a stand-in for any of the egregious human-designed efforts to ‘make the world a better place’, according to our own warped senses of what the world ought to be: the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the Terror in Revolutionary France, and on and on it goes. We humans lack the understanding to make perfect moral judgements on our own; as created beings, we are dependent on a higher being, a Heavenly Father, who is ultimately in control of all. We disrupt the metaphysical order of the universe when we forget our place, which nothing good can come from—as Babel’s fall, and all these other disasters I’ve mentioned, duly show.

**Here is a link to a visualization I found online if you’d like to get a better sense of what I’m talking about, though the best way to exoperience the sublime beauty of this moment is just to play the game for yourself all the way through!

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I went out on the street today
The Canadian Dream was as far away as it’s ever been
As it’s ever been

S.O.C.I.A.L.I.S.M. is here to stay
S.O.C.I.A.L.I.S.M. is the only way

Frozen land, frozen minds
Frozen hands and frozen time

‘Cause everything moves real slow when it’s forty below
Everything moves real slow when it’s forty below
Yeah, everything moves real slow when it’s forty below
When it’s forty below

The Canadian Dream

by Sam Roberts

Maybe I should start this by saying ‘sorry.’ If you’re here because you’re incensed that I would even suggest that the Canadian people are American, I do beg forgiveness, and ask that you offer me the chance to explain myself. But, in case you’re not keen to spend the next twenty-five minutes reading a think piece from a stranger online, let me just say: no, I don’t think Canadians are American. We’re certainly not the same country, let’s just get that out of the way. And while I do think we’re very similar, there’s a certain secret sauce they put in the poutine here which sets us apart. Allow me to elaborate.

One of the coolest things I got up to as a university student was pirate radio. I went to a small, indie sort of establishment in a humble Canadian town, far from the major urban centers of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. Despite its size, it really punched above its weight class. There were good programs, good professors, good people. I learned so much and met amazing people. Truthfully, it was during my undergrad that I began the process of becoming the person I am today in earnest. And along the way, I loved doing pirate radio.

I say ‘pirate radio’ because we were definitely (maybe?) breaking the law whenever we went on air. It was me and a buddy doing an hour-long show every Sunday where we would do semi-serious music reviews of cool bands that we liked. Think WWE SmackDown, only dweebier and it’s a musical. We tried to switch the genre up each week to keep things fresh, running the gamut from indie rock, indie pop, electronic, and heavy metal to jazz, experimental, funk, and folk. We even created our own theme music and sound effects to help create the vibe.* Our show was typically structured like this: we’d have a bit of banter in the beginning, then introduce each of our selected bands, identifying some sort of theme that united them—usually musical style or genre, or even a quirk in their names. We’d then play tracks from each artist, pitting them against each other in a series of boxing-style rounds. Once each track was finished we’d discuss our impressions, reactions, and do what little passed for ‘analyzing’ the merits of each one. After three rounds, we’d declare a winner, and then wrap things up.

As you can imagine, we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Now, what made this all a bit legally dubious was that we didn’t abide by the strict Canadian content rules which existed at the time. So far as I know, they still exist to this day. There was (is) a rule that at least 10% of all content that hits Canadian airwaves must be Canadian-made. Generally, this means that the artist themselves should be a Canadian national, but if the writer is a Canuck, or the song/music was produced in Canada, you might be able to get away with calling it ‘Canadian’. In our case, most of the bands we were interested in spinning were decidedly not Canadian. (We had an unusually high representation of European artists, now that I think of it.) Our own producer—the guy who managed this student radio station in his spare time—said that since we hosts were Canadian, that satisfied the requirement.

Would that argument hold up in court? I really can’t say. But we were just two dudes having fun, so we didn’t sweat it at the time. We did have a sense that we were playing fast and loose with the rules—I think we were generally sympathetic to the plight of Canadian broadcasting, struggling its damndest not to be cannibalized by American alternatives—but this was pirate college radio, not peak drive-time programming. What was the point if we weren’t being at least a little piratical about the whole thing? And, if we’re being honest, hardly anybody was listening anyway, so it’s difficult to say that it mattered much.

Remembering those heady university days and our time in the studio got me thinking: maybe we should have given a little more consideration to the Canadian-ness of our program. Both of us were big fans of the Canadian indie music scene, and we probably could have cut a few foreign artists to make more space for our fellow countrymen. It might not have made much of a difference in the grand scheme of things—it wasn’t like we had influence over a vast listenership, or anything—but I don’t know… Maybe we were shirking a sort of noble, civic duty? Maybe we should’ve used what little platform we had to promote Canadian culture and identity out of loyalty, if nothing else?

I do grasp that it’s not very pirate-like to wring hands over neglecting responsibilities and solemn allegiances. However, historically speaking, real-life pirates often operated as supralegal agents for their own national governments. (I know that because I took a course on pirate history at my beloved university!) Look at Sir Francis Drake: a scourge of the Spanish merchant fleets, a menace and a brigand, but also given a wink and a nod by his English monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, who received a cut of the profits and even knighted him. See how blurry the line is? One country’s pirate can be another’s privateer.

And so, I arrived at the idea that maybe, just maybe, my friend and I should have taken our pirate radio gig and our lawful obligations a bit more seriously. We probably could have managed to meet the 10% Canadian content threshold if we’d really been intentional about it. There are some really, really cool Canadian artists out there, virtually unknown outside their own national music scene (like Sam Roberts, the guy whose lyrics I included above, but we’ll get to him a bit later). The market here is small compared to down south; there are many more opportunities for artists to receive due recognition if they relocate to the States. Conversely, it’s also easy for American artists to reach cross-border audiences, what with the huge budgets of American record companies and the unstoppable machinery of mass-market commercialization. The American population being ten times the size of ours plays a big role, too—the bigger they are, the more you tend to pay attention. My friend and I had a chance to do what little we could to keep the tide of international interlopers from swamping our airwaves and drowning out our own local voices and talent, but we passed it up. Why did we do that? Didn’t our Canadian identity mean something to us? Didn’t we have some measure of national pride? Just whose side were we on?

Wait, wait, wait—are there even ‘sides’ to begin with?

I think these questions are actually quite hard for a Canadian person to answer in an honest, clear-minded manner. There’s something a bit odd about our cultural milieu which I’ve struggled to describe in precise terms, yet has always fascinated me. Our relationship with our neighbours to the south is a huge part of it, no doubt, but there are also internal frictions and contradictions which make it difficult to say definitively, ‘This is what it means to be a Canadian’. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to try and articulate just what’s been niggling at me—and while I’m at it, hopefully set the record straight.

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Artwork from ‘We Stand on Guard’, a comic series published by Image Comics in 2015. Written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Steve Skroce, with colors by Matt Hollingsworth.

A Canuck and a Yank walk into a bar…

Right off the bat, I should say that I don’t speak for all Canadians. I’m not some national spokesperson, and I can’t say that my experiences are somehow universal. We Canadians are very much a diverse people—this goes right to the heart of our history, as a settler nation made up of different groups who’ve travelled to this landmass over centuries in search of a better life.** While I am going to try and describe what brings us all together—and that’s a difficult thing to do, which is sort of what I’m getting at here—it’s absolutely the case that there’ll be people who feel left out of whatever supposed unifiers I can come up with. It’s very, very tricky to try and speak about multicultural societies in any sort of comprehensive way, because it’s an inherent contradiction; the ‘multi’ signifies that the culture itself is made up of many different cultures, so by definition, there’s no one single thing that makes it what it is.

I stress that this publication is not a place for polemics, diatribes or epic takedowns, and I will not impart how things should be, one way or the other. What I’m interested in exploring is how things are—specifically, how they compare and contrast to the reality of our closest cultural neighbours, the Americans. Here I should also say that, you guessed it, I’m not American, so everything I write about Americans is based on an outsider’s perspective. I won’t claim to be any more than what I am: a fairly ordinary person grappling with a question that has dogged them their entire lives, struggling to make sense of themselves and their place in the world. If we can tolerate a bit of innocent misconception in pursuit of better understanding (and I think we should, both because extending grace to one another is a good thing to do, but also because it’s pretty unrealistic to expect any one individual to have a perfectly formulated conception of something as massive and amorphous as a national culture), then I should we should be good to proceed.

It entered my mind to write about the topic of cultural differences between Canadians and Americans because of an interview I did over a year ago with a fellow Substacker. Together we discussed my fiction writing (stay posted for more on that in the future) and how my Canadian identity has influenced my work. My interviewer being American, the conversation naturally included a dimension of Canadian/American comparative analysis. I’d never really done anything like that before—okay, well, I did when critiquing music on my radio show, but that was a lot easier to do than dissecting an entire national ethos—so I bit off a bit more than I could chew and didn’t exactly express myself to the best of my ability. This was entirely my own fault and not that of the interviewer; he’d let me know the questions in advance, affording me ample time to prepare my responses. I had thought, rather naively, that I could just go in there half-cocked, the words would flow and I’d get my point across perfectly.

And so, in attempting to make the distinctions between Americans and Canadians in light of the stories we tell and the cultural touchstones that we share, I ended up doing anything but. This is partly because it is actually very hard to define what makes us distinct from one another—and here, I’m hoping to take a second crack at it. We Canadians know that we’re not Americans, that’s for sure. We want to establish our own identity as a people group, but we struggle to nail down what exactly that identity is or how it should look. Also, being a relatively young, pluralistic society, that there aren’t as many historcal or trans-cultural artifacts we can point to and say, ‘That’s ours, and it belongs to all of us.’ French-Canadians, Indian-Canadians, Chinese-Canadians, Ukrainian-Canadians, Syrian-Canadians, African-Canadians, Indigenous people and everybody else will have quite different cultural expressions and traditions that they bring with them into this variegated context, as you might expect, and all of them have an equal right to call themselves ‘Canadian’. What then are the things which bind us all together, irrespective our personal or familial backgrounds, yet which also distinguish us from our American counterparts? After further reflection and a whole lot of soul-searching, I think I’ve found a good candidate.

But first, let’s take some time to appreciate what makes us so similar to one another. In my mind, we Canucks and Yanks are very much alike. It doesn’t even necessarily make sense to think of the American and Canadian cultures as entirely disparate entities—on the grandest scale, ‘North American culture’ seems to be most appropriate, as LCD Soundsystem describes in the song North American Scum.

Oh, I don't know, I don't know, oh, where to begin
We are North Americans
And for those of you who still think we're from England
We're not, no

…

You see, I love this place that I’ve grown to know
Alright, North America
And yeah, I know you wouldn’t touch us with a ten-foot pole
‘Cause we’re North Americans

I can see what he’s getting at: we are North Americans. To everybody else who isn’t, we look pretty darn similar—just a bunch of noisy ex-Brits jamming out on a continent we’ve all to ourselves.*** When I think about the experiences I had growing up, the kind of world I inhabited, I don’t think there would be a whole lot that would differentiate me from a kid growing up in, say, the suburbs of the Twin Cities, the ouskirts of Raleigh, or a small town just outside of Spokane. We’d even have the same accent—the nebulous, generic Mid-Western/North American accent. What does that mean for my distinct sense of identity as a Canadian, if I can’t easily differentiate my experience from that of another person who lives in a ‘foreign’ country?

It’s for this reason that I’m not keen to make mountains out of molehills about the few things that typically spring to mind when we consider what makes Canadians Canadian. That list probably goes something like this: maple syrup, ice hockey, beavers, being polite, saying ‘eh’, Tim Horton’s (which is now owned by an American corporation), speaking French (although that in itself doesn’t even quite work the way that we might think, since Quebeckers generally consider themselves to be distinct from the rest of Canada, and most English-speaking Canadians care little about learning another language). To my mind, these are all pretty insubstantial totems to hold up and say, ‘Look! Differences exist!’ It may be true that we Canadians like our maple syrup, whereas Americans in general will go for straightforward (and in my opinion, bland) table syrup, but I ask the question, is that a dividing line which carries any significance? If we want to really consider how we’re distinct from one another, I think we’ll need to look deeper. We’ll need to consider who we are—the values that make up our society, the kind of community we are, or that we aspire to be. It’s the ‘spirit of the nation’ which we need to try and pin down.

Gustatory gallimaufry

Where is the difference, then, if any exists? Well, when I was giving that interview, I tried going down a couple of roads, none of which led to the answer I was looking for. I talked about the phrase we often bandy about to differentiate American multiculturalism from Canadian: America is a ‘melting pot’ while Canada is a ‘mosaic’. The common wisdom, at least among Canadians, is that American society tosses everybody into a big pot and blends them all together, no matter their cultural heritage. What emerges is a many-flavored soup—but still just one soup. There’s a distinctive ‘American-ness’ which takes primacy when discussing various peoples’ cultural identities. After all, you wouldn’t say ‘This is celery, bell pepper, onion, sausage, chicken, seafood, okra, cajun seasoning and garlic soup’; you’d just say, ‘This is gumbo’.

However, up north we tend to think of people not so much being blended together, but contributing their unique cultural experience to a larger, comprehensive work. That notion hasn’t always existed—it really only became part of the fabric of Canadian society when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was made part of the constitution in 1982 by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father (and definitely a more interesting political figure than his son). We can quibble about details if you want, but the key thing to note is this: in a mosaic, none of the individual pieces have to give up their colour or change their shape. The larger picture emerges only when they’re all assembled together.

I think there’s some truth to this idea, but how much, I can’t say. What’s more, I’m not sure how meaningful the difference really is, especially to a person who isn’t white, has learned English as a second language, or doesn’t have family which goes back generations. Does being boiled in soup feel much different to being chopped up and stuck on a wall? Maybe it does, but neither are comfortable experiences to go through, so what’s the point in making the comparison? It’s not necessarily the case that one is better than the other—they’re just different, and undeniably difficult for those trying to make these new places home.

The other factor to consider is how, in our mosaic example, none of the individual pieces necessarily ‘possess’ or embody the final essence of the piece. It only emerges when they’re all together. Take them all apart, and what’s left? Is there any ‘Canadian-ness’ to speak of? Do any of the mosaic tiles retain a core aspect of the larger image within themselves? It’s not as clear-cut as the various ingredients which all got stewed together and served up on a plate. Their individual flavours mixed and leached; pick out an onion bit or a chicken piece, and they’ll have at least a taste of each of the other flavours in the broth.

Sorry, I’m probably stretching these metaphors to their breaking point. To put it plainly, I suppose I’m saying that, in my view, the Canadian identity is an ambiguous thing. I’m sure it exists, but it’s elusive, difficult to grasp. It doesn’t insist upon itself, maybe I’m saying. It’s a ‘You know it when you see it’ sort of thing. Or maybe I’m saying that, because we Canadians have existed opposite to a culturally dominant neighbour for so long, we’ve spent most of our energy trying to avoid becoming tossed into that same melting pot, and thus have struggled to establish our own identity in its own right. It’s been easier to define ourselves by the things we are not, rather than what we are.

But is that all we have to show for ourselves—just being a little bit less American than the Americans? A sort of America-Lite? Are we only talking about a difference in degrees, not kind? There has to be something more. There just has to be! We could look to regional differences at a means of differentiation—I mean, there’s a lot that separates a Texan from a Vermonter, just as there’s a lot that separates a Newfoundlander from a Saskatchewanian—but from my perspective, when we zoom out to the furthest extent that we can, those kinds of localized idiosyncracies seem to blur and fall out of focus. I don’t think it’s just me who sees it this way, either. I live overseas, and I can’t tell you how many times it’s been assumed that I’m an American when people pick up on my foreign accent. I don’t get my dander up or make a scene when it happens. I just smile and say, ‘No, I’m Canadian, but don’t feel bad—I can understand why you’d think that.’

All the same, that interview has been bugging me ever since. I’ve been feeling like I might have—unintentionally, I assure you—failed to give my fellow Canadians their due. I didn’t probe deep enough, didn’t search hard enough for that one special thing that truly sets us apart. My sense of guilt might have been rooted in the suspicion that, as I no longer reside in Canada, my right to speak for Canadians has been revoked. If Canadian identity can be likened to software, then I’d say mine’s in dire need of an update. I mean, I’m not exactly in tune with everything that’s going on in my home country anymore. It’s developing and changing without me. Every time I go back and visit my hometown, I recognize it less and less. Not to get too elegiac on you, but soon enough, maybe, I won’t feel like I belong anymore at all.

Yet for what it’s worth, I do believe I’ve come up with an insight worth sharing. It’s belated, I know, but still—I think I could be onto something here, so give me whatever credence I deserve as an expatriate of narrow experience, limited vision and imperfect understanding, and please consider what I have to say.

Chasing the Canadian Dream

Do you remember those lyrics I included at the start of this post? I went back and listened to Sam Roberts recently (I come back to him every now and again to nourish my inner Canuck—he’s my go-to artist when I need a hit of that Canadian indie rock nostalgia) and was reminded of the beauty of this particular song off his debut record, We Were Born In a Flame. I’ve loved it since I first heard it back in the early 2000s, though I have to say, the lyrics had always puzzled me. They’re so…ordinary. Unpretentious. There’s a certain elegance in how down-to-earth they are. Did you give the song a listen? Do—I’ll wait. It’s only five minutes long. After, we can talk.

Right, you’ve done it now? Good song, isn’t it? I’d recommend all Sam’s work; there’s not a bad record in his catalogue!

But, anyway—The Canadian Dream. First, notice just how chilled out the track is. This is not a piece of music that’s in any hurry to get anywhere. I think the tempo—the overall atmosphere of this song, in fact—is key to unlocking its hidden meaning. There’s a certain aura of peacefulness that pervades the music, I think. We’ll come back to that.

The first stanza establishes something which we’ve already discussed at length: the Canadian Dream, whatever it is, is far away and out of reach. Every day when we wake up and go out ‘in the street’, or off to work, into our communities, out and about to live our daily lives, the essence of our Canadian-ness escapes us. Maybe it’s a dream in the literal sense—something which, when we think upon it, we can’t quite recall or put into words. Who we are, who we aspire to be, what we’re trying to achieve as a people, as a culture… It’s all just a bit out there, somewhere, instead of right in front of us. We feel a sense of yearning, but what exactly for, and in what direction it might be pulling us, we can’t quite articulate. I’ve talked a lot about wanting to define the nature of the national spirit; it would appear that the essence of Canadian-ness is spiritual in nature.

But we still need something to orient ourselves, don’t we? What hard, solid thing can we turn to and say, ‘That’s something real, tangible, definite—something gives me a sense of place and purpose’? Sam Roberts offers us his answer: socialism. I think all Canadians can agree, we’re a bit socialist. More than the Americans are, anyway. We don’t mind a little bit of extra taxation if it means we have a more robust social safety net to catch us when we fall on tough times. I think Sam is quite clever in how he chooses to spell the word out rather than simply say it, like it’s a chant that we have to keep repeating to ourselves. Who are we? Canadians! What do we stand for? S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-M! Why do we want it? Some awkward glances are exchanged. Someone in the back shouts, ‘Because it’s already here, so we might as well keep it?’

Sure, why not. For better or worse, it’s what we’ve got. Let’s make our peace with it.

As the song progresses, Sam starts to sing about something that all Canadians can surely identify with—the cold, harsh and brutal winters we all must endure, residing this far north of the equator. But it’s not only our hands that freeze in sub-zero temperatures, but time itself. The world seems to stand still all around us. When listening to the song, I picture myself lingering outside my house on a frosty day, seeing the snow sparkle, watching my breath coalesce into vapour around me. The air is piercingly fresh in my lungs, so much so that it feels like tiny icicles are pricking me from the inside. Nevertheless, I inhale deeply—and everything in existence, for a brief moment, is calm and serene. Almost by accident, I get a taste of true tranquility on this icy winter’s morn. A sort of ataraxia that only a Great White Northerner could know. That’s the sensation that I think Sam’s trying to capture, and he does it well.

Finally, he hits us with the final refrain: Everything moves real slow when it’s forty below. The world can’t stay frozen in place forever; there are still jobs to do, commutes to be made, children to be dropped off and picked up, groceries to be bought, friends and family to be visited. Life has to go on, but it goes on oh-so-slowly. Not sluggishly, mind you—slowly. You need to take your time to get where you’re going, when travelling in the winter. You need to wait for the car heater to warm up. You need to watch out for frosty roads and black ice. Sometimes the streets aren’t ploughed and you couldn’t leave even if you wanted to. You can’t fight the winter—you just have to move at its speed. And, when you live here long enough and you get used to it, it becomes your speed as well. Time’s moving slowly for you and everyone you know, so you don’t really notice anymore. A sense of peace settles in as you embrace this unhurried rhythm of life.

And that’s the key. What makes us Canadians who we are, I think, is our love of peace. I believe that goes right to the heart of who we are. I think it’s engrained in our collective unconscious. It could be related to our connection with this vast, open wilderness we call home—our proximity to nature’s bounty and splendour. Nature moves at her own pace, after all, and seeks harmony above all things. It could also be the reason why we’re reputed to be so polite. It could just be down to what happens when you’ve got a lowered body temperature. I wouldn’t say it’s anything profound; life’s just a bit easier when you can count on people to be nice to each other. As a culture, we seem to place a premium on just getting along with each other. It’s not a bad place to be, even if it doesn’t exactly put us on the map as a bombastic, spectacular and high-octane destination.

That’s not to say there aren’t moments where we stand up for ourselves or our friends. We have in the past, and I imagine we will again. All I mean to say is, peace is precious to us. One might argue that’s not always been case, and they’re probably right. We’ve certainly got our own chequered past. But I think it’s at the core of who we are now, or at least, it’s a powerful force in shaping the way we behave in the world and the way we behave toward one another. What’s more, I’d venture that it distinguishes us from the United States, as a collective. No doubt there are a great many Americans who yearn for peace, who bemoan violence and conflict. But I don’t think—and feel free to disagree with me here, Americans, if you think I’m missing something—that peacefulness characterizes the American psyche, in its broadest sense.**** Not in quite the same way that it is for us, anyway.

To test my theory, you’d have to try out what Sam’s singing about for yourself. You’d need to channel that inner peace on a desperately frigid winter morning, embracing the cold like a brother or sister, and then just get on with life. You’d have to move a little slower—relinquish your desire to rush everywhere, do everything, make the world turn on your command. But you’d also have to do more than that: you’d have to focus on the unsung lyrics. You’d have to tune in to the quiet parts between the verses—between the elusive Dream and socialism and frozen time. You’d have to let the calm wash over you and transport you to a different place, a different time, where the edges that define things are fuzzy, and you don’t exactly know who you are or where you’re going, but you’re okay with that. You still know you’re somebody; you still know you’re going somewhere. You just have to chase your dream a little further, a little longer.

And finally, you’d have to accept that you might never catch it. That’s what I believe every Canadian has to do.

*I feel this is worth mentioning because the tech in the station was from the 90s, or maybe even older. That meant we needed to play a CD with our music and effects manually, toggling between the tracks and hitting ‘Play’ or ‘Stop’ at just the right time, all while recording live. Have you seen the bit in Stranger Things Season 5 where Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington flies around the studio madly, trying to play all the right sound effects at the exact right time, loading and unloading cassettes in perfect synchronization? It was like that, except we were way more amateurish about it and tended to miss cues and leave dead air.

**That’s to say nothing of the Indigenous peoples who lived here for millennia and were colonized.

***Not to say that we’re scum—listen to the track yourself and you’ll see the tongue-in-cheek humour at play here. And besides, calling ourselves ‘North American’ as if we’re some sort of monoculture doesn’t even work because it leaves out our Mexican friends, who are very distinct, yet also very much part of North America. See what a minefield these issues can be? Yet we use generalizations like these all the time. I suppose, on some level, we do it because it’s just easier for us. The world is vast and complex—more than we can readily understand or easily express, so we tend to rely on shorthand and simplifications just to make things manageable. Generalizations are a sort of heuristic, I suppose. They have a function, but they’ll always fail us when we zoom in and look closer.

****But, I acknowledge, if by saying ‘in it’s broadest sense’ I risk reducing American identity to a monolith, then how useful is that, really? Probably not very. For example, I can see why Alaskans in particular might take issue with my ideas here. After all, they’re no strangers to harsh climes and hardscrabble living! Maybe the real question is, ‘Are Alaskans Canadian?’

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And I’ll tell you, those were two of the most remarkable hours I’ve ever experienced in my whole life. I can’t think of many times when everything has seemed so tranquil. I basked in those quiet moments. The irony isn’t lost on me—I probably wouldn’t remember these moments in quite so rosy terms had I known what was happening with my wife at the time. It’s terrible to think about how these same hours were utterly miserable for her, as all she wanted to do was hold her child. She, too, had little grasp of why she’d been taken away, as her condition had only manifested in the last couple of weeks, previously undetected by her doctors.

In my case, ignorant as I was, the world became very small and simple indeed. It was just me, my son, and this little hospital room. There was a pull-out bed for visitors that I’d been using. There was the reclining chair we were sitting on. A few lamps suffused the room with a soft glow. There was a window looking down on the street below. It was dark out—we were deep in the Nordic winter. Snow swirled beyond the glass. Not a soul in sight.

And so I sat in calm and contemplative silence. I say ‘contemplative’ because I’m a thinker more than a feeler. To understand how I felt in this precious moment, I needed to think things through. I can’t say I felt a groundswell of profound, powerful emotion as I beheld my tiny little baby snoozing on my chest. What sort of love did I have for him, then, if not something grand and earth-shattering? What did this new relationship in my life mean—this father-son bond? Did I feel any different? I suppose I did, but in an abstract, as-yet-undefined sort of sense. I knew that the world had moved under my feet, I just didn’t yet grasp what that would mean for me, for him, for us.

But I was happy, that much was certain. And the longer I sat there, listening to the rhythm of his breathing, the more I began to feel this amazing sense of peace. All my concerns faded away, one by one. My thoughts quieted; my body was still. The totality of my awareness began to dissolve into a few simple things: the way the blanket felt against my skin, the sensation of his little chest pressing against mine, the gentle hum of nondescript machinery in the background. It truly felt wonderful—like everything was right in the world (notwithstanding my wife’s illness, but remember, I really had no idea what she was going through). In fact, it was bigger than that—or perhaps, in an odd way, smaller? It felt like that little hospital room was the entire world. Nothing existed outside of it. I forgot all about other people, other concerns. The model of the universe that I carried—the Earth, all its people, all the things that humans do, all the things I understand to exist and to have relationships to one another—slipped away from my mind, a mere figment of the imagination. The true universe hung in the balance of the shared bond between myself and my child.

I suppose, to those of you in better control of your mental processes, this might all seem a bit quaint to you. ‘You were just practicing mindfulness,’ you might say to me. ‘You were being present in the moment’. You might simply think that I’m using my poetic license, describing a young father grappling internally with his new role. And you’d be right on all accounts. But I think you’d also be missing something, if you just chalk it all up to some kind of personal epiphany. I was slowing down and letting it all sink in, it’s true, but I also think it was something more.

I like to think that as love blossomed between me and my newborn son—as this new, beautiful relationship came into being—the whole world changed. Not just my world—the world. I think that the love between us, when you get right down to it, is the only thing that existed in those moments. Everything else beyond that hospital room was a dream. This love right here—this transdimensional, transcendental space we shared between us—was the only place where things were really happening, where things were true. I mean this in an absolute, fundamental sense; our love was the only thing that was real.

Let me try to explain.

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Home of the Future by Paul Alexander. Illustration first published in the Tomorrow and Beyond: Masterpieces of Science Fiction Art anthology (1978).

The heart is a map

Okay, I know it and you know it—we gotta talk about Interstellar. I’m sure you’ve seen it. I’m sure you remember the iconic ‘love speech’ delivered by Anne Hathaway’s character, Amelia Brand. (You haven’t seen it? Watch this clip here and you’ll know what I’m talking about.) I’m sure you have opinions about it. Let’s start there.

In the scene I’ve mentioned, Brand tries to convey her strong feelings to the captain of the mission about why she feels drawn to explore a certain planet over another. See, they’re on a mission to find a habitable new world for humanity beyond the ruined Earth, and stakes are high. A number of scouts have gone ahead of them to explore potential candidate worlds and have lit beacons signalling whether or not the follow-up team—Brand and crew—should pursue the lead. With limited time and resources, the crew needs to make the right choice and pave the way for humanity’s resettlement beyond the stars. They’ll only get one shot. They know that our survival as a species depends on it.

Brand is fully aware of all of this. She is an incredibly intelligent, highly-competent scientist. An expert in her field. She’s the best of the best, or she wouldn’t have been sent on this vital mission. She understands her task and what will happen if she and the crew fail. So, as she and the crew are weighing their options, doing their best to interpret the signals from the two viable candidate worlds they’ve received positive signals from, Brand admits to her captain that she may, in a way, be compromised. She doesn’t frame it as such, exactly; she wants to help make the right choice, but she has enough integrity to be honest about the factors that are shaping her perspective. Moreover, she is clearly struggling to judge just how reasonable these factors are. In essence, she’s struggling with her own objectivity. And of all the factors she needs to weigh up as she evaluates her options and scrutinizes the data, it’s love, of all things, that is giving her the most trouble.

Brand is in love with one of the scouts who went ahead of their crew. She knows that there’s little chance of seeing him again alive, as he’s been out on his own on a harsh, foreign planet for a very long time, but she still hopes that they can be reunited. What is more, she feels drawn to her love’s candidate world. She practically feels him calling out to her, inviting her to come and share paradise together. The draw is so powerful that she cannot deny its hold over her—indeed, she has to wonder, wedded to science and reason as she is, whether or not she has become totally compromised. Love is not exactly a scientifically valid tool of measurement, and she knows it. The inhabitability of a planet doesn’t come down to whether one feels ‘love’ or not—it comes down to the planet’s gravitational properties, atmospheric conditions, topography and magnetic shielding from cosmic radiation.

Nevertheless, Brand makes her case to the captain. Something deep within her is responding to the call from her lover. Something not of this world. Love, she argues, ‘is the one thing capable of transcending space and time.’ Her argument goes something like this: we don’t really understand what love is, and yet it is powerfully real. It’s so powerful, in fact, that it seems to defy our understanding of physics, biology. Love is a ‘social utility’, the captain tries to say, but Brand points out that this is reductive and deficient. What utility is there in loving a dead person? How can the profound levels of love we might feel for those we’ve lost be ‘useful’, either to us, or to society at large? The captain admits as much (though in a clever bit of direction, McConaghey’s acting is subtle enough that his answer could either be interpreted as genuine admission, or tactical defusement of a difficult, emotion-laden deliberation.)

And so Interstellar offers us something to consider, as we venture across the furthest reaches of our solar system and into the unknown expanse of space. It asks us: is this all there is? Planets and stars and galaxies and black holes—celestial objects made of matter, of particles, of ‘hard stuff’, all bound and governed by the natural yet blind laws of physics? Is that all we are—flesh and blood and molecules and chemicals sloshing around in the brain, conjuring hallucinations and biologically manufactured experiences? Because for many of us, Brand included, that just doesn’t seem to be enough. We seem to be able to experience things which transcend this mortal plane. There seem to be authorities greater than those of natural law. Love, Brand suggests, might be one of those authorities, or it might be pointing us in the direction we ought to search. The love Brand feels comes right from the very core of her being—so powerful, profound and sublime that she is in awe of it. She is in awe of her capacity to feel it, even; how can it be that she, formed from dust as she is, be attuned to some sort of otherworldly, extemporal awareness which fills her with a sense of purpose, of belonging, of comfort and excitement and satisfaction? It’s incredible, this love she feels. How could such a thing not be ‘real’?

Bedtime stories for robots

Just by asking that question, I suppose I’ve gone a bit too far. I’ve tipped my hand, revealing that I don’t think science is the only thing we ought to rely on to orient ourselves in the world. But I’d contend the we all know this, anyway—a world governed and ordered science alone would not necessarily be one we would want to live in. It would, for one thing, not have love. You wouldn’t able to say that ‘love is a chemical reaction in the brain’, because that isn’t love. I’m not just playing semantics here; I mean it. To define ‘love’ as nothing more than an automated response by biomechanical systems is to rob the word of its true meaning. A hollowed out love is not true love, it’s a facsimile. A philosophical-zombie love. Love, by definition, needs to be something transcendental. It’s fine if you think that transcendental things like God or free will or whatever don’t really exist—that’s a perfectly reasonable model of the universe to have. Indeed, the more I learn about what evidence there is to suggest that we’re not as in control of ourselves or our destinities as we might think (see: determinism) the more I have to admit that these are very convincing claims. Still, my point is that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. It seems to me that love either exists solely in the transcendental, imaginary world that we conjure up in our shared hallucinations—and what we experience of it down here on Earth is just oxytocin and dopamine fluctuations sparked by external stimuli—or it exists as some as-yet ineffable quintessence which connects us, corporeal beings that we are, to a high dimension which we cannot readily perceive, except by means of the sharing and exchanging of said love. In this sort of universe, love acts as a conduit, or perhaps a mode of existence in and of itself, which our physicalist models haven’t the capacity to integrate.

But hang on—just what do I mean when I say ‘love’? If the thing Brand is describing eludes even her ability to fully comprehend, what exactly is it? We need a definition of terms, or we can’t really be certain that we’re understanding each other when we make big claims about said thing existing or not existing. Fortunately, it just so happens that I’ve already endeavored to give a thorough definition of just what I believe love to be, and why I think it’s more than just biochemical programming. It was in an exchange with a fellow Substacker, , who writes some darn good stuff (and I highly recommend you subscribe to him). You can check out the article where my definition originally appeared here; if you want to read my explanation in detail, head down to the comments. But, if you’re already a bit overwhelmed and just want the TLDR, here it is, though I abbreviated and cleaned it up a bit:

I think love can be described as ‘perfect being’. For most things in the universe, they exist in a morally neutral state. A rock just is, a galaxy just is. They are neither good nor bad in their own right. Not that they’re perfect or imperfect, either—these value metrics don’t apply (yet). The moral dimension only comes into play when conscious beings such as ourselves enter the picture, and we can ascribe value onto things. A ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ is introduced, based on our wants/needs/desires/values, etc. In other words, a moral dimension manifests when describing the relationship between thinking, feeling beings and other things, which can also include thinking and feeling beings (though not exclusively).

So a thing that ‘is’—and that is also conscious of other things that ‘are’, plus is aware of its relationship to them—can begin to move through this moral landscape, beyond the point of neutrality. It can act in ways that sustain or even improve the relationship (good) or ways that deteriorate/damage it (bad).

Perfect being, then, is at the absolute top range of this scale I’ve described. It’s where a conscious thing that ‘is’ exists in total harmony with all other things, consciously valuing each of these relationships in their proper proportion. This kind of conscious valuation, by necessity, requires a kind of ‘emptying of the self’, which is part and parcel of what love is like, I think. Put crudely, a thing isn’t really loving something (or someone) else if it’s putting itself first all the time in the relationship. That’s all take and no give, and it’s bound to give out sometime or other. I’d have to call that Deterioration. Rather, it would reduce itself—gladly, humbly—out of recognition (ie. consciousness) of the relationship’s value. A loving thing sees itself as inextricably linked with all other things. It knows it’s part of an unfathomably complex webwork of interrelationships, and it seeks to maximize the harmoniousness of these bonds, emptying itself into them—feeding them, sustaining them.

So, love is ‘perfect being’, then. It follows that, on some level, the ‘being’ we’re most accustomed to—physical, corporeal being—isn’t quite perfect.** There’s something missing, in other words. Now, before you start scoffing and say that I’ve really given myself over to this lovey-dovey ‘woo’ stuff, allow me to try and be a bit more scientific. I’ve been thinking a lot about the role love plays in our universe—in fact, I wrote about it in my very first proper post on this publication. I wrote about how I bought a copy of Stephen Hawking’s Brief Answers to the Big Questions on a whim in a little independent bookshop, telling myself that if I was going to believe in non-physical things like God and whatnot, I’d better have a solid understanding of why smarter people than me didn’t believe in such things. I remember reading the chapter where Hawking describes for the layman how it can be that the universe brought itself into existence, using his ‘man digging a hole’ analogy. If you have a man standing on a wide, flat plane, and you ask him to dig a hole, he’ll do just that. Soon enough you’ll have your hole, but you’ll have something else as well: you’ll have a hill. All of the dirt the man shovelled out of the ground wasn’t just deleted from existence—it needed to go somewhere. With every shovelful he pulled from below, he created an equal and opposite counterbalance above.

Our universe is the hill. The hole—well, we don’t exactly know what the hole is, but maybe it’s the place or state where dark matter and dark energy exist. And don’t go thinking the man is God—no, no, no. The man is just the natural, fundamental laws of the universe, doing what they do. When we put it all together—the hole and the hill—what do we have? Nothing. A flat, empty plane. The two things which ‘exist’ cancel each other out. So, can we really say that anything exists? Unclear, but in a certain sense, no. Our universe might just be like the particles and antiparticles that make the bedrock of all reality, the quantum realm, popping into existence spontaneously and annihiliating each other almost at once. But do we need a God standing outside of this model to set in all in motion, insofar as this system can be described as being ‘in motion’ at all? No, because it’s a closed system, following its own rules. And at the end of the day, it’s hard to call it much of a system at all. It’s essentially nothing—look at a flat plane on its edge, and you’ll see its dimensions collapse and vanish.*

You might think this would have shaken my faith—that Hawking’s staggering intellect and rational mind had demonstrated, beyond a doubt, the redundancy of believing in God. I mean, if God didn’t create the universe, what do we need Him for? It’s a fair question. But this didn’t quite prompt the crisis of faith in me that one might have expected. After some time pondering the implications of Hawking’s insights and what it meant for me and my worldview, it suddenly hit me: if it was God he was looking for, he was looking in all the wrong places. So was I. A God standing outside the universe, watching it play itself out as if it were a stage performance to be viewed from the opera box? That wasn’t the God I claimed to believe in. The God I claimed to believe in was personal, intimate. A Creator who knew His Creation inside and out. A God who commanded us to love one another, who cared most about our hearts and how we relate to one another. A Heavenly Father—not a cosmic deity. The best place to look for such a God was inwards, not outwards.

The tell was in some of the later passages Hawking wrote, after describing his self-creating universe. He mentions his wife and children, and how much they meant to him. He discusses how his scientific work had been important, but it would have been meaningless without the love and support of his family. It’s fair to assume that he was being truthful about loving his wife and children, yes? But when he talks about love, does he mean that he loved them in a purely biochemical sense? That when he looked at his wife, a hormonal response fired in his brain, he felt some kind of sensation, and he responded accordingly, as a machine would do? Does he mean that, when his children were born, or when they fell off their bikes and scraped their knees, or when they graduated from college, got married and had children of their own, he manifested involuntary behaviour in response to external stimuli, determined by deep-seated, pre-programmed neural pathways? Is he saying that all of this was just atoms jostling each other and exchanging electrical charges? Because if he is, then I don’t think the word ‘love’ is the right word to use. I think it’d be disingenuous to call that love, and I wouldn’t accuse the great Stephen Hawking of being disingenuous. A better word for that kind of deterministic response would be ‘programming,’ as I’ve previously indicated. Is that what he said to his children when he put them to bed at night—go now to sleep, my little automatons?

I daresay that he didn’t. I think he more likely said, ‘I love you, now go to sleep.’ And that should tell us a lot—because he was either lying when he told his children that he loved them, knowing in his heart that whatever ‘love’ he felt for them was automatic and arbitrary, or he was a lot like Brand, grappling with a feeling that was too big for words, too big for the natural sciences. Too big to be adequately articulated by the material reality he had committed his life to understanding. Any of us that have truly experienced love—be it romantic, familial, filial or otherwise—really need to grapple with the same thing, if we’re to be honest with ourselves.

The dimensions of love

This moral dimension I’ve mentioned, then, is where love seems to reside. We can sense whether an action we might take in this material world is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending on whether or not there is love in it—whether it constitutes perfect being, as I’ve said. We’ve been born with a kind of compass, or a dowsing rod, which directs us toward the good. Sure, many might call the moral codes we uphold in our cultures to be products of tradition deeply entrenched instinctual biases, but if we know that, why do we go along with it? Show me a person who genuinely believes that all morality is artifice, yet who goes along with it because it’s socially expedient, and I’m prepared to rescind these arguments. My sense is that we participate in the moral universe because in some profound, ineffable way, we know its real and true. We participate in love because we know we’re made for love, somehow, someway.

The inverse of this can also be instructive. If our moral sense is preprogrammed, generated by nothing more than genetic coding and predispositions, why is it that we can violate it so egregiously? How do we account for the abominable horrors that human beings have unleashed upon one another throughout the ages? If we’re nothing but biological machines, what sort of ‘programming’ are we following that’s led us to commit murder, rape, genocide? I can see an argument where some of our baser instincts come from a sense of self-preservation or natural competitiveness, but is that really enough to explain how we’ve managed, somehow, to construct conditions of terror that are orders of magnitude beyond whatever we might see in nature? I mean, the animal kingdom is a savage place, for sure, but it’s hard to say that it’s evil. The various species of our planet vying for dominance don’t destroy one another for sport or pleasure. No, I think there’s something distinct happening in the hearts of humans when we commit atrocities against our neighbours. In such instances, I think we’re operating at the furthest extremity of the moral dimension. I think our consciousnesses grant us the capacity to understand, though imperfectly, how our actions will impact another, for good or for ill. For love or for un-love.

Consciousness is key here. Consider what we understand about how consciousness interacts with the physical realm—this realm we seem most comfortable with calling ‘real’. We know that everything that is physical is built upon a system that is fundamentally indeterminate and random. The quantum bedrock of our universe is foaming with potentiality, not actuality. Einstein taught us about Special Relativity, not Absolute Objectivity. I’ve written before about my belief that our minds—or actually, our consciousnesses, which are not exactly the same thing—are integral to shaping the reality that we experience. It’s not so much that what we experience as ‘reality’ is illusory, but rather that it’s but a fragment of all that is real. We operate with a low-resolution model of the wider universe because the real universe is far too complex and indeed random for us to possibly comprehend or navigate. Fortunately, we are very small creatures, and we exist in a very small, localized and stable reality bubble which allows us to survive in this cosmic chaos.

One common way of thinking about this quantum phenomenon is that of the observer ‘collapsing’ the observed photon (a fundamental particle) from an indeterminate wave into a singular point in spacetime, the double-slit experiment being the most famous and straightforward example of this. Strange as it may be, it is the case that the universe appears to take its shape—at least, the shape that we are capable of perceiving—at the very moment that we conscious beings interact with it.*** Another way of thinking of it is to imagine reality as being far, far greater than whatever you are perceiving at the moment; the totality of reality is a kaleidoscopic, fractal infinitude of possibilities, all equally real in their own right. The issue is that your conscious mind is only capable of experiencing one of these realities at a time—the particular branch of potentiality which is extending into your field of view. The reason why your moment-to-moment experience appears consistent and intelligible has a lot to do with probability. (The universe is fundamentally random, but it’s also huge; there’s a lot of data to crunch.) You aren’t God, so you can’t just go around manifesting whatever reality you want for yourself. You’re more like a passenger on a train running along a track; there’s not a whole lot you can do to change the ultimate direction that train is heading, now that it’s got its momentum, but you can look out the window and take in the sights. What’s more, you can reflect upon what those sights mean to you. You can perceive and relate them in an individualized, intimate way. You can’t help it—the very act of perceiving is to define some manner of relationship between the perceiver and the perceived. It’s here that you begin to realize you’re not just moving through the dimensions of space and time, but that you’re making progress through the moral dimension as well. You’re making value judgements about what is ‘good’ or ‘not as good’. You’re evaluating where things exist on a scale from abjectly awful to perfect, even if you’re not fully aware that’s what you’re doing. It’s all relational—it’s all about the bonds you share with people, places, objects. Nothing is an island unto itself. For something to be real, it must be in relationship to something else. And the only ones we know of who are capable of perceiving these relationships are us.

So, a conscious mind is one that is, at least phenomenologically, giving rise to the reality that said mind inhabits. How real is this perceived reality? It’s certainly real, but relative to all else that is also real, it seems to pale in comparison. But the conscious mind is conscious of more things than just photons and electrons buzzing around (material things, I mean—let’s not forget that all the stuff you and I typically point to as being ‘real’, like tables and chairs and alarm clocks, are made up of fundamental particles like photons and electrons.) It’s also conscious of how things feel, and not just in a hormonal sort of way, as I’ve tried to show. It’s conscious of love—or the absence of it. It’s conscious of ‘perfect being’, of relationship. This isn’t by choice, but by necessity; in order for a relationship to be perceived, it must also be afforded a value judgement according to the moral dimension of love.

So I ask you, then, what’s more real: the singular, individualized relationship being appraised, or the metric being applied to it? It’s kind of like asking how real are mathematics. Very real, I think, but you can’t exactly hold the number two in your hand. Numbers are abstractions, but they have concrete applications in this physical reality. It’s in this way that they point us to a higher sort of reality. Perhaps we can say it is even an objective one. Love is always love, after all. I can’t hurt you and call it love. You’ll know and I’ll know (or I might be trying to convince myself otherwise) that my unloving act did not constitute love. It was not ‘perfect being’, when we measure it along the moral dimension. And so, it begs the question: is love the only thing that is absolute? Is love the only thing that can transcend space and time? If it is—if it can—then is love the only thing we can say is really, truly real?

Try this at home, kids!

Consider the simple observation made in the Gospel of John: ‘God is love.’ John was something like the philosopher of the apostles, so we can’t necessarily allow this simple statement to fool us—there’s a lot packed into this idea. If you think about what it means to love someone, you need to ‘do’ something. Serve them, help them, honor them. But something has to happen between you two in order for that love to be actualized. This means that love is a verb; it’s something that necessitates action and interaction. But we don’t do this all on our own power—what need would we have for God, if we could love all on our own? God is love, so that means when we love, we participate in/with God. It follows that the inverse is also true: when we fail to love, we fail to participate in God. God and love are one and the same—and they are both very, very much beyond us.

Let’s remember that God is, theologically speaking, the First Cause. He’s responsible for all that exists, including ourselves. In this way, we can say that God makes up the fundamental reality—all things derive their existence from Him, and so cannot exist without Him. He’s the one who laid the foundation of the world, but He Himself has no foundation. He makes all things happen, but nothing makes Him happen. He is the Unmoved Mover.

And what is the nature of God’s existence? If we exist as Created beings, how does He exist? Well, this is where it gets really interesting—how can we really say that God ‘exists’ at all, if by existence we mean temporal, corporeal existence? We have to stretch our definition of existence to include more than just matter and physics if we want to include something like God. God is spirit, after all; the Scriptures tell us that ‘those who worship Him worship Him in Spirit’. The nature of the divine is nothing physical—it is totally beyond this mortal realm, or it wouldn’t be very ‘godly’ at all. It’d be just like us. I don’t know about you, but I’ve yet to find a human being so perfect that they are deserving of worship, in the sense that we mean when we’re talking about God.**** I can think of plenty who are worth loving, however. Perhaps even…all of them?

We should note that the kind of love that God exudes toward His Creation is one that is other-centric. This ‘agape’ love, as it’s called in the original Greek, is all about goodwill, benevolence, self-emptying. It’s about the appreciation of the other for the other’s own sake. God sees intrinsic value and worth in His Creation, and He desires good for it—not because it benefits Him in any way, but because it is in His very nature to be loving. The closest picture we have of this love on Earth is the love we have for our children. We love them not because they ‘do’ anything for us—indeed, they can often cause us a lot of trouble! No, we love them because they are deserving of love in and of themselves. By loving them, we get to participate in a kind of meta-love; we get to nourish and nurture this love-in-itself with our own relational love, and in doing so, become part of a wider, grander love. It’s not even that the love relationship between parent and child is a kind of two-way street, where we give and receive love. That does happen, but it isn’t the essence of it. A parent’s love for their child isn’t exactly reciprocal in that way. It’s true that, as I consider the love that I have for my child and the love I have for my parents, I can sense that they are both very real and powerful, but also that the love is moving in a certain direction. It’s travelling like a current—through my parents, then to me, then to my son. The love has a certain dimensionality to it. As it flows from my parents to me and outward again, it’s carrying me, transforming me to becoming love in-and-of myself. It did the same thing for my parents, and I hope that one day it will do the same for my son.

Here’s another piece of that answer I wrote Tim, which might help you to see what I mean:

I love my son. When he was born, a very strange thing dawned on me all of a sudden, but which I knew to be absolutely true: I realized what it was to love something (someone) so much that I would die for him. In other words, I would self-empty to the point of oblivion out of recognition of his immeasurable value.

Would this mean that the relationship was then terminated, if I actually did die? Not so, not so! Because our relationships with one another exist far beyond time and space. They’re moral, fundamentally, which is a dimension all of its own. If I died for my son, say to save his life in a house fire—this act of love would carry on long after I was gone in my son’s memory, perhaps even my grandchildren’s, and so on.

This is the trajectory that all Creation is on, I believe. Our acts of love echo throughout time and space. They are moving along a dimension that transcends both, ever-approaching that kind of ‘perfect being’ which we so desperately yearn for, deep in our broken hearts. None of us will get there in our lifetime. Indeed, it might take all of eternity to reach whatever the end-state of love is supposed to be. But if we can say that time is moving in a direction, and one direction only, I think we can say that love is as well. And that’s good news for us. It means there’s hope. The end of time might just be the beginning of perfect being—perfect love.

If we humans are something like fish, then love must be the ocean we swim in. We can’t readily perceive it, but it’s real, and it’s sustaining us. I think that’s what Brand was getting at in her speech. She didn’t quite have the right tools at her disposal for understanding it, being a fish and all, but she could tell that she was dependent on something. Rather than close herself off to the possibility that there might be a greater reality out there, a higher truth beyond her perception, she took some tentative steps towards it. She was a scientist, yes, but scientists are supposed to be curious. They’re supposed to test the boundaries, collect evidence, and make their judgements.

We can do something similar right now. Is love the only thing that’s real? Here’s a simple experiment you can try:

First, think of someone you love. I mean, really, truly love.

Second, consider if anything else in the world—material or otherwise—is worth exchanging for the love you have for that person.

Now, time to evaluate your findings. If you said yes, then I suppose there’s something more real to you than love. If no, then it seems as if there is nothing more real to you than love.

Make of that what you will. I’ll be here if you want to swap notes.

*I guess in this scenario I’ve described, we, the disembodied consciousness which directed the man to dig the hole in the first place could be God, but I’m pretty sure in Hawking’s telling of the analogy, this component was left out.

**Now, I don’t mean ‘imperfect’ in a dualistic, Gnostic type sense where the flesh is evil and the spirit is good; I just mean it’s not the ultimate. It’s not the final word in ‘being’. There’s something greater—something even more real—beyond it. And so we have to wonder, if there’s something more real out there, just how real is this physical reality we seem to occupy? Does reality exist on a spectrum? Are we living in a low-resolution type reality, but if we zoom out (or zoom in) we’ll get a clearer picture, and come to understand ourselves and our existence in more comprehensive terms?

***While some who resist the idealist’s view that ‘we create the universe via perception’ points to the fact that scientific instruments are perfectly capable of measuring quantum fluctuations without the need of a conscious observer to be present and manifest this ‘collapse’, it remains the case that someone has to eventually look at those machines’ readings in order for them to mean anything. So, who’s to say that the moment of collapse doesn’t occur then—when the observer picks up the device measuring the photons behaviour and reads the data it has recorded? Marco Masi has a great article to read, especially if you’re skeptical about this whole thing.

****Barring Jesus, but He was also God (if you’re of that sort of persuasion) so He doesn’t count.

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But those are just cases of random happenstance. They could happen to anybody, even if, statistically speaking, they’re unlikely. What about the times I’ve tempted fate and put myself into danger—youthful thrill-seeking and all that—yet somehow emerged unscathed? There was the time I jumped from a railway bridge into a river without any real sense of how deep the water was (I did, at least, suspect that it was deep.) There was the time I clambered up an old abandoned factory and, in an effort to reach a rooftop vantage point, leapt across a chasm filled with rusted rebar and shredded sheet metal. There was the time I was driving too fast down an icy road and lost control of my vehicle, yet after uttering a panicked prayer, the car—miraculously, I swear—snapped back into position and I travelled on safely, shaken but unharmed.

That’s not even the worst near-accident story I have. There was even a time—gosh, I shake my head to remember it—where somehow I lost focus while driving and ended up drifting onto the opposite side of the road. I’d already been driving for some time. It was somewhere out in the country, on a wide stretch of desolate highway—just the sort of environmental conditions that allow for a restless mind to wander. Belatedly, I realized that a massive 18-wheeler was bearing down on me. I swerved, not to the correct side of the road, but to the opposite shoulder. The truck sailed past and I rolled to a stop, once again shaken but unharmed.

You might be reading about these instances of dumb luck and thinking to yourself, that smarmy bastard. What did I ever do to deserve such good fortune in life? How is it fair that I’ve come through these experiences without so much as a scratch, especially when so many others—perhaps even yourself—have endured so much needless pain and suffering? Do I ‘deserve’ this privileged position I find myself in?

From a Darwinian perspective, perhaps not. Clearly, I’ve some kind of malfunction in my mental capacity to accurately assess danger and respond appropriately. People who can’t figure out how not to get themselves killed doing stupid things can’t expect to sire many offspring, as such folk won’t be alive all that long to pass along whatever defective genes they have.

But that’s just the beginning of the questions we can ask. How about morally—does it not behoove a person to avoid squandering their gifts? I can say I’ve been given a great many gifts in life; I’m intelligent, I’m healthy, I’m loved by many. What foolishness would it be to throw away such things—to throw away my own potential—for fleeting thrills and meaningless frivolities! Surely such an imprudent person deserves to have whatever gifts they possess taken away and handed over to those who could utilize them more responsibly and productively. How many people out there wouldn’t give all they could for health, for material comfort, for opportunity in life?

It makes sense to believe that we ought to make the most of the hand we’ve been dealt—especially if it’s a winning hand. But what doesn’t make sense is how randomly the cards are distributed. We want deserving people to live good lives and to be well equipped to do so; conversely, we want those undeserving of success, as we would deem them, to reap what they sow. Yet the universe, or maybe even God, seems to have a different idea about how things should work. The rains fall on the rich and the poor alike. It’s worse than that, actually—all too often the rains fall on the rich whilst the poor endure the drought. How can that possibly be fair? How can that be moral? Is whoever’s in charge of balancing the order of the cosmos asleep at the wheel, or are we supposed to believe that we’re missing something?

I’ve puzzled on this question for a long time, as I’m sure many of my readers have. I’ve looked for clues in the holy books; I’ve spoken with people I’ve respected and admired. I’ve received different answers at different times, from different sources. More recently, I’ve started looking at these questions from a different sort of angle altogether—one which de-centers myself, what I claim to know, what I believe to is or should be true. I’ve done my very best to shift my perspective. It’s somewhere in this approach, I think, that the secret lies. I won’t claim to have found it. I won’t claim to be able to lead you to any higher learning or deeper understanding of the mysteries of the universe. I won’t even claim what I’m about to describe below is even novel or particularly insightful; doubtless, there are innumerable spiritual schools, monastic traditions and even entire religions that have charted the same or similar waters. But what little I’ve seen from my unique vantage I’d like to report here, in the hopes that you may find it worthy of further contemplation. That’s what we pneumanauts do—we wonder and we wander, far as the spirit can carry us, ruminating oh-so-diffidently upon what we may uncover.

Here’s the essence of the thing I’ve been wondering about: if everyone has an equal chance, in cosmic terms, of being dealt either this card or that one, then isn’t it true that we all are playing by the same rules—the rules of random chance? Uncomfortable though it may be, is chaos not something of a great leveller? Furthermore, is it possible that we already know the mechanism by which the universe is made just? And yes indeed, I do mean that in moral terms. Maybe when we’ve been looking around ourselves and wondering why things don’t seem fair, we’ve been looking in the wrong places. Maybe the fairness we yearn for resides deeper, woven into the very fabric of Creation itself.

Let’s get real personal here for a moment. Just this past Friday night, my cat died. This is no Schrodinger’s cat situation I’m talking about. Only a week ago he was fighting fit, in the prime of his life. Then one bad meal poisoned him beyond hope and shut down his entire digestive system. Vets couldn’t do anything for him but ease his pain. I’m writing this just after coming in from digging him a grave in my backyard.

Now, I know exactly what’s going to happen to him once I put him in the ground; his body will decay, and eventually, every atom that once made up this furry little meowzer will have dispersed. What was once a tightly controlled and highly organized system that sustained his life—my cat’s physical form, comprised of unfathomably complex relationships between a whole host of proteins and cells, themselves comprised of biochemical bonds between molecules, themselves comprised of interactions between fundamental particles—will degenerate into dysregulated, decidedly non-feline patterns, insofar as we can call the newfound state of these particles a ‘pattern’ at all.

That’s entropy at a glance, on a small scale.* All that is will come undone and nothing will remain, just like my beloved cat. I know that, but I don’t exactly feel like what happened to him was ‘fair’. He was just an innocent kitty and a very handsome furry purry boy. He did not deserve to have his life cut short so suddenly—he deserved many more years of treats, pets and cuddles. Maybe he deserved even more, for who ‘deserves’ death of any kind? Why can’t we all continue on forever in bliss? (We’ll come to that again later).

At the same time, I also know it could have happened to anybody’s cat. Heck, I actually have two cats—it could just as easily have been the other, the deceased cat’s half-brother, whom I would now be preparing for burial. Why him, and not his kin? Why my cat, and not my neighbour’s? Why any cat at all, for that matter?

I’m afraid there’s no particular reason. It just happened. On some fundamental level, it was random. Accidental. A short straw drawn—could have happened to anybody, or anybody’s cat. And in that sense, harsh as it might be, it’s hard to say that it was unfair. The potential for my cat to get sick always existed, right from the moment he was born. Were I to take the furthest zoomed-out view of his existence that I can, I would see that, for many years, he did not get sick, despite whatever the odds might have been. Then, tragically, on this singular occasion, that ever-present potential was actualized. Heartbreaking, certainly, but unjust? What exactly can we say we are owed when every day that we live is never guaranteed, but a gift? If it’s not unjust, and the randomness encoded into the universe is brutal yet fair, then does this mean cosmic entropy—that little-understood property of the physical systems that make up said universe—is the very mechanism by which the gods or God balances the scales for all that is, was, and ever will be? Would that help us to make our peace with the lack of justice we seem to see in the world today?

Doubtful, I grant you. But it might be a step, at the very least, to seeing the world—seeing ourselves, even—a little closer to how an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God might see us. And gaining a little perspective never hurt anybody.

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Artwork by Noriyoshi Ohrai as part of his Green Universe collection.

Chaos theory

Are you familiar with Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight? Perhaps what made his depiction of the Clown Prince of Crime so chilling was that, despite how shocking and disturbing we may have found his actions, we could see that there was truth in what he said and a logical consistency in how he behaved. Ledger’s Joker is one diametrically opposed to the consensus reality that we pusillanimous sheeple have held up as the one sensible way to conduct ourselves in the world. This Joker accuses us of wanting ‘order in Gotham’ because we’re afraid. Though we can never know what’s ahead of us the next day, or the next and the next, we nevertheless convince ourselves that we can construct systems for ourselves that afford us some semblance of stability and predictability. We organize ourselves into petty hierarchies and arbitrary power structures, straining and competing against each other in an array of rat races, all to hold together this ramshackle ‘order’. We pretend to be in control and so we can sleep a bit better at night. This Joker laughs at our hubris and mocks our cowardice. He knows the only honest way to live is to ride the lightning every waking moment of every day. The truth is that the world is random, chaotic. Insane, even. But what’s more insane: to act as if the fundamental nature of reality isn’t what it is, or to live in accordance with it? No, it’s not the Joker who’s the crazy one—he’s just ‘ahead of the curve’, the rest of us either asleep or in denial.

In a pivotal scene, the Joker confronts an old enemy whom he’s brought to the brink of self-destruction. Harvey Dent was once a good man who stood up for justice and truth, but the Joker has shown him the ugly side of himself. The Joker has turned Dent against his friends, killed his loved ones and sullied the lofty ideals he once held. It’s only understandable that Dent wants revenge. Life has not been fair to him; he did everything right, but he still ended up being robbed of all he cared about. The Joker, knowing that Dent is at his lowest moment, exploits his vulnerability by making him a diabolical offer: kill me and claim the justice you so desire. Dent is sorely tempted, even though doing so would complete his transformation from paragon of justice to a diminished purveyor of vengeance. Yet as Dent is weighing up his options, the Joker reminds him of one thing: this man he’s come to hate has only ever been a ‘dog chasing cars’. An agent of chaos, following wherever his luck will lead him, exercising no real control over how it will all turn out. Nothing that the Joker has done is evil in the sense that it was maliciously seeking the destruction of an innocent man. Their conflict was never personal. The only evil to be found in this sad state of affairs is whatever evil Dent chooses to perceive, but he could just as well perceive things as the Joker does—chaos in action. There’s bad with intent, and bad without; they are not necessarily the same thing and do not warrant the same response. One must remember that everything in this world is down to chance.

So, the Joker spins the revolver, puts it to his own head and invites Dent to pull the trigger—who can possibly know whether there’s a bullet in the chamber or a blank? At least a world of chaos grants each of us a fighting chance. And that world, so says the Joker, is a fairer one than we’ve created for ourselves.

As I said, Ledger’s Joker is compelling at least in part because of how sane he is. But it’s a frightening kind of sanity—one which looks at the world around us and derives a completely different set of conclusions about how to respond. It confronts us with the fact that our way of doing things is quite possibly not the only way; it’s not even necessarily the best way, when you consider the cognitive dissonance we need to endure in order to live as if we are in control of our own destinies. We tend not to keep it at the forefront of our minds, but we all intrinsically understand that nothing is guaranteed in this life. Any one of us could be struck by lightning when we walk out our front doors. We could be knocked flat by a speeding vehicle while crossing just about any road in any town at any time; the odds, however unlikely, are very real, yet we go ahead and cross the road anyway.

We understand that to live in this world is to live with risk. All actions in life carry uncertainty. We can’t be bubble people and stay inside tiny microenvironments perfectly tuned to mitigate any and all hazards for our entire lives—we could hardly call that ‘living’ at all! Yet the fact that we understand this indicates that we grasp the truth in the Joker’s words. The universe can be a very unkind place. Random misfortune can lay low the strongest among us in an instant. Disaster can be lurking around just about every corner. It’s true, but we can’t bring ourselves to live as if it were true—and so the dissonance abounds.

This does not sound like a happy sort of place for us to find ourselves in—a universe that cares nothing for our wellbeing, that functions like a Lovecraftian blind-idiot god lashing out in erratic, senseless fits of frenzy. We can’t cope in a universe ruled by the capricious Lady Fortune, whose whims are as brutal as they are unpredictable. It’s no wonder that the Joker is depicted as such a destructive force in the movie—he’s aligned himself with the fundamental forces that seek to upend everything we order-loving people have established. We sense the truth in his words, but we are disgusted by this truth at the same time. What is it that causes us to recoil from what seems so obvious? Our own capacity for self-delusion? Or are there yet other forces at work—ones operating in the shadows, rather like silent guardians or watchful protectors—which we’ve not yet factored in? In a universe as cruel and unfeeling as ours, is it possible that we might deserve a hero?

The many ways the cookie crumbles

Before we can answer that question, we’ll need to map the territory a bit more thoroughly than we already have. That way, we might be able to spot where any secret saviors could be hiding. It turns out that we have a fairly decent grasp of why this undercurrent of randomness and unknowability pervades all that we can see. The ordered world which we inhabit—a world of people and pets and airplanes and governments and tax regimes and television stars and microwave dinners and luxury spa getaways and shopping malls and camping trips and electricity-guzzling data centers, as well as all the natural things like animals and bacteria and oceans and rocks and galaxies and stars and planets—while seeming structured and reliable, rests upon an unstable foundation. The pillars of both creation and civilization stand not upon solid rock, but a roiling sea of quantum uncertainty.

Take any solid object in your vicinity as an example. Maybe it’s a book or a coffee cup or a computer mouse, or a tissue you used to wipe your nose. That object appears to have a stable structure, yes? It has a definitive shape and form; it possesses distinct properties and lacks others. What’s more is that you could measure all sorts of things about the object if you wanted to—its height, weight, dimensions, chemical composition. You can do these things because that object is physical in nature, and there’s a lot that we know about how physical things behave in our material universe. Physical things are made of atoms, for instance**. With the right equipment, you could learn about just what sort of atoms make up that orderly structure you call a ‘tissue’ or whatever. You might even gain the impression that everything about this object is fixed, determined, set in stone. But you’d be quite wrong.

See, intrinsic to each and every physical object in existence, in conjunction with its environment (as you can’t really have a ‘what’ without a ‘where’), is a certain potential for chaos. A thing that has a shape and form is a thing that possesses a potentiality for its structure to degrade and erode over time. The exact way this degradation will play out is hard to know in advance because there are so many factors in play, but as long as the object doesn’t exist in some kind of perfect thermodynamic equilibrium—and lots of things in this big and busy world don’t—then cumulative degradation is assured. Remember that atoms, which make up all physical matter, are never exactly still, but vibrating and exchanging energy with one another and their environment. This means that a system which appears stable is far more chaotic than it might seem on the surface. They are never truly static; one moment the atoms are doing a bit of this, the next they’re doing a bit of that. Things look a lot blurrier when we zoom in. Over time, the effects of these fluctuations in the order/chaos dichotomy begin to stack up. As they do, statistically speaking, the system loses its coherence—its order.

This is why objects appear, from our perspective, to move toward becoming more chaotic instead of less. If you pick up a vase and drop it on the floor, can you expect the vase to somehow end up even more vase-like than it already is? Would you expect it to somehow reconstitute itself perfectly? Probably not, but there’s no reason in physics why this couldn’t happen. There’s no physical reason why the pieces couldn’t break apart and bounce around in just such a way that they’d end up exactly where they’d started. The issue is that it’s unlikely; the big money is on betting that the vase will shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. How come? Entropy.

In a world where the bedrock of existence is quantum indeterminacy (more of a foamy froth than rock, come to think of it), the next state a fundamental particle, such as an electron, will be in can never be known in advance—only the probability. The quantum realm is even more foundational to describing reality than the atomic, and so the atoms which make up all physical systems must abide by its rules, fuzzy as they may be. Here, fundamental particles are being created out of the boiling vacuum of space while at the same time simultaneously annihilated; it’s happening everywhere, all the time, all at once. Metaphorically speaking, by the time these particles reach the threshold where they become perceptible to us, their quantum nature has become hidden. To us, they seem set, stable, ‘determined’. Yet we must remember, none of us could have possibly known in advance exactly which of these particles would survive the chaos of the quantum foam and arise into a higher plane of existence—the kind of material existence that we’re most familiar with, where orderly physical systems like vases and tissues or even human beings can exist.*** The truth, as with many things, is far deeper and stranger than we can readily grasp.

But go back to the vase for a moment. You threw it on the floor—there it is, lying in pieces. In what sense does the vase still exist, then? Where there was once a vase, now there is a chaotic pile of ceramic fragments. The form, the system, the order has been lost. This is a picture of entropy at work—not a literal explanation, mind you, but an analogy. The highly regulated bonds between the atoms that made up the vase, having been injected in a sudden burst of kinetic energy by your arms lifting it up, gravity pulling it down, and the hard floor rushing up to meet it, have exchanged that energy with one another and their environment in countless ways, and every time they did, the integrity of the system was challenged. In the end, it couldn’t overcome the aggregation of disorder between itself and its environment, and it collapsed. Thus, you are left with broken vase pieces scattered across the floor instead of an even better vase than you had in the first place.

What this example shows is that physical systems are doomed to fall to pieces—in cosmic timescales, at least. The Heat-Death of the universe is coming for us all. It’s an entropic event, in essence; it’s all the structure, all the order that gives the universe its shape—everything that we make meaning out of and can say ‘exists’, from galaxies to stars to black holes—dissipated across the vastness of space and rendered into homogeneous, structureless soup. It’s the vase of Creation shattering across the floor of the void, playing out across trillions upon trillions of years.

So, a certain level of randomness is part and parcel to the world we live in. What’s more is that this randomness means that, in the long run, entropy will prove to be an overwhelming force that will consume all. There’s an expiry date on existence—not just for us, but for every structured physical system.

Who would design a universe that works like this? How could they possibly justify this sort of balance of power, where order can only be sustained for a short time, but chaos ultimately reigns? How could anybody look at this and call it ‘fair’?

Magnificent Monsters

Perhaps my favorite book in the Bible is Job. There are a lot of reasons to like it, among them being the fact that it is an actual story—no guy named Job ever existed, and Biblical scholars aren’t claiming that he did. His story is pure narrative, but that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. Regular readers will know my stance on interpreting Scripture, but to catch anyone up who might be new, I believe that stories of all kinds resonate with us because they’re True with a capital ‘T’, not because they literally happened in such a place to such-and-such a person. Those stories can be powerful as well, but the real power in storytelling is transcendental. Job’s tale is one that’s True, I believe, but that doesn’t make it easy. I’ve wrestled with it for many years. I still do. But I do think I’ve gained some insight into just why Job suffers as he does, and why God’s answer seems so deficient. The key, as I’ve mentioned, is in shifting one’s perspective.

Quick recap in case anybody’s unfamiliar—Satan approaches God and makes a bargain with Him that Job, a righteous man, will turn on God if Satan were to be allowed to strip away all the blessings that God has bestowed upon him in life. Essentially, Satan’s argument is that Job (read: humanity) only loves God because He’s being nice to them. Job’s love is conditional, in other words, and therefore invalid. God permits Satan to ‘test’ Job’s love, as long as he doesn’t kill him. Job then goes on to be afflicted with sickness, loses his livelihood, and has his family killed in a natural disaster. His friends come to visit him but don’t offer much help—they debate whether or not Job or someone in his family did something to ‘deserve’ this punishment. Job laments and, understandably, demands that God explain Himself.

The part of the story that I want to focus on is perhaps one that’s often glossed over. It comes after God responds to Job, refusing to offer an explanation for the man’s suffering. God does not say: here’s why bad things happen to good people. He does not say: it was all part of the plan, for this really good reason. Instead, God essentially puts Job in his place and says that he needs to check himself. Can Job fathom what it is to run an entire universe? Does he genuinely think he could do a better job of managing things than God could? Is his moral integrity truly so finely-tuned that he’s confident he can dispense justice in exactly the right way?

It’s then that God goes on to describe two of His creations, Behemoth and Leviathan. God invites Job to look upon these fearsome beasts (we don’t know exactly what they are, but they do seem mythical in nature—I like to imagine them as a bit like dinosaurs) and to admire them.

Wait, admire them? Aren’t they ferocious killers, capable of tearing limb from limb?

Well, sure, but God points out that He really likes them. He’s proud of them, in fact; He revels in the work he’s done, creating them to be so awe-inducingly terrifying.

This is the key, though: frightful as they may be, we can’t say that the Behemoth or the Leviathan are evil. They’re just like all other beasts of the land, air and sea. Sure, they can cause a lot of destruction in their wake, but they’re not doing it to hurt anybody—not on purpose. They’re just doing it because it’s what they’re designed to do. Bird’s gotta fly, shark’s gotta swim, Behemoth’s gotta stomp, Leviathan’s gotta eat.

This is a perturbing realization because it suggests the idea that a thing can be both dangerous and good at the same time. We’d much prefer if things which posed us mortal danger were bad in their totality—then we could easily say, with perfect moral clarity, let’s get rid of these hateful things. Our world should be one where only good things happen to people, never bad. But we need to realize that there’s a distinction to be made between a ‘bad’ or ‘unfortunate’ thing and an evil thing. If a kid falls off their bike and hurts their knee, that’s bad luck. If somebody pushes them so that they fall off, then we’re approaching the territory of evil. Evil is the willful, malicious desire to turn that which is good—something which God has made as part of His beloved Creation—and twist it into something dark. That’s not quite the same thing as blind chance.

I think what God is getting at by showing Job these two beasts is that the world is a dangerous place by design. There is an element of risk—of unknowability—in all that we do. And that’s actually a good thing. Think about what a world would be like where you knew every outcome in advance—where there was never a need to risk anything, because you’d always know exactly what would happen if you made choice A or B. You might gain a certain measure of control over how your life played out, but at what expense? You’d have lost discovery, achievement, the capacity to grow and change. You wouldn’t really be human, I don’t think, but some kind of hyper-efficient processing machine capable of determining optimal outcomes in all eventualities. On some level, to be human is to be limited. And while our limitations might be frustrating to deal with at times, I believe they’re there for a reason. We were never created to be independent creatures capable of total self-mastery; we were created to be in relationship with a loving Creator. We’re not meant to rely on our own strength, but to trust in God. A child shouldn’t carry the same burden that a parent does—they should be free to explore and discover, take risks and learn and grow along the journey of life, and leave the big stuff to the grown-ups.

Frankly, I think this idea can be taken even further. Let’s consider the ultimate limitation we humans face: death. I think that death is baked into every facet of existence, as if it were meant to be that way. As I discussed earlier, we already know what the final fate of the universe will be—entropic decay to the point of oblivion. We already know that ‘nothing can last forever’. Not just good things or bad things—nothing at all. God, I don’t think, intended for this big wheel to keep on turnin’ in perpetuity. Let’s remember that He’s promised us a new Creation after this one; a new home, a new body, a new lease on life. I think that the Biblical narrative makes it fairly clear that our hopes should be placed in what’s to come after this world passes away. And why shouldn’t it pass away? Death in itself is not evil. Death can even be a mercy, sometimes. I think of the sustained suffering of my grandmother-in-law who subsisted in intensive care for years with no quality of life. It was a relief when she finally went, complex as that feeling was. It was sad, yes, but it wasn’t exactly bad. Death is a ‘natural part of life’, as Master Yoda tells us. Can any of us really say we’d jump at the chance to become immortal in this world, as it stands today? Wouldn’t we rather hold out for a better one tomorrow—one without tears or sighs or suffering, as we’ve been promised?

So when God shows Job the Behemoth and Leviathan, I think what He’s trying to get Job to see is that humans like Job were never meant to be in control of things. Job wouldn’t stand a chance facing off against those beasts—who would? Only God, and that’s the point. God created a garden paradise for us and desired to keep us safe within it. Sure, there were dangerous beasts roaming outside, but within its boundaries, we would always be safe. We would be under His protection, perhaps until some point when we were ready to venture out into the wilds and confront these beasts ourselves, having gained the knowledge and wisdom required through experience and discovery. The issue is, we seized that knowledge sooner than we should have, and thrust ourselves headlong into a world that we weren’t properly equipped to handle. The beasts of the wild are fearsome indeed; we were never meant to face them on our own. The story of humanity ever since that moment has been about God creating a way to get us back to the garden while still honoring his original intention for his Creation. (I mean, if He wasn’t honoring it, that would mean he was erasing things and starting over, right? And as we see in the Flood story, God decided He’d prefer not to resort to such drastic measures.) This means that we’re now navigating a dangerous world with not much besides our own faulty wits to guide us. We’d be hopeless, if not for God’s grace. He wants to reconcile with us, and He continues to work in the world to bring about its restoration. We might have rejected God, but He hasn’t rejected us; though we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we should fear no evil, for He is with us, always.

In his suffering, Job had forgotten just where exactly he stood in the order of things. When he says ‘the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away’, I think he’s recognizing that nothing in this life is guaranteed. Every breath, even existence itself, is a gift. We’re not entitled to anything. We could just as well not have been here at all. But when we hurt terribly, we can question just why it is that we should have to endure it. It’s very much a ‘why me?’ question. All I’m observing is the possibility that the question might, from a certain perspective, might be misframed. It’s you because it just is—that’s just the way of things, it seems. There’s no ‘reason’ why someone should get cancer and another shouldn’t. That’s the logic Job’s friends operate under, and it’s wrong. It’s the same if you’re wondering, ‘Where’s the justice in this—why should I suffer in such a way: what did I ever do to deserve this?’ You might again, possibly, be looking at things with too narrow a perspective.

What I’m suggesting is that it’s not about what one person deserves or doesn’t deserve; it’s about what God is doing in the world through them, through you. Remember the grand story here—the restoration of all Creation. Take a wider view, and don’t despair, because that restoration includes you. If we look back in Job’s story, one thing that we can say for certain is that God is not unaware of his suffering. He hears his cries and answers. I’m not saying that knowing God sees your pain is going to make it go away or satisfy your grieving soul—not at all. But it’s true enough to say that you’re not alone in whatever you’re going through. That, at least, is a place to begin seeking a modicum of peace. It’s where I’d start looking, anyway.

The King of Kings’ gambit

Can I throw one more Bible story at you before I go? When talking about this topic with my dad, he mentioned the story of Jesus healing a man blind from birth as he was walking along. To him, it seemed more appropriate a place to find answers about the reason for humanity’s suffering than Job’s story. In the tale, Jesus’ disciples, like Job’s friends, thought that the man or his parents had done something to deserve God’s judgment. This infirmity he suffered was therefore an act of divine justice.

But Jesus refutes this. Instead, he says:

Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened that the works of God might be displayed in him.

John 9:3

At a glance, this might seem like Jesus is saying that the reason bad things happen to people is because God wants to use them to glorify himself. This might make God out to be some kind of masochist who doles out suffering upon His people**** for His own gain, but I think that’s a rather cynical reading of what’s going on here. What if what happened to this blind man was something closer to random chance? Being born blind is rare, sure, but there’s a non-zero chance it’ll happen. All it takes is a default in the genetic code; divine intervention is hardly necessary. In a similar way, what if Jesus—whom I don’t believe was walking around like an omniscient optimal outcome processor like I described earlier, but a man filled with the Spirit—happened across the man by accident, and sensed that here was an opportunity to bring about a little piece of that cosmic restoration our world so desperately needs?

That might sound strange, describing Jesus as doing something on a ‘whim’, as it were, considering He was God and all. But if it’s true that he was also a man, why shouldn’t he have experienced the unexpected as we do? See, the whole reason Jesus was able to save the world was because he was God—specifically, God purposefully putting constraints upon Himself so that he might relate to his Creation in a meaningful and loving way. It was an act of submission, in essence, just as submitting to die on a cross was. This leads me to think that there’s something in God’s nature where He is willing to limit Himself out of love. After all, don’t all close relationships involve a significant amount of negotiation in order to function?

Ardent Calvinists will hate me for saying this, but I’m persuaded by the Open Theology position that God has positioned Himself in relation to His Creation where He is learning from us, reacting to us, and even surprised by us. I think He does this because he respects our free will—that most precious and dangerous of all gifts we’ve received. I think he built the universe in such a way that it facilitates our capacity to be curious and discover, to take risks, to surprise ourselves and even our own Creator. I think He waits to see what choices we make, and then He acts in turn. Sort of a cosmic chess match vibe going on, only instead of Him desiring to clobber us at His own game, He’s trying to strategically bring us to a place where we finally see that we’re not competitors—we’re actually on the same team.

The chess analogy is quite apt, actually. Think about how chess works: you must ‘submit’ to the rules in the game for anything meaningful to take place. You are capable of so much more than just moving a rook left and right or a pawn two spaces forward—you can do all kinds of things! It’s within your power to ignore the patterns the various chess pieces are supposed to follow; nothing is stopping you from moving the bishop laterally, or having your knight leap across the board, or having your queen mowing down rows of pawns with a machine gun. You could slam your fist on the board and send the pieces scattering. The list of things you could do is endless, but you refrain from doing any of them because they violate the order that gives chess its structure. If you and your opponent don’t strictly observe the rules of chess, you aren’t playing chess—you’re playing with chaos. Does this mean that playing by the rules is oppressive because it imposes onerous constraints upon one’s free will? No, of course not! You willingly constrain yourself to the rules of the game so that the game can exist at all, both for yourself and the person you’re playing with. When the two of you harmonize over the shared order of the chess ‘universe’, something of beauty can take place: you enter into a stable, mutually edifying shared experience. It’s only through this act of purposeful self-limitation that a riveting, skill-testing, satisfying chess match can take place.

It’s a tough game to be playing, though, that’s for sure. It might not be fair, whatever the challenge it is that you’re facing. You might have had to make a lot of sacrifices just to get this far. Your opponents, whoever they may be, might feel like they’re in another league. But the game’s not reached its end—not yet. If I’m in any position to give strategic advice (I’m not, but here goes anyway) I’d say hold out until you’ve seen the final move play itself out. Then you might be in a better position to pass judgment on whether the game was rigged or not.

*Some science geeks might want to tango with me here. Yes, I’m aware I’m oversimplifying, favouring rhetorical impact over strict accuracy. The decomposition of a biological entity isn’t exactly the same as entropy—it’s the breakdown of cells and biochemicals and whatnot, given that they can no longer sustain themselves. Also, the atoms that make up these cells will go on to form other meaningful relationships with the atoms they meet in the earth I buried my cat in, or the plants that grow from his remains. So, strictly speaking, true cosmic entropy is not really at work here just yet. But I think it’s a bit pedantic to act as if what I’m saying here is ‘wrong’. It’s not; wherever one or more fundamental particles are exchanging energy with one another, entropy is always at work. Given enough time, all these interactions will cease and the universe will enter its heat-death state—a state of total dysregulation, where none of the things which can be said to physically exist today will still exist in any form. No ordered structures will remain, just like nothing will remain of my beloved cat.

**Most physical things, I should say. Neutron stars and radiation are physical but non-atomic (ie. the things they’re made of are in such a high-energy state that you can’t really think of them as having any sort of stable structure at all, which atoms do have). Plus, there are limits to our own scientific knowledge that we should appreciate as well. Maybe there are other things that things are made of that we haven’t fully grasped yet—things beyond the realm of classical physics. If there are, then we can get imaginative: maybe all of the particles in existence have twins that exist outside the dimensions we can readily access; maybe dark matter plays some role in tandem with ordinary matter, since we don’t really know much about it. Maybe there’s more to you than just your atoms, is what I’m getting at.

***No one except, perhaps, the Great Cosmic Observer that is you—or the Observers of Great Cosmic Observers that your consciousness is derived from.

****Though, do remember that in the story of Job, it’s not actually God who makes him suffer—it’s Satan. I take your point, however, that God’s permissiveness toward allowing Satan to harm his children raises questions. I’m just trying to emphasize that it’s not God Himself who’s inflicting the suffering.

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You know what kind of bug I think is really neat? Bees. Bees are super. I never miss a chance to watch a bee do its thing if there happens to be one in my garden. Those cute little guys, just buzzin’ around, pollinating and making honey and whatnot. Great stuff. Industrious fellows. I’m not afraid of being stung at all—are you kidding? Bees are the friendliest chaps. If you’re careful and considerate, they’ll even let you pet ‘em, right there on their fuzzy little thoraxes. Bam, now you’re bee-pals for life. That’s not all the long, mind you—most bees only live for a matter of weeks—but still. It’s all relative. A lifetime of friendship, to my mind. What a shame we’re killing them en masse with our cellphone and Wi-Fi signals.* Some friends we are.

You know what else is great about bees? They give us an excellent approximation of what a hive mind might actually look like in real life. I suppose it’s no accident the name, then—‘hive mind’. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s a science fiction concept that’s cropped up in many stories over the decades: Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, Star Trek, Ender’s Game, to name a few. And now, AppleTV’s Pluribus. (Haven’t watched it yet? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.) Hive minds can vary in their depictions, but in essence, they are a collective consciousness shared across a multitude of ‘units’, or bodies; units which act in unison according to the greater will of the collective. If you’re talking with one person who’s part of the hive mind, you’re not talking to ‘one’ at all—you’re talking to all minds, all at once. Every individual mind/unit/body is perfectly melded with every other one, all subsumed into the greater whole. As such, the concept of any one ‘individual’ existing within the collective breaks down altogether.

How do bees qualify as a science fiction hive mind? Well, if you ask an entomologist or an apiarist, they’ll probably say they don’t. Hive minds are science fiction, remember? And that’s true. But, at a certain point, you have to ask yourself: if it looks like a hive mind and quacks like a hive mind, is it not a hive mind?

Consider the following: bees exist as part of hives. This we know—but how does the hive shape the individual bee’s beehaviour (see what I did there)? It’s true to say that the bee’s entire life—everything it will ever do in its short existence upon this Earth—is done to slavishly serve the hive. A bee does the will of its hive, not its own. This is why bees fall into certain job-like categories; roles they were created from birth to fulfill. You have worker bees, drones, queens. It’s not like any one bee can decide for themselves whether or not they’d like to take up their prescribed mantle, or go off and do their own thing. In the cases where bees so change roles—say, from nurse to forager, or even from mere larva to newly-crowned queen, as sometimes happens in emergencies—it’s never the bees themselves who decide this. It is the greater will of the hive which prevails. The will of the hive is all there is for an individual bee.

Think about how honeybees will divebomb you if they believe you may pose a threat to their collective. (I know, I talked about being friends with bees, but even friends have to respect boundaries!) They will sting you and promptly die, as their stingers are barbed, causing them to rip out from their bodies after they’ve done the deed. What would possess them to behave in such a suicidal manner? Is not every individual bee life precious and to be cherished? Well, not from the perspective of the hive mind, anyway. The hive mind is greater than any one bee—greater than even hundreds or thousands of bees. Individual bees can be replaced, after all. No one bee carries the totality of the hive mind within it—not even the queen, who, in dire circumstances, can be replaced. The hive mind can do any number of things with the various ‘units’ across which its intelligence is distributed, both expending them and manufacturing them. Individual units are resources. It’s actually a rather clever survival mechanism, if you think about it. The hive mind avoids the mistake of putting all its eggs in one basket, so to speak—when one part of the collective is lost, the collective as a whole can continue on and adapt accordingly.

Consider also the absurdity of the hiveless bee. Does a lone, individual bee make any sense as a creature in its own right? Yes, it has its own brain, its own body, its own experience. An individual bee can discover a lovely flower patch ripe for the pollinating all on its own, then fly home to communicate this finding to its fellow bees by way of the ‘waggle dance’. But what use is all this jiggling and jiving if there’s no partner with which to boogie? Why would a bee pollinate if not to produce nectar, with which it can feed the young of the hive? Why would a bee sacrifice its own life to sting an interloper if there is no place to which the bee longs, nothing greater than itself to protect?

See, all the behaviours that make bees what they are only make sense in the context of the collective. Each individual bee is not so much its own creation, but is part of a greater whole. And the hive—the hive mind—is undoubtedly greater than the sum of its parts. Scientists actually refer to bee hives as a form of ‘emergent intelligence’. This intelligence does not reside with any one bee; it does not even exist in a material sense. You can’t carry out a thorough neurological examination of any one bee, or even all the bees in the entire colony, and expect to put your finger on exactly where this one bee ends and that other bee begins, or where their awareness of this higher consciousness—this ‘greater will’—originates and resides. Somehow, when you get a lot of bees together, communicating with each other, cooperating with each other, the hive mind arises organically. The many bees can coordinate their efforts in such a way that it gives the striking appearance of something new taking shape—invisible at a glance, yet apparent in all that they do. A ‘superorganism’, which can only be recognized when viewing together the intangible connections of all of the smaller organisms that make it up.

Now, this is all well and good when we’re talking about bees. Bees aren’t moral creatures—they’re just bugs. They obey the laws of nature, as do their hives. By all accounts, they live in relative harmony with other species, playing their unique part as pollinators in a healthy ecosystem. Maybe that’s why we humans are generally comfortable with their existence. We don’t really fret over the fact that hive minds are real (or virtually real) and, indeed, ordinary. It doesn’t keep us awake at night, wondering about the hive minds and how ‘emergent intelligences’ seem capable of directing the behaviour of vast legions of supposed individuals, coordinating them in concert to sustain and preserve the immaterial existence of something other, something Gestalt. Perhaps that’s because we perceive these hive minds as being neutral. Benign. It’s only when our imaginations start to get away from us, and we begin to imagine what it must be like to be part of a hive mind that the goosebumps start to creep across our skin.

We humans are terrified of the notion of giving up our autonomy. The individual is sacrosanct, particularly in our Western culture. Losing our freedom, losing our ability to self-determine, is the stuff of our worst nightmares—the kinds of horrors that fuel our most fevered visions of dystopian science fiction futures. It’s no wonder that so many of these stories imagine hive minds as a kind of monstrous evil intent on subsuming humanity and dispensing with our precious, priceless individuality. Think of the Borg in Star Trek—an amalgam of cyborg entities all connected by a hive mind literally called ‘the Collective’, intent upon incorporating all sentient life into their fold. Are they afforded much sympathy in their depictions throughout the various iterations of the series? No, they’re grotesque and heinous; it pains us to see Captain Picard assimilated into their collective consciousness, that time it happened in First Contact. ‘Oh no,’ we say, ‘lovely Captain Picard has lost his individuality and become just another mindless drone in the vast hive mind that is the Borg! Wail and lament! What tragic loss; what disastrous misfortune!’ We feel this way because we value ours and Picard’s individuality, and rightly so, because individuality makes us who we are. It is what makes each one of us infinitely valuable. As long as the universe exists, there will never be another you or another me.** The very fact that you exist at all is perhaps the greatest miracle to have ever occurred. Had your parents waited just one month to procreate, it wouldn’t be you sitting or standing there, reading this—it would be someone else entirely!

So, when we considered what a hive mind of humanity might look like, we shrink back in instinctive revulsion. Why would anyone ever wish to give up that which makes them the person they are in favor of—what, exactly? Access to the combined mental experience of the totality of the human race? Billions upon billions of unique perspectives and perceptions melded into one gargantuan super-consciousness? One can’t even fathom what that would be like; it’s entirely alien, considering that each one of us only possesses the one mind. Oftentimes one’s quite more than enough to handle, thank you very much.

It’s just that, well, Pluribus seems to show us a different vision of what humanity’s hive mind might be like. People who get assimilated into this particular collective—called the Others, or the Joined—seem to be rather happy about the whole thing. And it doesn’t seem to be that creepy, senseless, manufactured sort of happiness that we often see newly amalgamated people display, like in Body Snatchers or whatever. This hive mind seems to really want to make its many units satisfied with their existence as part of a greater whole. They might be likened to bees, perhaps; bees might not feel a whole lot of emotions, it’s true, but it’s hard to see bees as being disaffected or disillusioned with their lot in life. On the contrary, bees seem pretty keen to work away and try to make the best of this whole hive mind thing. Each bee finds its niche in the collective and does what it does best, no complaints. Is that just because bees lack the awareness that we have? Is it because they’ve never tasted the sweet nectar of individuality, so they’ve no idea what they’re missing?

Maybe. But it’s also true that our individuality affords us the propensity to make a right mess of things. Maybe when we frame things in moral or even theological terms, as I’m going to try and do here, we might discover a disturbing, niggling feeling within ourselves—a feeling that our insistence on doing things our way, according to the way we see fit, tends not to work out in anyone’s best interest, including our own. And if we can’t be trusted to wield our individuality for good, then what is it good for? Maybe we’d be better off being more like the bees. Maybe we should submit to the hive mind of humanity’s collective consciousness. Maybe our reluctance to connect, really connect with one another, is holding us back from achieving something like true utopia.

Does that terrify you? Disgust you? I think it’s understandable if it does—just like it disgusts Carol in Pluribus. But that doesn’t mean she’s right. It just means she’s reluctant to give up what she sees as the thing that makes her human. But let’s really think this through, here—I mean, are we really, really sure that our individuality is the core of our humanity? Isn’t it also true that for as long as humans have existed, we have formed groups, acted according to shared interests, and even sacrificed ourselves for goals and dreams and ideals greater than any one of us? Is that sort of behaviour just a human as anything else? Is it possibly even more human?

Maybe all Carol needs—all you need—is a bit of a shift in perspective…

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Cover artwork by John Higgins for the 1989 edition of C.J. Cherryh’s novel Serpent’s Reach.

One against the many

Since Pluribus first started airing, I’ve been thinking about how the show seems to deal with the hive mind in such a…what should we say? Evenhanded manner? An unprejudiced one? The Others are not shown to be like the Borg—they aren’t nefarious or hellbent on absorbing any and all intelligences into themselves, come what may. They seek to negotiate peacefully with Carol and the handful of other ‘immune’ humans who’ve somehow escaped the global mind-meld. They do appear sincere in their efforts to take over the whole human development project and make it work. Sure, you can argue whether the humans who have become part of the Others really are human anymore, but that’s a separate issue. I’m just trying to point out that the Others don’t seem to be evil—at least, not intentionally, if that counts for anything. If we’re being gracious, we might even say that in certain respects the Others are portrayed as being rather ‘good’…but I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?

You’ll need some basic facts about the premise of the show in order for us to continue. Here’s the (largely spoiler-free) skinny: a mysterious alien signal some kind causes the vast majority of humanity to come together as part of a hive mind. Collectively, those once-independent humans who now make up this hive mind are known as the Others. The transition process is not smooth; millions die in the chaos. But once it’s all over, things become eerily calm. The Others now seem to operate for the benefit of all humanity at once—rather like those bees we were just talking about. They direct the efforts of each individual ‘unit’ within the collective to carry out tasks that benefit the whole in some way or other. Essentially, everybody now works in unison toward shared goals. What’s good for one is good for everyone.

There are a few snags, though. For an unknown reason, a small number of people are immune to the alien signal and remain annoyingly unassimilated. The main protagonist, Carol, is one of those people. And she is not happy. Her partner was killed in the chaos of the hive mind’s takeover, so she and the Others haven’t exactly gotten off on the right foot. But Carol wasn’t really a happy person to begin with. She is a very flawed human being—at times cruel, spiteful, jealous, even hateful. You get the sense that on the whole, she’s a rather miserable person—just the sort of person who might be enthused by a chance to improve her outlook on life by joining a happy-go-lucky collective which promises to unite mankind and work toward a brighter future for all.

Yet Carol stands decidedly against the Others’ vision for humanity. She stubbornly insists upon cleaving to her precious individuality and refuses the Others’ invitations to enlist. (I’ll note that, unlike other science fiction hive minds, the Others do not compel Carol to join them. This is a critical difference, I believe, as it supports the idea that there’s something ‘good’ about this particular hive mind. More on that in a moment.) She even uses her newfound superpower as a kind of blunt instrument to berate and confound the Others, at one point taking advantage of their eagerness to please her and asking for a hand grenade and a tank. But Carol’s efforts to occupy the moral high ground are suspect, as it’s hard to say that she’s better off on her own. She’s hardly happy or fulfilled, as I mentioned; what’s more, her arguments for why humanity ought to spurn the Others have a certain whiff of the hypocritical. She derides the Others for having caused havoc during the time of their takeover, but she is swiftly countered by the observation that individual humans have proven equally capable of sowing discord and heaping up body counts in the thousands, if not millions. So, on that account, maybe the Others aren’t better per se, but it’s hard to say that they’re worse. The question of the hive mind’s moral corruption is further complicated by the fact that Carol’s refusal to join with the Others actually causes the Others to suffer—every time she reacts with a negative outburst against the hive mind, it causes a sort of visceral emotional reaction from the latter in which millions of the collective’s ‘units’ fall into seizures and die. (That in itself carries a certain significance that we’ll need to unpack later on as well.) How can Carol say in good conscience that she’s right to hold on to the individuality when it’s clear that it causes harm, both to herself and others—the Others? How can she say that things were better how they were, when humans were independent and free to think for themselves, when the Others are so clearly intent upon improving the world for the benefit of all in equal measure?

And then it hit me: what we’re dealing with here is a classic Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil scenario. Carol has partaken of the fruit of the tree and had her eyes opened. She sees what’s right and what’s wrong, and she feels keenly in her bones that whatever the Others are trying to do, it’s wrong. She knows perfectly well what the Others are depriving their individual vessels of—that sense of self-mastery, of self-conception, of self-knowledge. That ability to stand up on your own two feet and say ‘I AM THAT I AM’, and not give a damn who says what anyone says about it.

But hang on a minute—isn’t that exactly what the serpent in the Garden was trying to get those gormless humans in the garden to realize? God was holding out on them, jealously hoarding secret knowledge all to Himself. All they had to do was take it for themselves and they would be just like God. One bite of that fruit and they wouldn’t need Him anymore—they would be their own lords and masters, confident in their ability to choose what’s best for themselves.

Well, all of us have taken that same bite. As a result, we’ve all knowingly made decisions that served ourselves at the expense of another. Nobody’s perfect, right? All of us have fallen short of our own ideals. At the end of the day, we possess the knowledge of how we ought to act—in love, in harmony with our neighbour, in partnership and mutual respect and common purpose—but time and again, we’ve chosen otherwise. That’s what it means to be an individual, baby! That’s our superpower! We have the power to put ourselves in the driver’s seat and kick everybody else to the curb!

Only, in our heart of hearts, we know that’s not how things should be. I mean, we can really do a number on our consciences and convince ourselves that all kinds of awful things are actually not actually so awful, but for those of us who maintain a bit of humility and do our best to keep our worst impulses in check, we sense deep down that we’ve gone astray. This individuality, if it is a superpower, isn’t one that any of us can able to wield effectively. Not 100% of the time, anyway. And, unfortunately, every time we make a mistake, somebody pays a heavy price. Sometimes that somebody is us—maybe we’re thankful when it is, and others don’t have to suffer for our transgression. Nevertheless, we must admit that it’s often other innocent people who end up in the firing line of our right to self-determination.

So where does that leave us in the story of the Garden? Outside paradise, that’s for sure. Where’s God, then? Well, maybe God is where He’s always been: residing in a place of perfect unity, where no one person is greater or lesser than any other, where there are no tears and every soul gives and receives exactly what it needs to flourish. This kind of harmonious interdependence is made possible because God stands over it—He alone is greater, because He is the source of all. All that exists is in Him, including ourselves. And He longs to restore us to our proper place, the place within the Garden, where we can live as we were meant to live; not as rugged individuals, but as distinguished members of a common, beautiful collective.

Now you’re catching on. God is kind of like a hive mind, right? He’s the ‘one’ we all return to when we pass on. Death can be likened to a kind of mind-meld, where all our individual consciousnesses return to their shared source. If so, it seems the Others are more like God than Carol is. I think it’s it fair to say, then, that Carol’s on less-than-solid ground when it comes to making moral claims about how humanity ought to behave, how it ought to be. I mean, God is the ultimate arbiter of truth, for one, or He’s not really God.*** He’s the ultimate good, too, or He’s not really a God worth following. If God wasn’t all good, we’d be better off abandoning Him in favour of a ‘god’ which was more good than He was, yes? Maybe that could even mean fully trusting in ourselves and our sufficient moral understanding. That is, if we’re serious about trying to be moral creatures, and we believe that orienting ourselves towards the good is the right sort of way to aim. I think it’s fair to say that most people—in our individualistic wisdom—agree that we should pursue moral goods over moral evils. If so, then doesn’t it follow that we should follow this all-good God’s will for our lives?

It doesn’t even have to be ‘God’ God, if the Christian God isn’t something you vibe with. We can define ‘God’ just as easily as the overarching, unifying source of life and meaning and virtue for all humanity. An emergent force, perhaps, like the collective intelligence of bees. Get enough humans into a space, and the ‘God’ intelligence will reveal itself and make clear to all how they should act toward one another. I think you’ll agree, it won’t be to kill and maim and steal and rape and destroy. What sort of hive would we be if we behaved like that? No, we’ll share and cooperate and serve and self-sacrifice. Above all, we’ll love. That’s what God—the hive mind—desires for each of us to do to serve the collective.

So, if we agree on that point, why are we arguing with God? Why aren’t we lining up to join the hive mind and jettison this dilapidated thing we call individuality which, for all its wonderful strengths, has the potential to lead us so terribly astray? Or do we remain convinced that if we just redouble our efforts, we can learn how to tame the beast within and never, ever misuse our capacity for self-determination and harm another human being? It seems to me that it’s either that or accepting that sometimes, somebody is going to get hurt. The million-dollar question then becomes, is that a state of affairs we should be content with?

Live free or die

Thus far, my arguments have rested upon the idea that self-determination—our ability to exercise free will, in essence—is at the heart of why human beings have introduced evil, pain and suffering to the world. If we want to have a world without those things, I’ve tried to show how we might need to be prepared to give up on the whole free will thing, as it might be more of a hindrance than a help. After all, if we are in control of our lives and our destinies, then all that exists is so because someone, somewhere, made a choice and brought it into existence. That goes for human suffering as well; suffering exists because we choose for it to exist. Sure, maybe not in all cases—natural disasters and diseases definitely do exist and cause suffering—but these aren’t moral in nature. If a person gets injured in a naturally occurring event (such as, say, a rockslide) that’s tragic, but it isn’t evil. However, if a person causes another person to be injured by shoving them in the path of a large amount of tumbling rocks—yes, I think we would say that the suffering that was caused has a moral dimension to it. Person A has inflicted suffering upon Person B by choice; there is certainly some sort of moral failing here, as what Person A should be doing is looking out for Person B’s best interests.

What if Person A was just being negligent and steered Person B into the path of the rockslide by miscalculation? Would that still have a moral dimension? It would be different, sure, but manslaughter is still something that carries moral weight—a person who commits it has some measure of culpability in the suffering that they’ve wrought.

What if the case were one of pure accident, and Person A had no way of knowing that they were steering Person B into the path of the rockslide? Well, we’re right back to where we were with diseases and natural disasters. In the same way that such events cause suffering, they aren’t evil as such, and so we can’t regard Person A as having committed any moral failure on account of misusing their free will. Person A may have to wrestle with some difficult feelings, but likely as not, the knowledge that there was nothing else they could have done will act as a salve for their guilty soul. ‘Free will’ was not the chief cause of the tragedy, and neither was it the right tool to avoid it altogether. Sometimes shit happens. That’s just the world we live in.****

I acknowledge that some of my readers will take issue with the line of thinking I’ve laid out thus far. Might there be good reason to shift the blame for human suffering somewhere other than free will? Isn’t it a bit dismissive to say that diseases and natural disasters are tragic, but that’s the way the world is, so we should just suck it up? Shouldn’t we get angry that we live in a world where people can suffer and die for no reason at all? Wouldn’t it be fair to direct our righteous fury toward the Creator of such a world, who somehow saw fit to put us in a place where we can get mauled by lions or drowned in lakes through no fault of our own? What use is it to even talk about ‘fault’ in a world as unfair as this? How can I make the claim that giving up our autonomy is the right thing to do when it’s not clear at all that the ‘higher power’ in question has our best interests at heart?

Well, if that’s where you find yourself, I think you’re in good company, questioning this ‘Creator’ and just how good His intentions are. You’re like Carol, suspicious of the Others and their promise of utopia. What sort of utopia denies people free will? What sort of ‘perfect world’ has no space for people to be themselves, think for themselves, choose for themselves? How is that not tyranny? Slavery?

Good points, absolutely. But I think you also need to be careful what you wish for. If you’re going to have a world that allows for free will, you’re going to have to allow for a world that allows people to choose to make that world a terrible place to be. C. S. Lewis wrote that the only people in hell are those who choose to be there. When Jesus walked the Earth, he never compelled anybody to follow him—though it must be said, he did indicate what was waiting on the other side for people who didn’t play ball. Does that amount to compelling people—telling them they’ll regret it if they don’t acquiesce? Or is that just giving to people straight and helping them to understand for every choice, there is a consequence?

I think your answer will come down to a value judgement, and far be it from me to tell you what you should value most in this world. It’s for every one of us to choose how we respond to the idea of God: do we value our autonomy so much that it makes us suspicious of God’s motives in organizing the world as He did, with Himself on top and humans below? Or do we value trust—humility, even—and willingly accept that there’s a limit to what we can achieve on our own, so we put the rest in His capable hands?

For the early medieval theologian St. Augustine, there were two key fundamentals to being a person of faith: the first was to believe that God existed, and the second was to believe that God was good. I think a lot of people struggle more with the latter than the former. I’m reminded of the character of Ivan in Dostoyevsky’s great novel The Brothers Karamazov—in conversing with his faithful younger brother, he doesn’t deny that God exists. What Ivan objects to is the notion that God is good; Ivan looks around himself and mourns for the sorrowful state of the world. He sees innocent souls suffer harsh cruelties and egregious injustices. The hideousness of the world repulses him, and he—with good reason, I might add—questions how any self-respecting God could tolerate such travesty. As such, he remains convinced that he has a better sense of how the world ought to look than God, because he, Ivan, is the only person who seems to be raising any objections.

It’s rather like Satan’s position in Milton’s Paradise Lost, to drop another literary flex on you. Isn’t Satan’s whole argument that God can’t be trusted to run the world because He refuses to justify Himself? It’s Satan’s pride that causes him to believe he could do a better job of managing things than God could, just like it’s Ivan’s pride that leads him to believe that he must have a better-functioning moral compass than God’s. But it’s also hard to discount their criticisms, because we, too, recognize how awful the world is. We wonder about the person in charge and how they could have let it get this bad. The Problem of Evil troubles us desperately—cuts us right down to the bone. And sure, maybe we are the ones who are doing the evil, but isn’t it another kind of evil to have the power to stop it, yet let it continue?

In a way, these are the sorts of reservations that Carol has. She wonders about the Others: how good are you, really? Can I trust you? Or am I better off trusting myself? She doubts whether the hive mind really can make the world a better place, or if by revoking people’s right to self-determination, they’ve made it infinitely worse. So she battles and resists them, defying their desire to unify with her. We, the viewers, must ask ourselves, is she right to do so? Or does she need to open her eyes and see how she’s clinging to a myth—the idea that human beings are supposed to be free and independent, as if we were made to choose for ourselves how we ought to live?

See, if we look to Christian theology, we find that we were never intended to go it alone. God created us to love us and to be loved in return, just the same as a mother brings a new baby into the world. The thing about love, though, is that it has to be voluntary. By definition, a love that is forced—a love where there is no alternative but to love—is not love. It’s slavish sycophancy. God loved us enough to give us the freedom to choose to love him in return. What was required of us, to bask in this love? Only to trust and abide in Him. He would sort the universe out—we just needed to delight in how He’s made us, and let that be enough. What we didn’t see (until we partook of that fruit, of course) is how complicated this world He created is. We didn’t need to see it, as long as we relied upon him, like children. But we wanted more than what we were given, and we took what we were never intended to have. No wonder we’ve made a right mess of things with our newfound Knowledge of Good and Evil—we’re smart enough to grasp how things should be, ideally, but we’re nowhere near smart or powerful enough to make it happen. We’re not gods—we were never meant to be. Even Jesus said, ‘Not my will, but yours be done.’ And he kind of was God, if you believe in that sort of thing.

So, should we submit to the hive mind that is God? Should we give up our autonomy and start playing by His rules, and His rules alone? Would living perfectly as God intended require us to give our our free will, or would we still have free will, we’d just be forbidden from exercising it? Does free will in this context equate to ‘the right to choose other than love’, which is tantamount to saying the right to choose to harm?

I don’t know. I’m glad that I’m not in Carol’s shoes, anyway, staring down a planet-sized hive mind and refusing to yield. I’m glad that I’m not a bee either, because I like being an independent person with my own free will. I like feeling in control of who I am. But am I wrong to like that? I don’t want to cause suffering just so I can pridefully hold on to something I was never meant to have. And I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve made bad choices in life. I’ve hurt people. Maybe, if I was a little more ‘plugged in’ with the hive mind that is God’s perfect design for me and my life, all that pain could have been avoided. Maybe that’s the prize for being a believer at the end of all things—I get to join with God and all the other like-minded souls, united together forever in paradise, freed from the burden of autonomous willpower.

I can imagine a good many people chafing at that idea. I can imagine Ivan, like Carol, or even Milton’s Satan for that matter, burning with indignation at the notion of exchanging freedom for a bit of peace and quiet. They’d view it as exchanging the harsh but rewarding life of a pioneer in the wilderness for a prisoner in a cell. Sure, maybe the prisoner gets regular meals and doesn’t have to worry about bear attacks, but at what cost? Live free or die, they might say.

But I’m not sure that’s an accurate characterization of the trade-off that’s happening here. Is there a qualitative difference between not having free will and having free will, but choosing not to use it? A cynic might say no—and Lord knows, Carol, Ivan and Satan are pretty cynical people. But an idealist like myself might say in response, yes actually, there is a difference. To not have free will is to be a robot, a slave. I don’t discount that’s no way to live. But to have free will, and to choose not to use it—to choose never to hurt or harm or do anything other than love and love in abundance, I mean—that sounds more like partnership than slavery to me. That sounds like being part of a family. That’s recognizing that you belong somewhere, and that others do, too. That’s doing your best to use your gifts, your talents, your self to serve something bigger—to serve the good of others, as a collective.

And if that makes me part of the hive mind, well then, so be it. At least I can say that I’m not the only one.

*This point is scientifically contentious, but it is at least plausible that the multitude of waves and signals we pollute the air with are having some negative effects on bee populations. I admit—it’s mainly here for shock value. But don’t get complacent! Be friendly to the bees!

**There’s actually a crazy scientific theory called the ‘Level I Multiverse’ which posits that there might actually be an infinite amount of yous and mes out there in the infinite expanse of the universe, but I don’t have time to get into it! The basic premise is: if you venture out in one direction long enough, you will eventually encounter your doppelganger, because there’s only so many ways that matters can be organized into finite space. Eventually, you will come across some organization of matter that perfectly mirrors yourself. It is an infinitely vast universe, after all. In fact, if it’s infinite, maybe that means there’s an infinite number of perfectly identical yous and mes somewhere out there…

***Yes, yes, contentious points, I know. Bear with me, I’ll try to address these counterarguments in the next section!

****Now, a few of you might already be calling for me to hold my horses right there—who says we have free will? Fair enough, so. You determinists are a tenacious bunch. I’ve examined your claims, and I do find them to be quite powerful. You’ve the advantage of much of our best scientific understanding on your side as well. It seems the deeper we peer into the inner workings of our universe, the less we seem to be in control of things than we tend to feel. I’ve already written on the subject of determinism here, if you’d like to check that out. For today, I’m going to have to brush you off and say we’ve a schedule to keep—no time for mucking about with theoretical physics and whatnot. We’ll just have to carry on believing that free will exists, at least for today, or we’ll never figure out if we really should just sign up wholesale to the first alien hive mind that happens to pass through our neck of the galaxy.

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Now, this isn’t a game review or a player’s guide. This is a pneumanautic exploration—an earnest hunt for hidden truths and deeper meanings in the unlikeliest of places. The territory we map is mythological, but we know that myths—whether they appear in books, movies, music, video games or what have you—have incredible power to awaken us, to alert us to the hidden parts of ourselves that yearn for…what, exactly? Truth? Love? Beauty? Why is it that words on a page or pixels on a screen, when stitched together in just the right pattern, evoke such awe-inspiring responses within us?

A pneumanaut does not know. But a pneumanaut trusts that there is merit in the seeking. Most of all, a pneumanaut hopes that the seeker, by some higher will or power, will be rewarded in the endeavour. And so they seek, hurtling headlong into the depths of eternity…

Games-as-art Art-as-game

So, you’re a person who lives in the world, yes? You’ve probably heard of video games before. You might have even played one. You might already have very strong views about what games ‘are’. You might have already fit them into a very particular category, and you might have already conceptualized them in a particular way that wholly satisfies you. As such, you may be largely disinclined to re-examine these assumptions of yours because, let’s face it, you’ve a lot going on; the world’s falling to pieces and there’s just a lot of better things you have to be doing than waxing philosophical about what video games ‘are’. They’re games people play on computers. Simple as.

Okay, well, you’re not wrong. They are games that people play on computers. But there are also games that people play on computers that seem to resist the notion of being ‘games’ at all. They’re not easy to classify. They don’t neatly fit into whatever conceptualizations one might have of what a game should be. They seem, it would appear, to be exercising some sort of latent potential within the medium to be something…else. Something more, possibly. An evolution, perhaps—one that, once fully realized, might elevate a game into the lofty realm of art.

I played one such game recently. I hesitate to even call it a game, in all truth, as it appears to be aspiring to be a work of art first and foremost; in playing it, I felt the designers (artists?) to be largely disinterested in doing any of the things that games normally do to qualify themselves as games. I’d like to tell you about it, but if you’ll indulge, I’ve not yet finished musing on this whole games-as-art/art-as-game conundrum (though the option to scroll on is always there, dear reader. Don’t I know it—I do it all the time!)

We already accept that games and art can be intertwined, don’t we? There can be art in the way that a game is played—consider an expert sportsman who has mastered his/her craft, or the strategic metagaming employed by players seeking to gain an edge over their opponents. These people aren’t ‘playing’ their game, as such. The skill, the creativity, the tenaciousness on display—surely these constitute something more than mere frivolity. They wouldn’t put in such effort to win these games, or at least, to be proficient at them, if there wasn’t some kind of meaning hidden in it. And isn’t the pursuit and expression of meaning—particularly the ineffable sort inscribed in the human heart, not easily drawn to the surface to be articulated by the tongue—supposed to be art’s domain?

I mean, when is a game not a game? When it’s not fun? When it has no goal, no score, no clear objective? Must a game have rules—boundaries, objectives? Must a game reach a definitive conclusion?

Hold on—let’s approach this in more tangible terms, before I lose you. Is a game (a video game, I mean—that much maligned virtual medium, barely acknowledged to carry any artistic merit whatsoever) a game when it’s played on a screen? When you, the player, hold the controller and press buttons to make your character move this way and that? Is that what a game is? Is it ones and zeroes and electronic signals flashing at blistering speed, processed and interpreted by neural machinery to create digitized renderings of worlds, of people, of stories? Can it be anything more than that?

When does a game become art? When it eschews crude aims such as ‘entertainment’ or ‘competition’, and instead pursues something higher, something noble?

What even is art, for that matter? The Dadaists attached urinals to walls and called it art. Most people seemed happy to agree. If art becomes something that can be engaged with for nothing more than sheer enjoyment, as a game might be, has it lost something constitutive? Or, as in the example I just mentioned, can art well and truly be anything? If so, why can’t it be a game?

Consider that a person can look at a game the same way that they look at a painting or a sculpture. A person can watch a dance, a film, or a performance; so can one watch a game being played, as a kind of passive observer. A person can listen to music, opera, or a soundtrack. Don’t games utilize music in much the same way as films do—a medium which is already well established as an art form in its own right? In any and all of these cases, a person can admire the artistry at work, whether made by an individual or a collective. So, art can accomplish many things that games can, and perhaps it can be said that they were doing it first, and better, for longer. But can you ‘play’ art? If not, wouldn’t that mean that there is an entire realm of experience—a completely unique method of engagement—accessible only through games, which art cannot mimic? What, then, would be the superior pathway toward discovering meaning—the narrower path, by virtue of its legacy and prestige? Or the wider, newly constructed superhighway, taking you in as many directions as you could possibly want to travel, at ten times the speed?

Maybe this game we’re imagining—this potential piece of art—was never trying to be fun in the first place. Maybe fun, in the minds of this game’s developers, is a distraction. Maybe chasing dopamine hits is the lowest form of media consumption. Maybe this game aspires to be something more; maybe it’s not meant to be ‘consumed’ at all, but pondered, cherished, wrestled with. Maybe it’s supposed to be intellectualized. But that seems like a tough sell, honestly, if everything is just chemicals sloshing in the brain. Who’s to say that one chemical reaction is superior to another—the primal thrill of a massive multiplayer shootout with scores of online players, versus the cerebral contemplation of a gallery exhibition? If, at the end of the day, we can qualify both as ‘experiences’, each authentic in their own right, how can one be elevated above another?

I think we could just as easily think of games as canvases. Consider that in any game, there must be some manner of input from you, the ‘player’, for anything of meaning to take shape. You have to actually make your character move; you have to select that option, drive it that direction, lift that lever, take that elevator, slay that monster, sell that useless piece of junk, buy that priceless artifact, woo that romanceable NPC, build your base on that hill. You might even have to decide the fate of an entire civilization, a galaxy, or even the entire universe. This seems different to me than the experience of say, reading a book, where the words on the page will be the same and follow one another in succession exactly as they have before each time you read them. Doesn’t a reader lack a certain agency that a player enjoys? Sure, there’s lots of freedom in interpreting a text, in making sense of symbols and narrative and characterization. No two readers will walk away from the same book with exactly the same understanding, such is the power—or the ambiguity—of the written word. But I’d still contend that a reader acts more as co-creator of the story than creator; the latter honour remains chiefly the author’s, I believe. The player, however, creates their own story, often as not. Even in cases where a game is designed to tell a very particular tale, with stiffly structured setpieces or limited dialogue options, the player still exerts a magnificent amount of control over the world of the game. Godlike, in my view. They can even decide to kill whatever character they’re playing as. Almost all games have some sort of lose state, with death (or implied death) being the most straightforward and most common. Conversely, when reading a book, it would not be ordinary for me to cause the protagonist to off themselves by walking off a cliff or falling into a pit of spikes by sheer force of will. No, the author’s designs for their characters tend to win out against my own, for better or worse. And that in itself, I think, suggests that there’s something just a bit different about the nature of games as opposed to what we most typically consider ‘art’.

Maybe games aren’t art at all, then. Maybe they’re the next evolution of art—of storytelling, of capturing ideas and sharing them with other minds. Maybe there will be no paintings in the future. No sculptures, no songs, no theatre, no poetry, no written word. Maybe games are the early harbinger of what’s coming for all our preferred modes of personal, creative expression. Maybe we’ll develop technologies that will allow us to create entire digital worlds with the snap of our fingers, and we’ll live in them like kings, like gods—worlds full of music and dance and beauty and rich, diverse experiences, the likes of which our primitive, contemporary art forms can only gesture toward. We’ll cease to create using those old and outdated mediums of expression, in the same way that we’ve long since ceased to paint on the walls of caves using charcoal and animal fat. What’s more, maybe the denizens of these worlds we create will tell stories and compose great poems and dramas about us.

And then, when we’ve tired of our creations, we will abandon them. Erase them. Move on to the next. It was all just a game, after all.

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Artwork by Daniel Lighthouse. Check out their work here.

All the devils are here

Just what is it that has got me pontificating on the nature of games-as-art and art-as-game? Well, this week I played a game called Indika. I say ‘played’, but truthfully, that doesn’t seem like the best word to use to describe my experience. I ‘participated’ in Indika? I ‘engaged with’ Indika? Let’s just go with ‘experienced’ for now—it certainly was an experience.

Ostensibly, Indika is a video game where you play the titular Indika, a young Russian Orthodox nun living in…well, it isn’t clear, exactly. There is a strong element of surrealism to Indika’s journey, making it difficult to place her in a specific time or place beyond a nightmarish fantasization of ‘old Russia’. In any case, Indika is tasked with delivering a letter for the headmistress of her conclave, which sets her on a collision course with an escaped prisoner and a number of other odd, oftentimes unsettling characters.

So, we do have a protagonist, a setting, and a plot. These are the makings of a game, it’s true, but the way they come together is jarring and bizarre. You could quite easily say that the typical elements that define video games as a genre don’t come together here—there are points to collect and scores to achieve, but the game deliberately makes reaching them impossible, and even discourages you from trying. The environments you wander are often yawningly vast, yet you must move through them as if on rails, unable to embark on any sort of exploration whatsoever. The narrative suggests that it might be heading somewhere of importance, yet it constantly undermines expectations and even abandons plot elements altogether, as if it were following its own strange sort of dream logic. During cutscenes, the camera angles are wonky and fish-eyed, often zooming unbearably close on characters’ foreheads, serving to warp the scenes playing out in unsettling ways.

The gameplay itself is sparse and simplistic. Indika doesn’t do too much besides walk around and solve the odd two-step puzzle. Occasionally she will operate some of the monstrously outlandish dieselpunk machinery that dots the bleak landscape of this Russia-not-Russia. If there is fun to be had, it might be found in the handful of mini-games present here rather than the game itself. These bite-size morsels, rendered in 16-bit pixel style rather than the semi-realistic visuals of the main game, are by far the most challenging aspects, gameplay-wise. But they are also fleeting, perhaps by design, as they relate a series of memories from Indika’s past life—a life that is now long behind her.

Altogether, it’s rather baffling to behold. It’s almost like the designers are trying to throw you off—as if they’re trying to say to you, ‘forget what you know about playing video games; this isn’t a game. This is something else entirely.’

And that thought, dear reader, is what prompted me to conduct this pneumanautic exploration. There was something niggling in my brain as I played this game which would not leave me alone. I tried to grasp it, but it slipped through my grasp like an eel. It eludes me still, if I’m being truthful, but I want to give it my best effort before the experience of playing the game fades from my memory (as it is wont to do, considering the volume of media that I consume).

First, it might be pertinent to give you a clearer idea of what actually occurs in the game. (Here is your spoiler warning.) It is a game worth playing, to be certain, but unlike The Outer Wilds, which I wrote about on this publication, I don’t feel I’m robbing you of anything especially precious by revealing the major plot threads below. Indika’s tale is one of rejection, woe and searing injustice—I can readily understand why a person would rather spend their time playing a game that uplifts their mood, rather than one that drags them through the muck of human misery and religious hypocrisy.

Indika, as I mentioned, is a young nun living in a convent somewhere in Russia. She is not well liked by her sisters, for you see, she has a demon living inside of her head. The demon talks to her all the time—a sort of critical narration of her life and choices that she does her best to ignore, though at times, she feels compelled to refute. The demon has little patience for Indika’s earnest attempts to be a good nun; though she fulfills her obligations and says her prayers dutifully, the demon constantly points out how little this all counts for. Indika earns ‘points’ for her piety, but the target number of points she needs earn for…something…to happen is constantly shifting. Throughout the game, she might find an icon, an altar or a relic, and then offer her sincerest prayers and thanksgiving. These acts earn her more points, but the total required then immediately increases, rendering her effort essentially useless. The demon seems intent upon reminding her of the uncomfortable yet apparent reality of her situation: nothing she does is ever good enough, so why does she bother?

But Indika perseveres, enduring cruel treatment at the hands of her sisters, who ostracize and abuse her. That is, until one day when her abbess sends her on an errand to deliver a letter to the monastery some distance away. She embarks, but the world outside the convent is dangerous and strange, and she soon runs afoul of a prisoner escaped from a gulag who takes her as his captive. Ilya is his name, and while he initially appears fearsome, he reveals himself to be on a holy mission of his own. Ilya’s arm is badly frostbitten, but he has not yet died; he believes that if he can reach the city of Spasov, where a venerated relic is being held at a great cathedral, he will be healed and God’s purpose for his life will be fulfilled. Indika, something of a believer herself, decides that this might be a sign from heaven about what direction her own life ought to take (considering that the letter she’s carrying is a request for her own defrocking, which she learns after giving in her her demon’s cajoling and breaking the letter’s seal). Indika thus decides to journey with Ilya willingly so she, too, might be blessed and find a new lease on the consecrated life.

What follows is a strange and oftentimes disturbing fever dream, consisting of episodes that serve to undermine Indika’s faith in God at every turn. It does appear that her faith is genuine, if somewhat innocent and naive. Indika does her best to help others and turn the other cheek when others mistreat her. One instance that comes to mind is early in the story, shortly after she has left the gates of the convent. She arrives at a ferryman’s hut—one whose help she needs to cross a river—and is received in rather ugly fashion by her would-be host. The man accuses her of being a harlot and witch, her countenance spooking the pigs that he keeps. Indika replies calmly and sweetly that the pigs are simply happy to see her. This does nothing to convince the ferryman to aid her, so Indika must find her way across the river on her own.

Indeed, the wholesale rejection of Indika from the world which she apparently loves is rather stark. Though she tries her best to be a nun and follow God, the nuns want nothing to do with her. What Christian charity she extends to others is not returned to her. She takes unilateral action to save Ilya’s life by amputating his withered arm; instead of thanking her, he accuses her of being jealous of his God-given destiny, then picks up his arm and hobbles off, abandoning her. Later in the game, when she visits a church and asks for sanctuary from the men chasing her, she assures Ilya (with whom she eventually reunites) that the resident priest will not betray them in the house of God. No sooner has she spoken these words than the priest arrives with soldiers to arrest herself and Ilya. A shoot-out ensues, the priest is killed (by the same soldiers he alerted) and Indika is blamed for his death. No one comes to her aid—not even Ilya, who flees for his own life.

Her demon is with her though all of this, however. Eventually, when all is lost and she sinks to her lowest point, her demon is the only one to offer her any kind of comfort. She wills the demon to leave her alone, as she always has—the demon refuses, stating that he will only leave once she doesn’t want him to.

As the game comes to a close, it is suggested that Indika starts to ‘give in’ to her demon. For so long she has fought against its voice, its influence, its philosophizing and poking of holes in the absurdities of organized religion. She fights against it valiantly, but to what end? No one in her church, or indeed, the entire world loves her any more for her attempts to resist ‘evil’ and do ‘good’. In fact, in the few instances where she is tempted to sin—specifically, when she entertains some lustful thoughts regarding Ilya—her demon does not judge her. He teases her, yes, but she does all the self-hatred herself. In the end, it can be said that only her demon stands with her through it all, the good and the bad.

Their interdependence reaches its culmination in the final scene of the game, where Indika finally gets her hand on the kudets—the sacred relic she hoped would purify her spirit, expel her demon and show her the path forward—only to find it hollow and worthless, fobbed off for a few coins to a pawn shop broker. Indika then looks into a mirror and sees herself as the demon. She throws the kudets away in disgust and breaks apart her rosary beads, spilling them across the floor.

The game ends.

What have we just witnessed? What have we just ‘played’? The undoing of a good woman and her hastening descent into the pit of hell? Or the shattering of illusion—the deconstruction of religion itself, brick by brick, until the entire unholy artifact crumbles to pieces?

Your answer may largely depend on your own experience with the world of religion—your own response to those big questions I mentioned earlier. Is there a God? Does He dwell within His Church? Or have we humans developed rites and rituals and doctrines that have led us all astray, further and further away from the light? You probably already have your own answer. If you don’t, I would suppose that you at least have your suspicions.

After rolling credits on Indika, I was somewhat mystified. The ending didn’t feel like an ending. It didn’t feel cathartic. It felt like everything Indika was—everything that had made her into the person I’d come to understand her to be—had been undone. Pulled apart, thread by thread, like the unravelling of a garment. What was I—she—left with? Nothing. There was nothing left of Indika by the end of her story. Did that mean she might rise up like a phoenix and make something of herself—become something new, seize her own destiny? Has she escaped the trap of religion and could now finally be free?

There was nothing I saw in that ending that suggested such a thing. Her demon, which had become her by the end, had said that it would abandon her, too, when she needed it most. I felt like what I had just witnessed was an annihilation—the furthest thing from a personal victory or a throwing off of the proverbial shackles.

And then I began to think…

Is that what happens to us when we dare to question our deepest, most cherished, most sacred beliefs? When we inspect every nook and cranny of our worldviews, pry up all the floorboards, tear apart the entire house to check and make sure that our foundations are solid? Do we inevitably find that everything we’ve built—everything we believe—is built on nothing but sand?

In Soviet Russia, game plays you

Socrates said that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. I think he was right. So, if none of us know anything at all, why do we insist on acting like we do? Are we really just acting on faith, no matter what we believe? And what is faith good for, if it doesn’t align with fact? Superstition and false assurance—that might be the only appropriate answer, if we’re being intellectually honest.

If I had to put my finger on it, I think the reason this game resonated with me would be something like this: I think this game—this story, this work of art—was trying its best to deconstruct me. I wasn’t so much playing it as it was playing me, in a sense; it knew I was there, controlling Indika, using her as my little avatar. It knew that I wanted to know: what’s her story? and then move on to the next thing. It knew these things, and it wanted me to know in turn that Indika’s journey was my own. The crucible of existential torment she was enduring was also mine and every other person’s. We are all human, aren’t we? One way or another, we have to face life’s ‘big questions’ and offer up an answer. Is there a God? What happens beyond death? Is there heaven and hell? Is there any value in faith or religion at all, when it can cause so much trauma and ruin?

Choosing not to think about such things is an answer in itself, the game made clear. Thus it confronted me with these ideas, and forced me to dwell upon them for longer than I might have on my own—for longer than was comfortable. Like Indika herself, who is tormented by a ‘demonic’ voice whispering in the back of her mind, narrating her every step, the game itself was whispering to me, ‘You recognize this, don’t you? This is you. This is your world. See how hollow it all is.’ It challenged me to look where I did not want to look; to sit and meditate upon that which I would never meditate, had I the choice. It dared me to turn it off and give up, which I almost did at a few points, because I found it boring. ‘Boring?’ the game said to me. ‘Do you think I’m here for your entertainment? For your pleasure? Just who are you, so high and mighty, that you would think I’m here to make you feel good?’

‘I didn’t ask for this, game,’ I said back, a certain haughtiness infiltrating my voice.

‘No, no—you asked for comfort, didn’t you? Grand adventure, stunning vistas. ‘An experience worth having’. But you’re having an experience now, aren’t you? It’s not to your taste, hm? Well, aren’t you the master of your own fate, dictating what experiences you’ll have, and which ones you’ll ignore. You’re like some petty king; your servants grovel at your feet, stepping over each other to deliver just the thing you want, to say just the thing you want to hear. What you don’t realize is, for every thing they do say, there’s a hundred more they don’t—they filter your reality for you, strain it of irritations, inconveniences. So what kind of reality is it that you inhabit?

‘That’s an awful lot of fancy talk, game,’ I said in return—though at this point, if I’m honest, I was starting to sweat a little. ‘You think you can manipulate me into wanting something other than what I want? I’m in control here; I’m the player. I decide what I want.’

‘Well, if you’re not enjoying yourself, turn me off.’

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Then you’d have the satisfaction of having ‘beaten’ me.’

‘Beaten you? We’re not in competition, you and I—we’re in a partnership.’

‘A partnership for what?’

‘For your betterment, of course!’

‘All this misery you’re subjecting me to—the pontifications on the emptiness of religion. The hypocrisy of the Church. The casual cruelty religious that people exhibit toward the vulnerable. The rape scenes. This is making me better, is it?’

‘A vessel needs to be emptied before it can be refilled, no?’

‘Oh, and since I’m a person of faith, I’m ‘filled’ with these sorts of things, am I? False religion, false belief? I’m wandering around in a fog, believing in ghosts and trusting in visions?’

‘Hit a nerve, have I? I wonder why that would be. I’m surely not causing you to doubt any of those things you steadfastly claim to believe, mere little game that I am?’

On and on we went like that. Well, I’m being facetious, but I could easily see how someone like myself might go on like that—wrestling with this game in the depths of their soul. The observations it makes are too hard-hitting, too blunt and brutal in their poignancy to dismiss out of hand.

Now, I would consider myself already thoroughly deconstructed. Without going too deep into things, believe me when I say that I know what it is to belong to the church world—that human-made institution we’ve created over millennia and thrust God into the center of—and also what it’s like to live in the outside world. For most of my life, I’ve straddled the strange liminal space between the two. It’s been an uncomfortable existence, to say the least. But I’ve survived it, not least because I still hold on to a kind of belief in the very core of my being—a belief that there must be something true to all of this religion business. Something buried deep that must be excavated out from under all the human-made detritus we’ve heaped on top of it, but something real and true and beautiful. I feel it in my soul—and yes, I do believe I have one of those. What can I say? It’s a knowledge that defies reason. It’s a knowledge that resists the definition of ‘knowledge’ altogether. It’s something like soul-knowledge—truth etched into my very being. Without it, I would be utterly lost. I would not be myself. I’d be something like Indika, maybe—well and truly destroyed beyond all recognition. A monster gazing back at me in the mirror.

So, I’ve a kernel of faith at the center of my being, but I like to believe that I’ve cast off all the artificial, arbitrary baggage that faith/religion/church has acquired ever since…I don’t know, ever since Constantine declared he would conquer in the sign of the cross. I’m not sure what exactly to make of that story, but I think it has to be something like he, being a Roman emperor, had already adopted a certain paradigm in which conquering lands and people was ‘good’—or at the very least, true—and so when God stirred up the waters of his spirit, nudging him, tugging at his heartstrings, he made sense of those intimations in a way that could only make sense to a guy like him. Does that make sense? That’s sort of how I think we ended up with thousands of years of Christendom—which I do not for a minute think is what Jesus intended for his Kingdom of Heaven to look like once it came to Earth.

What am I getting at here, exactly? I’m saying that Indika was speaking a language that I recognized. This game was interrogating what faith looks like in this world we humans have built for ourselves, and was forthright in pointing out the flaws. It was showcasing the emptiness of contemporary religion—how it’s a construct, and oftentimes not a beautiful one. It’s something that swallows up all that is authentically good and righteous and pure and twists it, spitting out golden images and fragrant incense in their place. It was demonstrating how religious people devote themselves to serving traditions—ideas, interpretations and dogma—rather than people themselves. It showed how, like Pharisees, too often we who call ourselves believers obsess over the wording of the law and miss the spirit which animates it.

That’s a journey I’ve been on for several decades now. I have not yet arrived at my destination, nor do I think I ever will. But that awareness that I’ve far from figured it all out doesn’t cause me to despair—nor is it ammunition for the ‘demons’ out there to use against me, like Indika’s did. In the game, Indika’s religion is shown to be the sham that it is—crude, incoherent, incapable of saving anybody. While I do think there’s a lot of ‘religion’ around today that’s much the same, I also think that God is still at work in the world. I think His work is that of a redeemer, and even in His own imperfect, corrupted church—indeed, perhaps especially there—He can work to bring about good things, for His own ends. I think He’s doing that all over the world. I think He’s doing that in places most people would never even think to look—in prisons, in slums, in casinos, in drug dens, in internment camps, in barren fields and isolated villages. I think God’s spirit draws nearest to those who are humble, who are hurting, who are hungry for justice. And those people are likely to be far from the hallowed halls of a church or convent or otherwise recognizably holy place.

So, I guess I’m saying that I understood what Indika was trying to say, and I didn’t disagree. I just didn’t think that it had captured the full story. Yes, maybe our religion is empty and meaningless. Maybe all of it—I mean all of it—should be torn down because it’s doing far more harm than good. Maybe we are chasing our own tails when we’re trying to figure out the best way to salvation by our own wits, our own merit. But even if it’s all a charade, and the Devil’s laughing at us, so what? He can laugh because this is his moment—this is the time given to him. He can witness the destruction of a young nun and think smugly to himself, ‘That’ll teach her a lesson.’ But he’d be fool indeed to think that he’s the only power at work in the world, the sole influence in the hearts of human beings.

Maybe Indika did lose her faith. But even though the credits rolled, her story didn’t end there—just the story of her time as an Orthodox nun. Indika’s story was bigger than that. She was the daughter of a bike technician before she was ever a nun (that’s what the mini-games tell us). She could be that again. She could be something else entirely. And the spirit at work in her—in the whole of her—is greater than whatever spirit was gleefully sowing the seeds of discord and discontent.

That’s true about the story of humanity, I think. We’ve had ups, we’ve had downs. We’ve had downs that were so way, way down, we might’ve thought we’d never see the light again. But here we’re still here; you and me, we’re keeping the story going. However dark it gets, it never overwhelms the light. We seem to understand, we humans, that the ending is already written—and it’s a good ending. That’s why we keep struggling toward it. Why we haven’t given up hope yet. I mean that as a collective, but also as individuals. We haven’t given up yet, or I wouldn’t be here writing this, and you wouldn’t be here reading it.

There will be an ending to all of our stories, no doubt. But on the whole, no matter how bad things get, they’re still stories worth telling. And that, I think, tells you everything that you need to know.

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Now, this inaction I displayed wasn’t because I was some kind of conspiracy theorist who denied the existence of the disease, or because I rejected the government-led initiatives to try and control its spread as incursions into my personal freedom. No, this was because I lived in Sweden at the time. You might have heard a thing or two about it on the news—Sweden was an outlier among the nations of the world when it came to determining what sort of countermeasures ought to be implemented to combat a global contagion. Where most other countries opted for lockdowns and severe restrictions of their citizens’ activity, Sweden took a more hands-off approach. In Sweden, the populace was encouraged to practice social distancing, as I mentioned, but apart from that, was permitted to go about their business largely as normal. The thinking of the Swedish health authorities was, in essence, pandemics are by their very nature nigh impossible to control, so why bring society to a complete halt when it wasn’t likely to be effective? Appealing to people’s common decency and asking them to take measures to protect themselves and one another, rather than compelling them, would minimize hardship and maximize compliance.

Did this approach work? The record is decidedly mixed. I’ll leave it to you to do your research and judge for yourself whether other nations ought to have travelled the same road. What I can tell you about my experience of living through the Swedish response to the pandemic was that I was very uncomfortable, though not in the way that most others living in different countries were. My wife was pregnant at the time when the disease first began spreading across Europe, and we had no idea what would happen to her or the baby if she caught it. No one knew anything about the disease at all—all of us, all across the planet, were charting courses through dangerous waters without so much as a map. We were certainly following the news, growing increasingly disturbed by the clear disparity between how our home countries were responding to the crisis (neither my wife nor I are Swedish) and how our adopted homeland was choosing to respond. We kept asking ourselves, ‘Is this right? Why aren’t they doing in Sweden what they’re doing everywhere else?’ Indeed, we doubted very much the wisdom of allowing people to more or less continue their lives as per usual, only now with a mask on, if they so chose.

In our anxiety and discomfort, we began to observe a kind of lockdown of our own making. We continued to go to work because we were obligated to, but we would keep as much distance as possible from others while commuting. We didn’t leave our apartment unless necessary—we ordered our groceries for delivery, we abstained from fraternizing with friends or colleagues. The things we could control, we did our best to, while our baby continued to grow in the womb.

But we were angry, too. We couldn’t understand how we’d ended up in a situation where we wanted more protection from our governmental authorities, whereas most of our friends and family overseas wanted less (as in, to have the restrictions of the various lockdowns eased in some form). We were angry that we had to worry about the health of our unborn child and do our best to fight back against an invisible, pervasive threat. I suppose, too, that we were angry that we were so alone in our struggle—so totally at odds with the society we’d come to call our own, even for a short time. We hadn’t sought to be detractors, upstarts, holdouts or skeptics, but that seemed to be the role that had been cast for us.

In the end, our child was born happy and healthy. The restrictions, or lack thereof, were rolled back as the worst years of the pandemic receded. All we have now are memories of that strange time, and the strange dissonance we felt between ourselves and the wider society we belonged to. Was all that fear and trepidation on our part worth it? Should we have gone with the Swedish flow? Had we been better off in our comparatively open society, or might we have been spared some amount of consternation if we’d resided somewhere else? Had we ever been in lockdown, would we have yearned for the freedoms enjoyed by the Swedes?

Impossible to know. But very interesting to think about. At the very least, the episode brought a few things into focus like never before: namely, the truth of how deeply interconnected our lives as human beings are in this world we’ve created for ourselves. We typically think of our social networks as extending as far as friends and family, perhaps a handful of work acquaintances and so on, but rarely do we think of the entire population of our home countries—or indeed, the entire planet—as being woven into the same relational tapestry as the people we know and love. The pandemic revealed the ties that bind us to one another, even total strangers, like nothing else ever has. Perhaps this is something along the lines of how ordinary people feel when a natural disaster strikes their homeland, or a terrible war is waged on their borders. Suddenly and sharply, people are reminded of the complex webwork that supports their daily lives, invisible like spider’s silk, yet every bit as powerful.

So, by the simple fact of being human beings alive and at work in the world, we share something with all other people in existence. There is an implicit connection between myself and every other person currently walking the face of the Earth, as there are between yourself and every other person in kind—connections that can be actualized in any number of ways, for good and for ill. That’s the reality of the situation. Knowing that, what happens when we adopt an ever further zoomed-out view? If we see our world as it is—a hive of activity positively buzzing with interconnections and potentiality—might we then extrapolate that it is likewise intertwined with the wider universe in more complex ways than we might realize?

At first, it might not appear so. We’ve detected no signs of life anywhere else in our galaxy, or galaxies beyond. Fermi’s great question of ‘Where is everybody?’ remains unanswered. Does it make any sense to consider that our social network, if I can use that term, is much broader than we readily understand when it seems that there are no other living, breathing, thinking, feeling and perceiving beings out there for us to relate to?

It doesn’t, I would argue, so long as we hold to the idea that we’re alone in the universe. But have you ever wondered if that’s by design? Maybe we’ve been made to feel alone. Maybe this hive of ours is dangerous to the outside world precisely because of its potential to affect, or indeed infect, those that exist beyond ourselves. Something as tiny as a virus—a scrap of unintegrated DNA—can overwhelm an entire immune system and render the body defenseless. A virus can even kill. There are disturbing parallels to be drawn between how a virus behaves toward its host and how we behave toward the biological systems upon which we depend, including the Earth itself. I’m reminded of Agent Smith from The Matrix and his disdain for the human race, referring to our kind as a ‘plague’—a disease spreading across the planet, destroying the symbiotic relationships between all other lifeforms that we encounter.

And so, a speculative question arises: if there were someone, or perhaps many someones, observing this great human drama playing out from a distance, how might they react? Would they tolerate the misery we humans seem uniquely capable of manifesting to spread, uncontrolled? For the moment, we are contained. We can barely get ourselves to our own moon, let alone other planets, let alone the stars. Might these imagined someones feel motivated to take action to keep things that way—both for their own good, and for ours?

We can say what we wish about the quarantines we experienced during the Covid years (or the lack thereof) and whether we felt the ends justified the means. There may come a time in the future where we’ll need to rehash all of those old debates, as our globe continues to shrink and we become ever more interconnected. But whether it happens today or tomorrow, the core principle that animates our deliberation remains the same: where there is sickness, it must be prevented from spreading. There is a moral and logical reason to mitigate risk and protect what is precious; the question is only how to respond, not if we should.

And if humans are somehow sick—spiritually sick, I mean—then isn’t it only right that certain precautions be taken to keep things contained?

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Art by Ed Valigursky for the cover of Amazing Stories, May 1955.

The all-seeing ETIs

Imagine if there were other species out there, more advanced than ourselves (which is not implausible, though it is also possible that we are among the earliest civilizations to emerge from the cosmos) which has been observing our progress from afar. They watch, aghast, as they witness the savagery and barbarity we often display toward our fellow human beings. They see empires rise and fall, and the scale of the suffering wrought in pursuit of power. These distant observers quite rightly decide that they want nothing to do with humanity. They adopt a ‘Dark Forest’ type of strategy to intergalactic relations—maintaining a low profile, pretending as if they do not exist, for fear that the other intelligent (or at least, bloodthirsty) denizens of the universe do not discover them or their location. These observers might hope against hope that humans never gain the technological capacity to unlock the stars and travel beyond our own home world, because if we ever did, they can only imagine what sort of destruction we would bring in our wake. Is it not the case that throughout human history, at every stage of our development, we as a species have raped and pillaged and massacred our way to dominance? Who wouldn’t be apprehensive about living close to neighbours such as ourselves?

Let’s give a name to our supposed intergalactic voyeurs before moving on. ETIs, or ‘Extraterrestrial Intelligences’ seems like a good one. These ETIs comprise a range of advanced species who, for all their differences, share one key commonality: they understand the danger humanity presents to themselves and multi-stellar civilizations as a whole. The ETIs face something of a conundrum—should they intervene and prevent us humans from achieving our full potential, for fear that we might unleash horror untold across the cosmos, as we have done so again and again upon our own kind? Should they hide away and cover their traces so that when we eventually do reach for the stars, we won’t ever find them? Whatever path they might choose, they must choose something, because our mere existence as a (relatively, at least in comparison) intelligent species poses a potential threat that demands a considered response and careful preparation. Fortunately for them, they are a much more advanced race than we humans currently are. They’ve eliminated war, hunger, and pestilence from their societies, if they ever had these problems to begin with. They pursue knowledge and reason with clear minds and honest hearts. If they are aware of other ETIs, they treat them with respect and consideration in all matters that may affect relations between them. They are, all in all, utopian in their ideals, ambitions and achievements. How do we know this? Because if they weren’t, they’d be like us, and they’d probably have annihilated themselves one way or another well before they ever developed the kinds of technologies and societal infrastructure that they enjoy today.

If that seems like too flippant an explanation, let me describe a bit more about what I mean: it could be the case that we are the most advanced intelligence in existence, but on the whole, that doesn’t seem likely. This is called the Copernican Principle, and it underpins much of modern-day cosmology. In essence, the idea is that the universe is probably more or less the same everywhere, meaning we’re not located in any particularly unique location, and so by extension, there’s nothing particularly unique about us either. I mean, what are the odds that in a universe the size of ours we’d arrive first on the scene? The probability would seem to be that we humans would count as an average intelligence when compared to the range of developing intelligences on offer. And given the kinds of timescales that exist in our universe, there might easily be civilizations that have had eons longer to develop than we have. Check out this video if you want to dive into more detail on that subject, as there are some interesting rebuttals to the Copernican Principle (and reinforcements).

Supposing these early civilizations could iron out the growing pains like resource scarcity and whatnot (to which there are potential solutions, by the way—check out Dyson spheres), I think it’s entirely fair to price in highly advanced alien intelligences into our working model of the universe at large, even if they are extremely rare and far-flung. But if they are rare and far-flung, so what? They’re highly developed—they could have technologies unfathomable to our monkey brains. And so, it’s not impossible to reason that they might have taken notice of ourselves, distant as we might be. Distance doesn’t mean much of anything if you’ve invented teleportation or timewalking or quantum tunneling or some sort of indistinguishable-from-magic future tech.

Anyway, I can’t take credit for the idea of enlightened and powerful ETIs surveying the cosmos for potential disturbances to the delicate systems they’ve painstakingly constructed; it’s largely through discussions with a fellow Substacker, , who laid out some of her own thinking on the subject, that I was inspired to develop the ideas espoused herein. Evelyn and I found that we had a lot to talk about regarding the existence of ETIs, even though we were approaching things from quite different angles. For my part, I can readily see how ETIs—substitute in ‘God’ here—would be perturbed to see the manner of conduct humanity seems intent upon displaying here on Earth. Being enormously powerful and wise—again, rather like God—they take it upon themselves to counter the malefic influence bedeviling our species. It’s the moral thing to do; they’ve achieved the impossible in establishing a perfect society for themselves, so they must do what they can to protect it. Maybe they decide to intervene and lay waste to our nascent interstellar travel technologies before we can ever use them to spread ourselves across the galaxy. That reminded me quite a bit about the story of the Tower of Babel, but I’ll get into that more later. Maybe they’ll test our species through a series of tribulations intended to purify our hearts and give rise to a new, greater humanity. That sounds a lot like the stories of revelation and the Second Coming, yes? They’ll simply come down and wipe us out—man, woman and child. Total extermination. Not entirely unheard of, when you consider God’s original plan for the Great Flood, before He thought twice and decided to spare Noah and his family.

My point is that there’s a strange resonance to the idea that highly advanced extraterrestrial civilizations—which we shouldn’t rule out existing, as Fermi’s paradox is yet to be solved—would behave and respond toward human advancement in much the same way as it appears the Christian God does in the Bible. This is why Evelyn and I found ourselves having a lot to talk about, and also why I thought it would be interesting to share with you. What you and I and Evelyn all share, no matter what our personal beliefs are, is our humanity. And being human means that we have a keen sense of one another’s intrinsic value. We are all aware of our moral worth as individuals, as well as a species. It just comes with the territory. The question of what we (or other highly advanced intelligences) ought to do about human frailty or the human capacity for cruelty is fundamentally a moral one, and furthermore, it is one that each of us is well-equipped to answer. Or at least, begin to formulate an answer.

So, let’s formulate.

Sick as sin

I don’t think it’s misanthropic to note that there’s something dangerous about the human species. There’s something in our hearts that can too easily turn dark—something vulnerable to corruption, which almost seems to want to lead us down the path of destruction. Famed psychologist Carl Jung talked about the need for human beings to complete ‘shadow work’; all of us need to confront the dark parts of ourselves, our secret, base impulses, and find a way to master and holistically integrate them into ourselves, in order to be healthy and well-adjusted. The darkness inside must be conquered by each and every one of us. For Christians, this darkness—this ‘curse’—is called sin. Somehow, none of us exist as we were originally meant to be. We carry within us a potentiality for evil that must be recognized and contended with. With a little help, we can avoid capitulating to these instincts altogether, and live a little closer to how we’re meant to.**

This gets tricky to parse at an individual level, when it can be so clear to anyone and everyone how good a certain person might be. Sure, there’s always a bit of bad mixed in there, but most ordinary people whom you know are fundamentally decent, wouldn’t you say? You wouldn’t tend to view your neighbour or friend or family member as afflicted by some sort of spiritual disease constantly tugging at their hearts, bending them toward wickedness. Admittedly, there’s a lot to discuss there, but let’s set it aside in favor of exploring where we can more easily see the influence of this disease—on the macro scale. When we look at humanity collectively, we can rather easily see the patterns of how we’ve conducted ourselves through the millennia. It’s absolutely true that we’ve completed astonishing feats that would only ever be possible through cooperation, mutual respect, and even love; it’s also true that we’ve fallen pitifully far from these ideals many times over. We’re a tricky bunch to pass judgment over, considering how ‘complicated’ we all are, but it’s altogether undeniable that we have demonstrated some seriously monstrous behaviour. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a trend that we’re bucking, not even in our shiny technological era—an era where we’ve never been richer or had a greater command of our destinies. We aren’t beholden to nature in the same way we once were—we can alter our own DNA, change the weather at will, transform any kind of environment to suit our purposes, split atoms apart and harness their energy, destroy an entire ecosystem at breakfast and erect a state-of-the-art data processing center in its place by lunchtime. We are, in a word, growing more powerful all the time. And the unfettered accumulation of power is dangerous.

Now, when a single person is deemed a danger to themselves and others, implementing a kind of quarantine is often an appropriate measure for restricting their ability to cause harm. That’s what prisons are, essentially—quarantines for offenders, removing them from the society they have offended. Government responses to the pandemic followed the same principle: we must protect the many from the few. Even the Bible provides a theological grounding for quarantines, as we find in Leviticus 13:46, where rules are laid out for the ancient Israelites on how to combat contagion (specifically, leprosy):

⁴⁶ As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp.

I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds on this one, as it’s a bit outside of our scope to dive right down into the contextual nuances and implications of Old Testament-era cleanliness codes and rituals. Hopefully we can agree that establishing clear rules around how to treat very sick people is ultimately good and reasonable, without needing to get lost in the details—particularly when we’re considering that these rules were intended for Iron Age people with limited understanding and very limited medicinal capabilities. Once again, the core principle I mentioned earlier stands: to protect the many, you must sacrifice the few.** I don’t say that callously or even like it’s a self-evident truism. Obviously that’s painful, ugly, and even downright awful. But what’s the alternative? All the lepers may mill about among the healthy unimpeded? Allow the disease to spread unhindered? I think any reasonable person will see that that’s not exactly an ideal outcome either. Perhaps the fairest criticism one might offer isn’t to fault the logic of preserving the many over the few, but to fault the God who created a world where such harsh calculus is sometimes required.

And I know, I know, I know—Jesus walked among the lepers and healed them. An absolutely fantastic subversion of typical human thinking, demonstrating how all things—even the commands of the Torah—were under Jesus’ divine authority. But notice that Jesus also told those he healed to observe the proper rites and rituals after the fact, as was expected of them by those same codes and Scriptures that He seemed to be overturning. Why do this? Why not just send them straight home, and let the healed skip the busywork of presenting themselves at the temple to be inspected by a priest? I think it’s because Jesus understood their function—to lay out a process by which people could be restored to their families and communities in a way that protected the sanctity and need for cohesion within the group. He respected people’s freedoms to choose a pathway for themselves, I believe—both as individuals and as collectives. In all things, he worked through people—transforming hearts and minds through his subtle influence and role modelling—rather than remaking the world by force and trampling over anyone who got in his way.

Look at me, I’m already neck-deep in weeds after I specifically said I wanted to avoid it! If I’m starting to lose you, here’s the bottom line: if sin is something real, then it makes sense that its influence ought to be curtailed. If we humans have a spiritual essence which can become marred, broken, corrupted, then we need to do our best to prevent the rot from setting in. We need to keep our hearts clean and pure as best we can. How do we do that? I can hardly fathom, but I can at least observe that limiting the spread of the contagion seemed appropriate. If evil breeds evil, if suffering breeds suffering—think of the vicious cycles of abuse and how often the abused becomes the abuser—then anybody with any moral sense would feel it imperative that we do our utmost to break the cycle. Enacting a kind of ‘quarantine’ can do just that. We can cut off the connections between ourselves and the afflicted person that might cause us harm. Isolate the problem to make it manageable. Maybe this isn’t the only remedial approach we take, but it is a valid one—perhaps even a necessary one.

This doesn’t sound very forgiving, does it? Where’s the selflessness we’ve come to expect as being part and parcel of Christian teaching? Am I really advocating for a sort of spiritual therapy in which we eliminate people from our lives one by one just because they might be struggling, and causing us to struggle in turn? Isn’t it the moral duty of humans to help one another in our suffering, putting our own well-being at risk for the benefit of those whom we love and aim to help?

Yes to all of that! Now we’re starting to see just how difficult this all is. We can see validity in implementing sanctions to prevent the spread of the disease; we can see validity in heading straight to ground zero to administer treatment as best we can. Jesus healed the lepers, sure, but he was Jesus. What are we supposed to do about the existence of evil? It seems all we can do is muddle through, administering imperfect justice this way and that. Some offenders we catch and lock up, some roam free, and still others are reconciled and returned to the fold. We can see potential for each and every human being to achieve redemption (or at least, I hope we can) but who is it that makes the final call about who’s worth saving, and who’s too far gone?

Spare a thought for our ETIs. They’re facing all these same questions as well as they watch us blow each other up with tanks and bombs and so on. They’re thinking to themselves, ‘Gosh, these humans have a lot of potential, they really do, but are they worth the risk of keeping them around?’

And if we’re being honest about our answer—and I mean really, deadly honest—we might not find it so easy to say well and truly: yes.

Babel’s fall

In C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, he weaves a speculative theological tale about humanity’s place in a universe populated not only by ourselves, but by a whole host of intelligent extraterrestrial beings. He titled the first novel in the series ‘Out of the Silent Planet’—the Silent Planet being our own. Earth is ‘silent’ because it has been cut off, effectively, from the rest of the cosmos. The reason our world has gone dark is because of sin. See, the rest of God’s great Creation is getting on just fine, exactly as He intended. The extraterrestrials might call Him by different names and have varied understandings of who He is, but they sing His praises and worship His holy name all the same. From the dawn of time, they have reveled in his grace and love and have striven to fulfill His purpose for them. They’re not exactly perfect in the heavenly sense—they still struggle with material things, being material creations—but they are as yet ‘unfallen’, unlike our human selves. They’ve not broken faith with God so irrevocably that there’s no going back. They’ve not allowed that malign sickness to infiltrate their hearts and twist them against their Creator.

You can guess what happens next. Nefarious spiritual and human agents seek to corrupt the idyllic realms untouched by the dark influence that has already consumed Earth. One man must travel beyond his fallen homeworld (or Thulcandra, as it’s known across the wider universe) to ensure that sin is never allowed to gain a foothold among the various planets of the Solar System, inhabited by the diverse peoples of God’s Creation. In essence, Lewis’ novels tell the story of the struggle to contain the spread of this human infection upon as-yet untainted worlds. Fallenness—evil, suffering, corruption, if you want to strip it of its theological terminology—is so dangerous that it warrants the quarantining of an entire planet. A part of Creation must be sectioned off to preserve the rest.

Why not just eliminate it altogether—burn out the blighted buggers like an exterminator fumigating a house? If everybody on Perelandra and the other Lewisian planets is getting on just fine and dandy, why does God allow Earth to continue on in its sorry state, especially when its influence is so dangerous?

You’ll have to look at the story of Noah for that one. Remember that the story tells us that humanity was so wicked, so vile, so thoroughly debased that God regretted ever creating us at all. It might be hard to imagine humanity in such a state, but if we accept that some human beings can become so warped and twisted that it would have been better if they had never been born, then there’s by necessity a non-zero chance that the same could happen for our entire species. If it’s possible with one, it’s possible for all.

But God is a loving and forgiving God, we are told. He spares Noah and his family because Noah is righteous. In fact, God works a kind of redemption arc for all of humanity through Noah. God does start anew, but not so totally new that His original Creation is well and truly annihilated. A soft reset, I suppose you could say. Better than the alternative, anyway.

Maybe that’s what our ETIs would opt for—a more moderate, compassionate option. Witnessing our kind take the first tentative steps to becoming an interstellar species, maybe these ETIs make a calculated strike, decimating our military capabilities, eliminating our energy sources, and blasting us right back to the Stone Age. Sounds harsh, but then again, it’s better than being dead. We made it through the Stone Age once before; it stands to reason that we could do it again. Maybe we’ll even learn our lesson and try to develop our civilization in a different direction this time—one that doesn’t lead us down the path of warmongering and colonialism.

I’d mentioned that I’d revisit the story of the Tower of Babel, too. Doesn’t it seem like that story tells us something fundamental about the nature of the relationship between God and humanity? We humans strive to be like gods—we want total control over the cosmos for ourselves, because we think we’re prepared to wield it, and that we’d do a better job of managing things than God Himself. We build structures and devise machinations so that we might exert ever-greater power over the universe and each other. We even built a tower to reach heaven itself, as a testament to our achievement as a species. The issue was less to do with the tower’s height and more to do with it being an exposition of our immense hubris. We thought we could show God who was the new boss—that we didn’t need Him anymore, that we could do everything He could do. Maybe we could even do it better.

Remember, however, that the reason why pride is such a dangerous fault is that it blinds you. It makes you think you know more than you know. It makes you into something that you are not; it divorces perception from reality. Humans are not gods. Can you imagine what horrible gods we would be if we could create Creations all of our own? (Look no further than the story of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a likely contender for 2025’s video game of the year, and one of the best games I’ve played in years). We’ve far too limited an understanding to manage that kind of responsibility effectively. That’s more or less what God points out to Job when Job demands an answer for his suffering: what do you know of it? Have you, a human being, any real grasp of just how great and vast and complex and unknowable the universe is? Maybe you mean well, but if you were King of the Universe for a day, how can you be so confident that you wouldn’t cataclysmically mess everything up? Heavy is the head that wears the crown, remember.

So God destroyed the tower and scattered the peoples of the Earth, confusing their language so that they might not ever come together in the same way as they had with this project. It seems harsh, but we have to remember the spirit of this story: we were on the verge of doing something absolutely terrible, and we were blind to the consequences. I don’t think the appropriate interpretation of this story is that God is a tyrant who refuses to share power and wants to keep us all under His thumb—no, I think it tells us that there is something very, very dangerous about us humans, and we need to be kept in check. We can’t always help ourselves—sometimes we lose the run of ourselves, and things spiral out of control. Consider the greatest horrors known to mankind: the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, the Rwandan Genocide. Hardly an exhaustive list. In all of these, we built machinery of devastation with our own hands, lying to ourselves about what we were doing, committing ourselves wholesale to the horror. It was only when the day broke and we saw ourselves in the cold light that we recognized what depths we had sunk to, what abhorrent evil we had wrought. And all for what? What were we even trying to prove, besides our chilling capacity to give ourselves over to depravity and wickedness?

With these examples in mind, it might not be so hard to see why God—or an ETI—would see fit to intervene and set us back a few millennia before things really got out of hand. Just imagine the sorts of unspeakable horrors we could unleash with the technologies now within our grasp: gene editing, quantum computing, bioengineered pathogens. It’s the same reasoning that causes the Reapers of the Mass Effect video game series to lay waste to the various civilizations of the galaxy every few million years; mortal beings cannot be permitted to ascend to godhood. Our technologies enable us to do wondrous, even miraculous things. But what should happen if our tower became so tall as to be unstable? In our arrogance, might we unleash something that would destroy us all—permanently, I mean? Is that what AGI might do if we continued down this path we seem intent on hurtling down at speed, heedless of the potential consequences? What use would our superintelligent AGI creations have for us once they’ve been brought into existence? Do we really think we could control them—bend them to our will like gods?

The eternal prison

I’ll close with one final thought, the most speculative of the bunch (and therefore the most fun!) We know that the universe’s expansion is accelerating. Every day, there is more and more universe than there was before. Dark energy is driving this process by some unknown mechanism, but it’s clear that there’s more space between us and every other celestial object in the universe than once existed. That means that there’s a definitive limit to the region of the vast expanse that we’ll ever be able to reach. Were we to develop the means to travel beyond Earth and reach distant worlds, at a certain point in the future, all of those worlds would be moving away from us at such speed that it would become impossible to catch up to them. No matter how fast we moved, the rate of expansion would be carrying them away even faster. There would always be more space to traverse in pursuit of that certain galaxy or star system—too much to possibly overcome.

So, this means that there’s a certain insurmountable barrier that restricts what we humans can experience of our own universe. We exist—or we will exist at some point in the future—in what amounts to a kind of prison, trapping us in a certain region of space that we can’t ever hope to escape. We know this region to be the Local Group, a collection of around fifty or so galaxies that includes our own Milky Way. Together, these galaxies form a larger structure called a ‘cluster’, in which the constituent parts have enough mutual gravitational attraction to hold themselves together and resist the force of expansion that would otherwise pull them apart. In about 150 billion years, the Local Group will be all that we have access to, as the rest of the universe recedes from view.*** True, future humans might be able to colonize the various galaxies surrounding us, like Andromeda or the Large Magellanic Cloud, but these would be the final frontiers of expansion for them. It would be a tiny kingdom indeed, considering all that exists beyond this unbridgeable boundary.

But I ask again: what if all this is by design? Maybe not the work of ETIs, who, even at the furthest stretch of the imagination, it would be hard to believe them capable of orchestrating the never-ending expansion of the universe itself. But I wouldn’t put this sort of thing past God. God is non-corporeal, unbound by space and time. Eternity is His domain. Why couldn’t He, in His wisdom, have recognized where things were going with humanity and put a plan into motion to arrest our development? Why couldn’t He have cast His eye over the entire cosmos and seen all His beautiful creations—the Quarlathians, the Omolons, the Helaktitians, the U’maar, the R’k’y’ko’ki, and a hundred thousand million other wonderful and unique species, all precious, all loved—and decided that it was best to keep humanity separated from them? What if He is the source of the ‘dark’ energy spreading our islands apart, not because he wishes for us to be alone, but because it’s necessary to preserve the whole of His Creation?

What if we really are sick, and the best thing God could do for us—and others—was put us under quarantine?

Maybe that’s a depressing thought. But it doesn’t have to be; quarantines are necessary not only to halt the spread of contagion, but also to facilitate healing. In quarantine, one can receive the full attention of qualified medical professionals who understand what the problem is and can focus their energies on treatment plans and whatnot. And don’t forget: if we are in cosmic quarantine, and if the Christian story is to be believed, then it’s also true that the doctor’s already been in. What’s more, He’s given us the cure. All we have to do is take our medicine.

*…Unless, I suppose, you subscribe to an ultra-Calvinist approach and believe in the total depravity of mankind. I don’t hold it against you if you do—let’s chat about it sometime and work to understand one another’s viewpoints a little more clearly.

**If that line made you jump, I’m not talking about literal sacrifices here. I don’t know the answer to the classic trolley problem any more than you do; I’m only observing the logic behind choosing outcomes that minimize suffering, even if some suffering is inevitable. Doesn’t make it easy—doesn’t even necessarily make it right—but it does seem like it’s the best we’ve got a lot of the time.

***It will literally recede from view because, as everything in the universe accelerates away from us, eventually all the light from those faraway stars won’t be able to reach us anymore. The rate of expansion will outstrip the ability of light itself to cover the distance between. The sky for our descendants will go dark, save for those stars that remain in the little family of galaxies that make up our Local Group.

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Just a few weeks ago, my Substack feed was flooded with all these Rapture memes, seemingly out of nowhere. I suppose if you’re the kind of person who engages with long-form content like mine on this platform, you might have an idea of what I’m talking about. I thought to myself at the time, what gives? I didn’t hear any trumpets. I didn’t see any celestial lights or angels swooping down from above. I mean, I wasn’t necessarily expecting to, but I figured that when and if it did ever happen, well, wouldn’t someone such as myself have been a likely candidate for a one-way ticket to paradise? Had I done something to get my name struck off the list somehow? Maybe a chocolate smudge had obscured it, or was it down to just plain clerical error?

The proliferation of Rapture-themed digital detritus got me to thinking: what exactly is my stance on this rather strange notion that at the end of the world, God will come riding on a cloud to whisk away his faithful? It’s an idea that I’ve had swirling around in my head for basically my entire life, having been raised in the evangelical church, made all the more palpable by my unique background and familial dynamics.

The memes kept rolling in for a few days before petering out. In the end, it appeared that the Rapture had come and gone without so much as a peep. No seven-headed beasts rising from the sea; no stars falling from the sky. Everybody was still where they always had been, here on Earth—no mysteriously well-folded piles of clothes left behind at workplace offices or in supermarkets or in the seats of cars driving down the highway (can you imagine the carnage of people just up and disappearing mid-commute?) One post that struck me in particular as being rather clever was a person who had ‘checked themselves as safe’ from being whisked away into heaven, evoking those old Facebook notifications I’ve seen once or twice when there have been natural disasters in certain areas.

Now, I’m hardly a social media guru (and I’m also not American, and thus exist somewhere at the extremities of this platform’s cultural circulatory system), so I was a bit bemused at what exactly was going on. After a bit of research, I found that some hardline pastor in South Africa had predicted, with brazen certainty, that the Second Coming was just around the corner, and had thus spawned the latest frenzied wave of TikTokery. September 23 or 24, 2025, were the dates mentioned, to be precise—or, somewhat precise, anyway. It’s kind of hard to nail these things down, of course. People have been trying to predict when exactly Jesus would return to Earth and scoop up the faithful for, well, basically as long as Christianity has existed.

And that’s the angle I’m coming at this from, honestly. What was the big deal? Why did people leap on this particular prediction in such large numbers, besides the fact that it was trendy and funny and, I suppose, a reflexive response to the existential dread so many of us feel pervading our daily lives? Doomsday predictions are nothing new. I would know—I come from a background where this kind of thing was part and parcel to regular religious expression. My grandfather stored up a small stockpile of solid gold because he genuinely believed that the end was nigh, and if he happened to live through it, it’d be better to have ingots on hand rather than cash. Common currency isn’t worth much in the apocalypse, but gold is the eternal standard. Want to barter for untainted drinking water with a post-nuclear wasteland scavenger? You’ll need something better than a fistful of Benjamin Franklins.

I don’t say this to mock or ridicule my grandfather. I say it because I understand how seriously he took the idea of he world ending within his lifetime. I understand how seriously other people take it to this day. I also understand why lots of other people don’t take it seriously at all—why the whole thing’s laughable, from a certain perspective. I mean, Revelation is a weird book, no question. Whatever’s going on in it has been hugely difficult for even trained theologians to decipher, much less ordinary Christians, and even less people with little to no Christian background. And isn’t it kind of awful, in a sense? God putting the world through all sorts of trials and tribulations at the end of time, as if we haven’t had enough of that already? Not to mention how patently unscientific all the stuff we read in it is. It’s mythology, it’s gotta be. Tell me how armies of scorpion-tailed locusts with human faces aren’t the makings of pure fantasy!

Well, if you’re expecting me to now come out and say, ‘ahckshully, that’s all wrong,’ I’m not going to. I’m not going to try and articulate how we ought to approach eschatology one way or the other (barring one way which I think we shouldn’t approach it, which is to accept the notion of a literal Rapture akin to which our most recent would-be doomsday prophet apparently subscribes). What I want to discuss, as ever, is how the ideas we see presented in Christian theology and Biblical scholarship have a fascinating, eerie resonance with something we find in science fiction; in this case, the concept of the Singularity.

No, not the singularity we find within the core of a black hole, though they do have a certain parallel. The Singularity is perhaps one of the most widespread and widely recognized science fiction ideas permeating our increasingly techno-saturated culture. The Singularity is, simply put, the moment in time beyond which we cannot see or predict how the future will unfold. Science fiction is all about trying to predict the future—trying to see the trends of our modern times and extrapolate upon them, anticipating what might be. Sometimes it’s grounded—hard sci-fi—and sometimes it’s fanciful—speculative sci-fi. But whichever it is, it can never see beyond the event horizon of humanity’s final evolution. There’s a barrier to what we can know, limited creatures that we are. But we are not so limited that we cannot conceive of ways by which we might unleash unfathomable forces upon the world, forces which shall forever alter ourselves and everything we know. Technology is a Pandora’s box, one that we’ve lacked the foresight to keep shut.

We already possess frightening, godlike powers that we’ve no idea how to wield. For instance, have you heard of CRISPR, the gene-editing technology? Here’s a cool article from Stanford University to get you started on the topic if you haven’t. If you trust me to summarize, I’ll say this: humans have developed the technology to alter our own genetic makeup, down to a dizzying level of precision. Presently, we’re using this tech to make modifications that can alleviate genetic abnormalities and debilitating conditions, such as sickle-cell syndrome. This is where the term ‘gene therapy’ comes from—the process by which we isolate bad DNA and swap it out for better, healthier DNA.

There’s no question that this is an amazing thing, allowing us to treat many terrible conditions that we’ve never had the means to before. But it’s also not too hard to imagine how such a technology might be used in more nefarious ways. The above article mentioned some of the ethical concerns arising from the advent of CRISPR as well. After all, if we can edit out our defective genes, why stop there? Why not edit ourselves to be stronger, faster, more intelligent? Why not opt for ‘designer babies’—edit the genetic makeup of our unborn children in the womb, to form them into the kinds of people we might want to see in the world? There’s nothing stopping us—technologically speaking—from developing ourselves into whatever types of creatures we might wish to be, successively across the generations. We’re getting into science fiction territory now, of course, but it’s not hard to imagine some sort of future government or perhaps a corporate entity mandating that all its citizens or workforce be genetically altered, in some sense, to suit whatever designs these entities have for the human race. And once we start down that road, when do we stop?

This is but one of the frightening scenarios that might give rise to the Singularity. What they all have in common is a loss of our collective sense of self. Whatever humanity is now—good or bad, precise or commonplace—is forever changed. It doesn’t even make sense to refer to there being a humanity anymore, or civilization, or perhaps even a world that we might recognize as being ‘real’. We have reached the point of no return, kept our gaze fixed forward, and have ventured beyond. All bets are off the table. The universe and everything in it becomes a cloud of unknowing.

But perhaps that’s just what we need to meet God face-to-face; to cast aside our own knowledge, or any sense of pride that we might have in being certain of anything. Perhaps when we cross the threshold of the Singularity, the human story is well and truly finished, but a new one begins. And isn’t that pretty much exactly what Revelation seems to tell us—when all is said and done, God still reigns, and his Creation is born anew?

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Artwork by Bob Eggelton.

The last promise

As a kid, I’d often visit the small library we had in our church. My parents would often be busy after Sunday service finished, what with my dad being the pastor and all. Since I wasn’t particularly social, I gravitated toward spending my free time in a quiet space filled with books. I discovered a lot of interesting reads in that little library over the years, the likes of which wouldn’t be easily found on either my school’s or the public library’s shelves. There was a respectable collection of kid-friendly Christian reading, including an all-time favorite of mine, the Zaanan series (written by Al Bohl, featuring tales of a prayerful, heroic spacefaring action hero who battles against a totalitarian AI-controlled government.) Now, I’d love to gush about Zaanan, but more pertinent to our discussion is the forty-odd novels I read between the ages of 11-14—the Left Behind series. It’s possible you’ve heard the name before, as there was a movie made with Nicolas Cage, of all people, as well as a main series geared toward an adult audience.*

If you’re unfamiliar, what transpires in these stories—both the kid’s version and the adult—is a ragtag group of unbelievers who witness firsthand the events of the Rapture, and end up being ‘left behind’. Some weren’t believers at all, while others had lapsed in their faith. All are understandably astounded at what has occurred—a noticeable percentage of the world population just goes poof, leaving behind nothing but piles of neatly folded clothes. Global chaos and calamity ensue, to be sure. But this is only the beginning. Over the course of the series, each and every one of the events foretold in the Book of Revelation unfold, fancifully dramatized and vividly described. The author of the series takes certain liberties with interpreting just how these wildly outlandish events are realized in a semi-realistic fashion—the Antichrist is imagined as a European politician who cunningly marshals the emergent one-world government, as an example—but certainly does his best to pack in as many Biblical details as possible.

When I was reading them, I remember being particularly titillated by the description of the First Trumpet Judgement being poured out—hail and fire mixed with blood—here imagined as a meteor shower entering the atmosphere and striking the earth, thus wreaking havoc and devastation. The scenes are exciting in the same way that 90s-era disaster movies get the adrenaline pumping; you’re rooting for the heroes to survive against the odds, cheering when they stop to help a stranger trapped beneath the rubble, baying in frustration as a once-beloved character betrays the group to save their own skin.

If I’m honest, these stories did shape how I understood the Rapture and End Times, to a point. I read them at a time in my life when I didn’t know much and was generally impressionable. Now, that isn’t to say that I took the stories literally in any sense—as in, that I believed the apocalypse was nigh and when it struck, it would look a lot like it did in these novels. Rather, the stories fueled my imagination. They gave me something to conceptualize whenever I thought about what Christ’s return might look like. Revelation wasn’t really a text that we tended to look at in Sunday school or youth group, or even in regular services. Like I said before, it’s a strange book, and people have a tendency to walk away with strange ideas after reading it. I didn’t know it at the time, but my parents had purposefully left a church environment behind where the End Times were a major doctrinal issue in order to raise our family in an environment where that wasn’t such a big deal. For their kids, it had become a curiosity. Entertainment, even. Not a life or death issue like it had been for them once upon a time, or their parents—or many, many other believers in the world today.

All this to say, I had a framework now, even though I knew enough to know I shouldn’t put too much stock in my own understanding. Whatever the Rapture was, it was something like what I’d read in those books—good Christians getting taken up into heaven, everybody else left behind. The final days of Creation would play themselves out, and at the end of it, a new day would dawn. I’d carry this muddled notion of what the end of the world was going to look like for about a decade, until I found myself taking part in a young adults’ Bible study as a university student. I don’t remember too much about what we learned or discussed, but one lesson did stick with me and would end up shaping the next stage of my eschatological development.

This time we really were doing a study of Revelation. I remember being excited for the challenge. I knew things about the book, sure, but I’d never really studied it closely, as I’ve mentioned. I’ve always been interested in theological deep-dives (reading this Substack, could you guess?) and so was eager to sink my teeth into what is perhaps one of the most elusive and maddening segments of Scripture. Our leader, a senior fellow in the church, opened up the study with a wise teaching that has stuck with me through the years. I can’t recall his exact words, but the essence of them was this: we may never know exactly what is going on in this book. It could very well be impossible to interpret. It is a vision, after all—the apostle John, at the end of his life, supposedly saw heaven open up to him. This is his revelation; it was given to an audience of one. How are we, so far removed from the original source, to make sense of it? Perhaps we can’t. But one thing we can be assured of is the story’s ending.

Here are the last word of the Bible, in case you’re unfamiliar:

20 He who testifies to these things says,
“Surely I am coming soon.”

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.

That’s the note we end on. Sixty-six books of narrative, mythology, poetry, history, epistle; we leave off with a prayer, a hope, a longing. And a promise. Jesus is coming back. We can’t say for certain how or when, but he’s coming back. We’re just going to have to hold on to that, in faith, for as long as is needed.

What’s the point in all this? God wins in the end. That was the lesson our mentor imparted: God wins in the end. The ending is already written—we’re progressing toward it, day by day, but it’s settled. We can take comfort in knowing that when all is said and done, the Creator of the Universe will still be standing. And, if we believe that He is indeed a good and loving god, He will make good on His promises to restore us. The Great Work that He’s been doing over the millennia will reach its conclusion, and it will be successful. It’s only a matter of time and patience.

Now, that might not cut much ice with a large portion of my readership, and that’s absolutely fine. There are, after all, very legitimate concerns to take up with this approach. Isn’t it a bit like throwing our hands up, or perhaps even washing them of all the pain and suffering we see in the world? Just because it’s all going to be ‘made right’ someday in the indeterminate future doesn’t mean that it is right. Where’s the justice? Where’s the loving kindness for those who need it most—here, now, today? What good does it do for us to sit on our hands and wait for Christ to come back? If he comes back. Haven’t we already been waiting for this for two thousand years? What exactly is the holdup?

All valid questions that I didn’t have excellent answers to (which is not the claim that I have excellent answers now). As you can probably see, my eschatology had not developed to such a point that it had solved every issue relating to the final destination of the human race, and what our ultimate fate might be. It wasn’t until this past week, when I spoke with my dad about this topic, that the needle moved somewhat and I felt that I might, just maybe, have a little bit of a deeper understanding than I once did.

Spirits in the sky

The idea of the Rapture is relatively new in the Christian Church. Nor is it particularly widespread, a notion which surprised me when I first learned it.** It gained popularity in the late 19th and early 20th century, and it was rooted in a certain interpretation of Revelation. Specifically, it was rooted in conservative evangelicalism, which, it should be said, is not to be conflated with the Church at large. There are other major traditions in which the particular version of the Rapture that we’re perhaps most familiar with is not well-regarded at all, such as the Catholic tradition. This idea we’ve popularized—the same one we find in the Left Behind series, and in the memes of RaptureTok—is built on very shaky theological ground. Rolling thunder and people flying up into the sky to be assumed into heaven? Celestial voices ringing out from on high, angels breaking seals and pouring God’s wrath out upon the world? Just where did we get all these notions from?

First, let’s differentiate between what we call the Rapture and what we call the Second Coming. When we study the Book of Revelation, we have to keep in mind the wider context surrounding it. It was penned by the apostle John at the end of his life, after having been exiled to the tiny island of Patmos, off the Greek coast. We don’t know exactly how old John was when he wrote it, but most scholars believe he was anywhere between 85 and 95 years old. That’s a full sixty years removed from the time when he had walked and talked with Jesus personally.***

Now, having lived for many decades after Christ had walked the Earth, John must have been reappraising some of his earlier convictions. A significant amount of time had passed, but there was still no sign of Jesus returning. He and the other disciples—as well as other early church leaders like Paul of Tarsus—had been more or less convinced that Jesus would be back before they knew it. Paul is explicit about this idea in several of his writings, but we’ll talk more about him in a minute. For John, he’d carried these expectations longer than anyone else in the original cohort. He’d witnessed his friends and fellow disciples martyred one by one. He was the last one left standing. Jesus hadn’t come back in time to save any of them. And, now that John was staring down the very realistic prospect of dying on that solitary island, he was coming to see that he might not live to see Jesus return, either.

That had to be a hard realization for the man—maybe even the faith-breaking kind of realization. Maybe that’s why God gave him the vision that he did, if you want to be a bit speculative about it. Maybe it was a reminder to hold firm to his belief in a moment of doubt. Whatever it was, John witnessed something incredible. A dream, perhaps, but even dreams can be mesmerizingly detailed and earth-shatteringly meaningful. He set himself to the task of recording this dream, this vision, in his final moments of life. He seemed to understand that what he’s witnessed could be of help to others who might be wondering the same things as he was—where’s God in all this? When will the promise be fulfilled? When will our time of suffering cease, and when will all be made right? In the telling of his story, John seemed to realize that Jesus wasn’t going to return in his lifetime—he would die on that island after all. But he wouldn’t be alone. He came to see that the spiritual struggle he’d been part of for most of his life would continue into the future. It was a battle far greater than perhaps he’d ever imagined. But he also saw that there was a promise for those who endured, and he wanted them to know what lay in store. He wanted to offer hope, I believe.

What about Paul then, and his writings on the subject of the End Times? In 1 Thessalonians, he writes this:

6 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command,
with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.
And the dead in Christ will rise first.

17 Then we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air,
and so we will always be with the Lord.

Sounds a lot like what we typically conceive of as the Rapture, right? So, if Paul’s writing about it, then that should be the end of the matter, yes?

Here’s the thing, though: Paul is a human being, limited in scope and knowledge, shaped by custom and culture and paradigm, just like John. Paul is a theologian laying the groundwork of what will eventually become a full-blown religion. But he doesn’t know this—he’s just doing his best to make sense of what he’s read, what he’s heard, what he’s experienced. The Rapture, then, as we typically conceive it, would fall into the category of an idea or interpretation—an incomplete one. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s based on only partial information and so yields only a part of the whole truth. The Second Coming, however, is a solemn promise of things to come. We don’t know too much about how that will look, either, apart from it will usher in the end of the world as we know it and serve as the genesis of the world to come. Squabbling over the exact details isn’t likely to be of much use; if the outcome’s already known, what difference do the details make?

Do I mean to say that there isn’t any God involved in the theorizations that Paul is transcribing here? No! God’s involved in our lives in every waking moment—even the air we breathe is a gift from Him. But I also don’t think that God is literally putting the words and ideas in Paul’s mind, uttering his will and testament verbatim through his human puppet. What would it say for human free will if this is how God operates through us? Aren’t we His children, whom He delights in?

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that Paul, for all his strengths and godliness, is just a man. He’s not even a man like Jesus was a man—he’s very clearly a flawed man, redeemed as he might be. His thinking, his worldview, his entire perception have been shaped by Roman and Jewish customs. His writings reflect the times he lived in and the world as he saw it—which is to say, confined to a narrow set of experiences and perceptions. Put another way, yes, Paul was divinely inspired to write (if he wasn’t, then there’s no need to put much credence in his words at all, and certainly not treat them as any kind of Scripture), but his writings are still incarnated. They exist in a certain time and place just as we do, embodied beings that we are. Just like Jesus, in fact!

This is the fascinating mystery of what Christians believe about God’s work in the world—He chooses to limit Himself and work through His Creation, rather than supersede it. People like John and John and even Jesus himself can be at the same time full human, limited in understanding, as well as ‘attuned’ to the spirit and granted insight into something beyond themselves. I don’t for a minute think that any of these men understood quantum mechanics or that the Earth revolved around the Sun or that dinosaurs existed or any number of true things we know about our world today. But I also think that when they looked into their own hearts and listened to the whispers they heard in the quiet moments, what they perceived was true as well. They sense in their souls the love that God had for them, and for all humanity. Jesus would be the one who took this deeper kind of understanding to its ultimate conclusion, living a life in perfect communion with God. He trusted in the voice of his Father and followed where it led, even when it led to places he didn’t want to go.

So, Paul the theologian was a starting point. He was writing at the very genesis of the Christian story, doing his best to make sense of what he knew in his spirit to be true. We are fortunate to have advanced from this position, having the benefit of time and perspective. We can look at these writings forbidding men from having long hair and say to ourselves, ‘that was just cultural, it doesn’t apply,’ as with many other things. Even if we don’t think we do this—if we kid ourselves into believing that we follow the Bible to the letter—we obviously don’t. There are a thousand and one things that the Bible tells us to do and not do, and we both do and don’t do any number of them on any given day (not to mention the things the Bible says that flat-out contradict one another). All anyone can do is their best to keep a clear conscience and muddle through, knowing they’ll make mistakes along the way. That’s why Jesus’ message of forgiveness is so revolutionary. It’s the people who try to systematize what we find in Scripture and impose legalistic restrictions on how people behave and believe that cause the most issues. Fundamentally, they’re no different from Pharisees. The ancient Jewish elite whom Jesus railed against thought it was good and right to follow the rules to the letter, but their darkened hearts were blinded from the needs of those who lived and suffered on the daily.

Sorry, that’s turned into a straight-up sermon, hasn’t it? I’ll sum up by reminding you of my key observation: what we read of the Rapture in the Bible is a timestamped reflection of what certain people thought in a certain place, in a certain time. These understandings are not timeless. John himself would have progressed from believing that Christ was coming in his lifetime to believing something else. We today ought to believe something different as well—not that people will be caught up in some whirlwind on some fateful day and carried off into heaven. That kind of thinking won’t do us any good anyway, because we’ll be sitting around with our bags packed, wondering when the train’s leaving, instead of getting up off our rear ends and helping somebody across the road or suchlike. If our belief counts for anything at all, it ought to make a difference in the lives of those closest to us. We ought to show love to one another—even our enemies, hard as that might be. If we’re hoping we’ll have our satisfaction when God blasts the trumpet and we finally leave all those sinners behind to wallow in their filth and muck, then I’m sorry to say, we’ve really and truly missed the point.

‘Never tell me the odds!’

So, what does all this mean? Are we meant to be waiting until the heat death of the universe for Christ to finally come back as promised?

Well, first of all, why not? Any finite amount of time is infinitely small when compared to eternity. If Jesus waited two thousand years, or three thousand, or ten thousand, or ten million, or a hundred billion—or the hundred trillion it is estimated to take until the last light from the last star winks out—it would make no difference in the grand scheme of things. If we believe that he is coming, then it doesn’t matter if it’s today or tomorrow or the next day. Our mission is clear: love our neighbours as ourselves. And the timeframe doesn’t matter either, because even if we have to wait until the entire universe goes dark, when he does come, the world will still be made right. The promise will still be fulfilled. Every tear that’s been shed will be wiped away, at the end of all things.

And so that’s where I see the link with the idea of the Singularity. If we truly are hurtling toward an unknowable future, so what? It will arrive when it arrives, or it won’t. The accelerationists want to speed the process up; the decelerationists, if they exist, I imagine, want to slow it down. But neither group can predict what will occur once it finally does arrive. And I find it hard to believe that it will never arrive, so long as humans are able to keep advancing their technological capabilities. Think of all that we’ve achieved in the last century. Is it really so hard to imagine that AGI could be possible—that we might replace ourselves with superintelligent machines? We needn’t imagine anything, in fact, since we already know that we have the capacity to evolve ourselves right out of existence. All that it means to be human is in question in the digital age, the cybernetic age, the bioengineering age. Our capacities are swiftly outstripping our understanding, if indeed they ever were in step with one another.

What I’m saying is that, following the trends as good science fiction enthusiasts do, we shouldn’t be surprised if we eventually reach a point beyond which we cannot see. I do regard it as inevitable, because I know how humans are, and I know how much time we have. The trends have been the same as long as we’ve existed as a species—or at least, from whatever point we ‘awakened’ to ourselves (a speculative idea which I wrote about previously to explain why some hairless apes should evolve into the creatures we find ourselves to be today). If the universe is due to keep expanding for another hundred trillion years or so—and when we consider the leaps and bounds by which we’ve advanced in just the last century—why wouldn’t we think that there would come a point where we would alter ourselves or our world to such a drastic extent that to consider ourselves ‘human’ by any definition no longer seems possible? We just might gene-edit ourselves into oblivion, replacing ourselves with the transhuman—the next stage in our evolution. We just might create an AGI that we promptly lose control over, becoming strangers in a world that we no longer have mastery over; a world that no longer makes sense and is no longer even ‘about’ us.

I do hear what many of you might be thinking—who’s to say that we survive that long? Isn’t it far more likely that we annihilate our entire species in nuclear war or some sort of manmade catastrophe? And honestly, I’m inclined to agree. We humans are a resilient species, but I don’t think we’ve had to deal with crises on quite the scale that we do now. Never before in our history have we possessed the capability to wipe ourselves out several times over. For us to survive into the millennia to come, we will have to practice extraordinary restraint every single moment of every single day, and the way things are looking at the minute, it doesn’t seem like we’re collectively up to the task.

Maybe we won’t make it to the heat death of the universe. Even if we did, wouldn’t that be the end, anyway?**** It does appear to be the case that the ultimate destiny of humanity is one of death, just as it is for each of us as individuals. That’s just how things are for corporeal beings made of matter. But, if we believe that people are more than just the starstuff that makes up their flesh and bones—if we believe in something as audacious as the human spirit—we just might stand a chance. We won’t be the same as we once were, that’s for certain. Whatever’s beyond the Singularity will change us forever. We might not even recognize ourselves anymore, once we receive these ‘new bodies’ that Revelation appears to promise to us. Will we still be who we were? Will the line of continuity be eternally broken?

I would contend that the answer is unknowable. The only way to know what lies on the other side of the event horizon is to cross it. That’s a fearful thing; to cross a boundary from which there is no return, and for which there is no guarantee of survival. It’s no wonder that the theorists fretting over the impending arrival of the Singularity think it might be the end of us all. But for those of us who believe in something greater than all this, thank goodness we have some assurance of what’s waiting for us on the other side—a father with arms open wide. Knowing that ought to be enough for us, if we’re serious about believing that God is who He says He is. That’s the big ask of faith: taking another at their word. We have God’s assurances that we’ll not be forgotten at the end of all things—that there’s something more in store beyond the pale. We can’t know what it is, but we can trust in it.

The Singularity might well come for us all in the end, it’s true. The Second Coming might well be just around the corner. But how we ought to conduct ourselves in the meantime is clear: keep calm and love thy neighbour.

*I should note that I read only the kid versions, which I imagine were somewhat sanitized compared to the main novels. The originals were geared toward an adult audience, and I believe even had some success outside the evangelical world. Nevertheless, the kids’ ones left a powerful enough impression on my mind for me to still be thinking about them all these years later.

**Further evidence of the fact that I had once existed within a kind of cultural/religious bubble, which I’m glad to have made progress in escaping. I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, however, as we all exist within bubbles of our own, of varying sizes and shapes.

***In case anyone wasn’t sure, the John we’re talking about is the same John who served as one of Jesus’ original twelve disciples.

****One of my favorite YouTube channels has a super interesting thought-experiment on that subject, if you’d like to check it out.

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Or, put more simply: is there scientific evidence to suggest that our universe is merely a simulation?

What a question! I haven’t the foggiest what the real answer might be. But I was mightily chuffed that somebody thought of me when asking said question, as if they might want to know what I have to say.

I suppose I’ve styled myself something of a theoretical physics nut here on the ‘Stack. If I’ve given you the impression that I possess any sort of expertise on the subject, I humbly beg your forgiveness. Yes, it’s true that I find physics fascinating—particularly if there’s an ‘astro’ or ‘quantum’ in the name—but I’m a far cry from what one might call studied, or even knowledgeable. My interest in physics is a relatively recent thing. It was my least favorite class in high school, actually, but thanks to a good teacher, I managed to scrape through.

See, what I’ve discovered is that I don’t really like science. Never have. And not because I’m a person of faith of anything, but because it’s arduous. It’s painstaking. It’s dull. It’s just pretentious mathematics. At least real math doesn’t dress itself up and act like it’s useful in day-to-day life. No, science has to go around insisting upon itself—take me seriously, or you’ll never understand what the amygdala for or how fast the Irish coastline is eroding or how the intricate mating rituals of marmosets work or why some men go bald. Like, give me a break, buddy. I’m just an evolved ape trying to get the kids in bed by 7:00 so I can put on slippers and drink a glass of wine while watching Taskmaster reruns. I don’t have time to be bothering with the whys and the hows of it all.

I’m joking, in case that wasn’t clear. Science is very important—far too important to ignore, especially when it comes to forming beliefs about the fundamental nature of the universe and so on. And, much to the bemusement of my teenage self, it turns out that I like science a lot, albeit with one critical caveat: as long as I’m not the one doing the science. Experimenting, testing, measuring and then re-measuring are all rather tedious, at least in my mind. That’s why I’m grateful to be living in an age where I have near-unlimited access to the scientific knowledge of others. I can read about recent discoveries, listen to free lectures given by brilliant minds, and educate myself in the leading theories of fascinating fields of study. The hard labor of scientific inquiry can be outsourced to people with better talent, greater willpower and pointier heads than myself, while I can sit back and reap the benefits from my armchair or computer desk. There’s never been more science happening at any time in human history—our understanding of the natural world has never been more sophisticated—and I get to live in that time. That’s an amazing blessing, in my view.

Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s also the age of science fiction that we find ourselves in. As our grasp of the inner workings of the cosmos has improved, so too has our capacity to imagine just what else is out there to discover. We’ve learned about the true nature of stars, galaxies, and black holes; we can fantasize about what it would be like to visit these places. We’ve probed deep into the mysteries of our own minds and bodies; we can imagine what it would be like to manipulate these at will, guiding our evolution along pathways of our own choosing. We’ve identified the defining characteristics of carbon-based life; we can envision intelligent beings born on distant worlds, wholly alien yet resembling ourselves more than we might like to admit. Science has allowed us not only to better grasp what is, but to ask more intelligent questions about what might be. Just consider how Karl Schwarzschild used Einstein’s theories to predict the existence of black holes in 1916, long before we knew they actually existed. The relationship between science fiction and science fact also works in reverse: consider the famous example of how Star Trek envisioned long-distance wireless communications decades before cell phones (and all the infrastructure that makes them possible) were invented.

That was my in with science—the idea that there was more out there than we knew, or could ever possibly know, but with meticulous study and concentrated effort, we might probe just a bit further into the unknown than we had before. And so, I’ve been doing what I can, when time allows, to wrap my mind around our latest and best attempts to explain what’s really going on in the natural world.

It might seem strange, then, why I’d take a question like ‘Is the universe a simulation?’ seriously. On its face, it doesn’t seem like a very scientific question; it seems conspiratorial. Indeed, there’s a whole tangle of wacky simulation theories out there that range from merely offbeat to downright insidious. I don’t want to touch them with a ten-foot pole, because this publication isn’t about giving credence to conspiracies. It’s easy to lose your bearings when you go down those rabbitholes. Sometimes people don’t manage to find their way back to the surface, and I don’t want to be responsible for leading any of my (admittedly few) readers along lines of inquiry that are bound to sharply diverge from what more sound-of-mind, admittedly boring people would call ‘the real world’. Does this mean I’m closing off potential avenues toward truth? Maybe that’s what a conspiracy theorist would accuse me of: being too chicken to redpill myself. A sad, sorry bluepiller, still stuck under the thumb of consensus reality, too afraid to pull off the blindfold and witness truth.

Maybe that’s valid. I guess that’s a hard accusation to disprove—but that’s also kind of my point. You can’t really make logic-based, sensible arguments when you’re in the realm of conspiracy theories, because there’s always a conspiracy down one level down, ready to jump out and say, ‘Ha! But how do you know what you just said is true? Maybe they’re all lying to you!” And, well, maybe they are. But I’m not going to get very far suspecting that any and all truth is actually some sort of façade crafted by THEM to manipulate me, whoever ‘they’ are. It’s not worth it to try and argue in rational terms about such things. At some point, everybody has to make a stand on what is True above all other truths, and figure out their way forward from there. Rationally speaking, it seems like a safe bet is to assume that, if the vast majority of people share certain ideas—ideas which act as lodestars to epistemologically and ontologically orient themselves in the world—they’re probably onto something. Sure, they could ALL be wrong, but what’s more likely? The multitudes of ordinary people who share common beliefs and convictions across cultures and languages, or the fringe types who think all politicians are lizard people from the Moon wearing skinsuits? But that’s a rational argument, again, so I don’t imagine it’ll convince you of much if you’ve already convinced yourself that nothing and no one can be trusted. If it’s all part of a government psy-op to control the masses and somehow you’ve seen through it all and are no longer a puppet…good for you, I suppose. But I’ve got work in the morning, so I’m gonna leave you to it, I think.

So, if I’m not much interested in conspiracy theories, why bother with exploring the idea that the universe might be a simulation? My answer’s simple: because it’s not all that different from believing in God, to my mind. If you’ll allow me to elaborate, I hope to show you how—and why it’s not such a bad thing to live in a simulated universe, maybe.

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There is no spoon

To my mind, the most famous example we have of a simulated universe story in the science fiction canon is The Matrix. It’s hard to imagine there might be people out there who’re unfamiliar with the 1999 box office smash hit, but in case any of them might be reading this, I’ll give you the basics: the world you and I live in is not the real world. Rather, it’s a digital simulation controlled by advanced machines that enslaved humanity centuries ago. They keep us in vats and harvest our bioelectricity while we slumber, completely unaware of our grisly reality. Our brains are fed false electrical signals to stimulate them in just the right ways to make us think we’re free in the world, walking around, going to work, picking up the kids from school, heading out for a beer with friends, planning a vacation, falling in love, mourning the loss of a loved one. But it’s all an illusion—a massive, comprehensive global-scale charade designed to keep us sedated. Our only hope of ever escaping from this shared nightmare is to wake up and end the simulation once and for all.

It’s a fascinating premise, and one hell of a great movie. I think part of the reason why it’s so great is because, wild as the idea of living in a simulated reality is, it actually seems rather plausible. We understand enough about our own neuropsychology to grasp that our brains can lie to us all so easily. The famous ‘Montreal Procedure’, in which a series of epileptic patients had various parts of their brains electrically stimulated whilst receiving brain surgery, elucidates this point: subjects reported all sorts of illusory phenomena, such as a piano being heard somewhere in the distance, or children playing in the background of the operating theater. If we can alter a person’s perception of reality with such simple methods, doesn’t it logically follow that with highly advanced technology and more sophisticated means, we could reshape ‘reality’ in its totality—stimulate the human brain in all the right ways to represent the outside world that fits whatever designs we might have?

Terrifying, no doubt. But on its face, conceptually sound. Thus, the idea of a ‘simulated universe’ has to be taken somewhat seriously, I think. It’s even arguable that we live in a simulated universe by merit of our own fallible minds, emotions, and limited knowledge. If our perceptions of reality can be so flawed—either by ideologies, religious dogma, phobias and trauma, biases of various kinds, or otherwise—aren’t we living in ‘simulations’ of our own creation, rather than experiencing the world as it really is? Objective reality isn’t so objective if we can’t ever grasp what our own limitations are, in terms of our subjective experience of said objectivity.

But perhaps I’m getting too deep in the weeds with these philosophical pontifications. Simulation theory isn’t about abstract notions about Platonic Forms or whatnot—it’s about somebody, or something, lying to you. Hiding the truth from you. It’s about pulling the headjack out from your spinal cord and seeing the world as it really is, not how your secret overlords want you to see it. It’s about breaking free from all illusions—stepping out of the cave and allowing the daylight to shine on your face.

Most typically, simulation theory holds that there is a truer, objective reality out there somewhere, beyond our reach. This reality we’re stuck in is arbitrary, constructed, ephemeral. Maybe we’re all living in sort of Matrix, where all that we see and touch is reducible to ones and zeroes. Maybe there are highly evolved human beings helming this simulation, running tests for some unknown purpose. (Let’s be real: it’s probably to figure out how to generate more value for the shareholders of whatever company they work for. These are humans we’re talking about, after all.) Maybe it’s aliens who’ve built some sort of godlike artificial intelligence that is running all manner of contingencies simultaneously, and we happen to be one of them. Maybe we all exist in the dream of some blind, idiot eldritch god, like Lovecraft imagined, and the moment this monstrosity awakens, we’ll all cease to exist.

I mean, maybe it is. There isn’t really any way to discount these ideas; they’re inherently unprovable. Because of that, they’re also irrefutable. You can’t prove that the world isn’t a simulation, since any evidence you point to may in fact be part of said simulation, purposefully designed to lead people off the scent. Here, too, there’s an interesting parallel to The Matrix, as in the second movie (which I hold is actually quite good), the hero, Neo, learns that despite everything he’s done to break the grip of the machines over humanity has amounted to nothing. His resistance is part of the system itself—a necessary ‘check and balance’ that contributes to the health of the overall system. In the same way, if we point to the ‘unscientific-ness’ of simulation theory’s core concept—unscientific because all science must be testable and falsifiable—a proponent of this same theory might simply say that’s a feature, not a bug.

So, if we’re going to believe that the universe is in fact a simulation, we’re just going to have to believe it. And this is what struck me as terribly interesting when I pondered that question from that fellow Substacker: isn’t believing in something that you can’t see or prove simply an act of faith? How different, then, is it to say that you believe in God? Not very, I should think. Lots of people believe in God. Perhaps not as many believe the world is a simulation. But perhaps, if we look at this issue carefully, we might find that these two groups of people are fundamentally the same. We might even find that it’s God who’s up there, jacking us all in and watching the green numbers stream across the screen.

Living (in) the dream

On Mars Hill, when the apostle Paul was addressing a gathering of Greek philosophers and curious listeners, he used the words of one Cretan poet, Epimenides, to try and make inroads with his audience: ‘In him, we live, move, and have our being.’ Epimenides was referring to Zeus, the father of the gods and supreme deity of the Greek pantheon. His meaning was that humans were descendants of Zeus; Paul, however, used this familiar language to describe God—the ‘Unknown’ god, Yahweh, supreme and singular god of all the universe. Paul wanted his listeners to see that we humans exist because of and through God. Christian theology has made a lot of that concept in the thousands of years since.

Paul agreed with the poet in that our relationship to God is defined by more than just a Creator/Creation dynamic. We aren’t part of some kind of mechanistic system where God (or Zeus) wound up the universe and let it run like a clockwork toy, then wandered off somewhere and forgot about us. No, we exist and continue to exist because God actively sustains us. We can think of it like a dream: when a dreamer dreams, they ‘sustain’ this dream by the simple act of dreaming it. They are intimately involved in the persistence of this dream, moment after moment—indeed, it cannot continue to exist without them. The denizens of this dream may behave in ways that are strange and unforeseen by the dreamer. They may appear to have lives and wills of their own. (Perhaps they do—who really understands what is happening when we dream? Scientists don’t. They’ve got some theories, sure, but nothing concrete.) But they are still part of the dream, and rely upon the dreamer to keep them ‘alive’, or ‘existent’, or ‘dreamt’—however you want to call it.

Let’s break down each of the components of Epimenides and Paul’s axiom to see what we can extract that might be useful:

1. In Him, we live

   This first part deals with the physical vitality we enjoy as created beings. We are alive, and that’s an astounding thing because we’re made of dust and mud. We have corporeal forms constructed from organic compounds, which themselves are made of entirely inorganic materials—elementary particles. We are inanimate matter made animate.

   It’s a fact I think we fail to appreciate, especially we who are serious about science: we have no answer for how life could arise from the non-living. There is no sufficient explanation for abiogenesis. Esteemed physicists have created all sorts of incredibly complex models of the universe that have no need for a Creator to set it all in motion. But life itself? Where did it come from? Why is the galaxy, or indeed the universe, not simply filled with rocks and gas and dust, and nothing more? Why are we here to perceive it in all its splendour?

   And, if you’ll permit me to get all quantum on you for a moment (you do know how much I love to get quantum): if there were no one there to perceive this splendid universe, would any of it really exist at all?

   God, then, might not just be the Prime Mover or the First Cause. He might also be the First Observer. In Him, our hollow bodies blossom into life, and the soul flourishes.

2. In Him, we move

   I’m surprised that in doing these essays for as long as I have, I’ve never really dealt with the issue of entropy before now. I’ll have to write on that topic in more detail soon, because it’s fascinating. We know, scientifically, that ordered systems like our universe, our bodies, or virtually all things that we interact with on a daily basis, are eternally moving towards ever-increasing disorder. Chaos is but a hair’s breadth away at any given moment. Entropy is but the gradual descent of the ordered universe into this chaos.

   In poetic terms, you can think of it as the journey from birth to death—a baby is born, grows and thrives, but then at some imperceptible moment in the prime of their life, they begin to dwindle. They age. Their body slowly but surely begins to break down. The body itself fights against this, doing its best to restore order within the system. The heart still pumps, the blood still flows. But little by little, it fails. All the tiny components that make up this incredibly sophisticated and intricate system break down. Eventually, the body dies. But the inevitable march toward disorder is not finished yet; there is still the decomposition of the body. The chemical bonds that once made up this human person’s form will disintegrate, and every atom that was once bound up in the grand mystery that was their life will break faith and go its own way. Nothing of that ‘ordered system’ will remain, or indeed, shall ever exist again.

   So, where’s God in all this? Well, when that human person was alive, did they not move toward purpose? Did they not have goals, set out to achieve things in their life? Did they not have dreams? Did they not have desires? Did they not yearn—did their hearts not break, yet in time, did some strange force not mend them and help them to struggle on?

   Maybe we can think of God as the sustainer of all order that exists in our universe, particularly our own—the force that enables one to make something out of chaos. Whether we acknowledge him or not, God can act at the waypoint that our hearts follow as we move through the world. He offers direction and purpose in life. He offers love. He is love. In seeking love for ourselves on this mortal plane, we seek Him, and move ever closer to His loving embrace.

3. In Him, we are

   What is consciousness? How can it be that your mind is not the same as your brain? How can it be that you are there, reading these words, having thoughts and reactions and emotional responses all your own, perceptible only to you? Experienced only by you? How can it be that you have an entire universe inside of you—that you are a stranger even to yourself?

   I subscribe—tentatively, mind you—to the notion that our consciousness is a gift from God. That animals are alive as we are is clear enough. Indeed, it’s clear that many species (perhaps even all) possess some manner of consciousness. But there is a world within us; its vastness is incomprehensible, even to ourselves. I believe Sam Harris, the famed New Atheist, even remarked with some amazement at the emergence of consciousness from mere matter, describing it as ‘mysterious’. And that’s not even taking into account what happens when we expand our minds with psychedelics! It really doesn’t make sense why there’s just so much stored away in there, orders of magnitude beyond what we see exhibited by the rest of Creation. We are unlike anything else in the universe. You can almost think that there’s a certain touch of divinity about us—though we’re far, far from the mark of gods ourselves. Perhaps that’s what it means when we say we are ‘made in the Image of God’. We are conscious, as He is. All that we are—the entirety of our personal experience—is rooted in our identity as Hid children.

   “First there is a physical world, unconscious and seething with unperceived events; then, by virtue of some physical property or process, consciousness itself springs, or staggers, into being. This idea seems to me not merely strange but perfectly mysterious. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. When we linger over the details, however, this notion of emergence seems merely a placeholder for a miracle.”

   - Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

What does any of this have to do with simulation theory, then? Well, we have to consider what exactly this ‘force’ is that gives us life, purpose, and essence. In simulation theory, this force exists beyond ourselves; we are not the masters of our own universe, or ourselves. The machines, to go back to The Matrix, have created all the parameters for our existence. It’s their will that gives our world its shape.

God, too, is beyond our universe. He designed it—His spirit hovered above the waters of chaos and brought an ordered system into being. The nature of that order was. by definition, arbitrary—it is as He made it. The Sun and Moon in the sky, the Earth below. The relationships between the heavens above and the seas below are tuned by His sublime intelligence. We didn’t decide on any of this; for all our powers of scientific inquiry, we can’t change anything about the fundamental laws of our universe. We can study them, come to understand them, but never alter them.

If you want to call that a simulation—as in, a model or facsimile of ‘reality’, beholden to certain forces beyond itself that give it its characteristics—then I think I can agree. Our world is not all that is. There’s a higher realm, a higher being beyond ourselves that holds us in the palm of its hand. Our little sliver of lived experience is not the full picture. When we consider our relationship toward this ‘higher’ reality, this elevated state of being, we can see that we are, in a certain sense, living in a simulated universe. It’s real—but not really real. It’s a reality that’s sustained by another beyond it.

Resurrection/Re-creation

This idea really comes into focus when you consider what happens after we die. In Christian theology, we believe that there is an afterlife. After we shuffle off this mortal coil, we go somewhere. Or, something happens. We’re not quite sure what, exactly, but death is not the end of the story. It wasn’t for Jesus, who rose again. One of Jesus’ monikers in the Bible is the ‘First of the Dead’. It’s an odd thing to call a resurrected God/Man—off the top of the head, it sounds like an epithet a Dungeons and Dragons necromancer might use. But it’s actually a very powerful idea: Jesus (if you believe the stories) was the first person to experience what it is that we will all experience after we die.

Let’s take a close look at just what Christians mean when they talk about an afterlife. Two main views have shaped Christian thinking over the millennia since Christ walked the Earth:

1. Heaven and hell

   In this view, our souls continue on beyond death in a sort of non-material existence. This idea is actually rooted in Greek religious/cultural belief about the duality of the body and the soul—dualism, in a word. The early Church fathers were heavily influenced by this thinking and applied a Christian framing to it: when the body dies, it dies. The resurrection, then, refers to the spirit continuing on afterward. It is judged and ends up in either heaven or hell—paradise or eternal damnation.

2. New Heaven and New Earth

   In this view, made more popular by the writings of modern theologian N.T. Wright, there’s a ‘re-creation’ that happens after death. This isn’t just a recreation of the individual person who died, but of the entire world and everyone in it. Wright draws a lot of his ideas from the book of Revelation, which makes a big deal of the notion that heaven will come to Earth in the final days. Though we don’t know much about what exactly this ‘coming’ is going to look like, it seems to be something along the lines of everyone who’s ever lived and died coming alive again, but with new bodies, existing in some kind of new in-between state where heavenly and earthly existence are merged. (Sounds kind of quantum, doesn’t it?)

Right, so, what do we do with those two interpretations?

First off, I’m going to suggest ignoring the former. I really want to look at how the stories of the resurrected Jesus seem to match up with the ‘New Heaven and New Earth’ version of the afterlife, because it appears to me that’s where the synergy is. Without going over all the various accounts of Jesus reappearing to his disciples in the aftermath of the crucifixion, we can notice that there’s a common theme between all of them: Jesus appeared at once both eminently recognizable and human to his followers, whilst also being entirely ‘other’ and indiscernible. He simply ‘appears’ and subsequently vanishes in their midst, yet is decidedly not a ghost—best evidenced by the story of Thomas putting his hands through Jesus’ wounds. On the road to Emmaus, his followers are completely unable to recognize him as they walk and talk together at length; only once Jesus disappears do they suddenly realize that it was Him all along.

We might be reading into things here, but it seems to me like these stories capture the idea that lies in stories for each of us after we depart. We remain corporeal beings, in some shape or form, yet we’re not bound to the same plane of existence as we currently are. We’re simultaneously citizens of heaven and Earth, and can move between them at will. Or, perhaps both heaven and Earth are here at once, and we belong to each equally, just as Jesus did (if you believe he was the Son of God and all that).

Ultimately, the Bible says nothing definitive about the true nature of the New Heaven and the New Earth. I acknowledge we’re firmly in the realm of speculation here. But, if there’s any truth to this model of an aftermath that I’ve described, then it seems to line up with the idea of a simulated reality nicely. Right now, we’re only experiencing one ‘mode’ of reality—the Earthly one. We have a divine nature, a soul, but we don’t have ready access to it. It’s hidden from us, this spiritual realm. Maybe, when all is said and done, and the Heat Death of the universe has come and gone—and God finally decides He’s ready to make all things new—we’ll be resurrected into this new sort of life that we see Jesus living in the New Testament. At that point, it seems accurate to describe this recreated state as a ‘truer’ reality than the one we’re living here and now. It would bring together both the spiritual and the corporeal—a perfect union of body and soul. The simulation would have ended, and we’d get to finally see how things really are meant to be. No more pain, no more sorrow. Life, and life in abundance.

Debugging the system

Okay, so we’ve talked at length about what theological evidence there is for a simulated universe. But why would God simulate us? For the machines in The Matrix, their motivations made sense: enslave humanity and ensure they were no longer a threat to machine-kind’s supremacy. But what sort of motivation would someone such as God have?

I actually explored this idea in a story I wrote some years ago. Someday, I’d love to revisit it and revamp it now that I’m a more experienced writer. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll tell you a bit about it briefly, to help you see where I’m coming from.

Imagine a world where the gods are machines. These all-powerful mechanical deities are eternally seeking to optimize their functions—functions which would include the sustaining of creation itself. There are five of these God-machines in total, but as each of their functions are individualized, there is disharmony among them. They wish to create a system of perfect cohesion—every gear turning in its own prefect way, maintaining the balance of a clockwork universe with precision and finesse.

To that end, these god-machines each create their own ‘children’—a race of beings who bear the marks of their respective identities and purposes. They set these children loose in a controlled environment—a world unto itself—and watch carefully to see how their simulation play itself out. They intend to learn from the actions of their children, and incorporate these lessons into the next iteration of their co-created universe.

Invariably, the children war against one another. Conflict and strife abound. This signifies impurities in the systems of the god-machines—impurities which they earnestly seek to rectify. They allow the simulation to play itself out, even though it has proven itself to be a failure. In failure, after all, great knowledge can be gained. The god-machines wait for the inevitable collapse of the world they have given rise to, anticipating its demise. For when all its ruins, and not a soul remains to draw breath, it is time to begin anew.

Hopefully, that little foray into my imagined world stoked your interest. I sincerely hope to write stories set in this universe one day—perhaps many! But, to the main point: what does this have to do with simulation? It’s simple: why wouldn’t God simulate our entire universe? If he’s omniscient, and if He desires to have a perfect relationship with His creation, why wouldn’t he create many different iterations of said creation? Why wouldn’t He adjusting the parameters of each ever so slightly to maximize that chance that He’d arrive at the desired outcome?

Imagine a situation where we are not only the universe in existence. It shouldn’t be too hard—if God created our universe as effortlessly as He did, couldn’t He created many more? Perhaps infinitely more! Maybe each of these universe is slightly different, because God wishes to see how each one turns out compared to the others. We’re doing a pretty rotten job of things, I think you’d agree. Maybe they’re doing much better over in Universe 2-B. (Let’s face it: they almost certainly are.)

It’s a bit like the situation in the series Miracle Workers, with Daniel Radcliffe. Not a great series—I don’t really recommend it—but the concept of God being one of a family of gods, each personally responsible for their own pet universes, is an interesting one. In this series, God (played by Steve Buscemi) is a negligent, hapless fellow who’s made a mess of his world—our Earth—and wallows in self-pity, scorned by his siblings whose own worlds are far more successful. Why couldn’t our God—the real, Christian God—be up to something similar, given His infinite power and wisdom? Why couldn’t He have created many universes, each different in its own way, and be sustaining and interacting with each of these just the same as He does our own?

None of this is to say that God doesn’t love us here in our universe. Love is an infinite resource. No matter how many children a person has, they retain the capacity to love each and every one of their children. The depths of love are boundless; if you draw deep, you’ll always be amazed at what you can muster up. If God really is as great as Christians think He is, I believe He’d have the capacity to love us perfectly as well as an infinite number of other Creations, disparate as they might be from one another.

I mean, that’s really what it’s all about at the end of the day. Love. That really is what I think the universe is for. There’s only one God—not five, like in my story—so if He’s going to love anybody else, it’s got to be us. And if He’s the ultimately arbiter of all reality (just as any God should be) then aren’t we, by design, living in His simulation?

A simulation of love, it turns out. But we needn’t think of this simulation as being less than real. It’s more like we’re in a process of debugging the simulation—smoothening out all the bumps that make living in a world of perfect love impossible, so that on the other side, we can enjoy what we were originally created for.

And when the simulation’s over, that’s when the real love can begin.

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Why, you ask? Well, let’s go through the list systematically and assess all the possibilities, starting with a traditional burial.

To be interred forever within the Earth itself is all well and good; there’s a certain humility to the idea of returning to the dirt from whence you came. Very grounded, no doubt about it. But it’s a bit basic, isn’t it? And hardly anybody comes up with an epitaph worth reading. You know what I mean: you find yourself in a cemetery for somebody’s funeral (hopefully not someone close to you), and inevitably you end up looking around the places, examining the other graves, wondering who all these people were, where they came from, what led them to end their earthly existences here, of all places. You check the dates on the headstones and possibly remark to someone about the rather ostentatious ones, or the mournfully neglected ones. In either case, it gets you to think about memento mori for about an hour or so, but before you know it, you’re back to the daily grind. See what I’m saying? It’s not got quite the sort of long-lasting impact I’m looking for—a psychological one, I suppose, if not an emotional one.

Then there’s cremation. That’s a bit more flamboyant. Some real pizzazz going on there, using your corporeal remains to create some sort of fireworks display for your loved ones to enjoy. It’s got appeal, don’t get me wrong, but I really can’t get into the idea of urns. Creepy, to my mind, having somebody’s ashes just hanging around on top of your fireplace mantle. And it’s just a disaster waiting to happen if you’ve a cat in the house. Those little bastards just can’t help themselves when it comes to ledges and precariously positioned objects.

Burial at sea? Well, now we’re talking. To have my ghost wandering the darkest depths of the world’s oceans as opposed to some crummy graveyard next to the shopping center? That’s a dignified sort of haunting, to my imagination. Davy Jones’ locker is a place far removed from the human realm, and I’m all about exploring worlds hitherto unknown and unplumbed.

But a black hole—I mean, that’s really on another level, isn’t it? That’s a Space Viking funeral, right there. No fire arrows, I know—what with there being no oxygen in space—but the visuals would be out of this world all the same. The blazing light of the accretion disk juxtaposed with the incomparable darkness of the void? The image of the casket slowing as it approached the event horizon, then appearing to freeze as if trapped in eternity…only to fade from view, as if never having existed? Tell me you’re not tingling at the idea.

Sure, it’s a ridiculous notion. The closest known black hole is about 1,600 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have the means to fund any sort of newfangled interstellar funerary rite. What would even be the point—I’m dead aren’t I? Chalk it up to poetic sentiment. I don’t want to go out with a bang or a whimper. I want it to be ontologically debatable whether I went ‘out’ at all.

See, there’s a lot we don’t understand about black holes. What exactly is happening beyond the event horizon—that ultimate terminus beyond which no information can be gleaned? How can naturally occurring phenomena appear to break the very same physical laws that give rise to them? And most interestingly: where does all that stuff that falls into them actually go?

A lot of scientists would say something along the lines of: ‘The question makes no sense.’ Space and time break down and become a muddled, indiscernible soup when we approach the heart of a black hole—the ill-understood ‘singularity’. This infinitely small point of infinitely dense space-time defies our best understandings of how the universe ought to function. Whatever’s happening in there, however, we can’t assume that it’s any kind of timey-wimey space sorcery. It still has to make sense with what we know, and we know that the universe is a place of rules. You can’t just delete matter out of the universe; even if it falls into a black hole, it still exists in some form. That matter is just caught in this process of infinite collapse, ever receding from our physical frame of reference, but never truly gone. Our best scientific minds continue to grapple with just how all of this works.

But then, there are those who think a little bit more outside the box—or, outside the universe, I should say. They would say that, following along with the idea that the universe is a place with rules and structure, it doesn’t really make sense that this supposed ‘infinite collapse’ of the singularity might exist in such a localized way. In fact, we don’t really know if singularities exist at all. If they don’t, maybe a model of black holes that makes more sense is one that does, in fact, have an exit point. All that light and all that matter that falls in has to go somewhere (speculative though this idea may be). Insofar as that place is a place at all, it’s decidedly not here, that’s for sure.

But if not here, then where?

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Alternative artwork by Kilian Eng created for Disney’s 1979 film The Black Hole.

The call of the void

I will confess to being a huge, massive, irredeemable nerd. That much you’ve likely worked out on your own, if you’re at all familiar with what I’ve been up to here on the ‘Stack. Look, what can I say? I loved video games from an early age. I made my own comic books as a kid. I wrote high fantasy novels as a teen. I developed a keen appreciation for role-playing games in my 20’s. But none of these things, much as I love them, would I describe as ‘obsessions’. Not even reading sci-fi novels, which might be hard for any of my Sci-Friday brethren to hear. They were—are—merely passions. Truly, there is only one nerdy thing that I can say has gone far beyond a mere diversion, pastime, or hobby, and degenerated into full-scale addiction.

That thing is Magic: The Gathering.

I told myself it would never come to this. Years ago, before I’d even held a booster pack in my hands and felt the all-too satisfying crinkle of the foil package between my fingers, I’d dared to scorn those nerds who spent their Friday evenings heading to their local game stores to get in a couple of matches, or even those who just played around a kitchen table with friends. I perceived—rather foolishly, I might add—that this was a level of nerd-dom which was just a bit too nerdy, even for me.

That all changed when I moved abroad and made some new friends. Hardcore types—the kinds of nerds who paint their own Warhammer figurines. These guys were on a whole ‘nother level. Poor, innocent me, I was not prepared. All it takes to get a guy off the smokes and onto the hard stuff is a bad influence or two. This dangerous crowd of enablers invited me along to a draft night (where players crack packs and select a card before passing the pack along to repeat the process, thereby constructing a deck), and that was it. I was hooked. Doomed, more like.

I can’t tell you how much money I’ve spent on little pieces of cardboard since that time—I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Magic is a yawning, insatiable chasm. You keep tossing funds in, hoping to sate the beast’s hunger, yet it only grows stronger. You lose all control. Whoops, where’d my paycheck go? There it is; you tossed it into the monster’s gaping maw in return for limited edition Secret Lairs and Commander Pre-cons.*

For our purposes here, let it be enough to say that Magic is a card game unlike any other. It is, reputedly, the most complicated game on the planet, but that’s not the accolade it ought to be known by. It should be known as a moneysink, a timesink, a destroyer-of-relationships. Are you married, engaged, or have a long-term commitment to a romantic partner? Stay far, far away. Once you cross the event horizon of this black hole, there is no escape.

That was your disclaimer, right there. Caveat lector.

Now, if you’re wondering what any of this has to do with wormholes or a certain Biblical story about stone pillows and angels sliding down banisters, I’ll tell you: the latest Magic: The Gathering set is really cool. Like, super cool. So cool that reading about it might titillate you enough to consider picking up a few packs and trying the game out for yourself, to which I can only say… Yeah, dude. Join the party!

See, for the first time in their history, the creators of Magic—a company called Wizards of the Coast—set their game in a sci-fi universe. (In case you didn’t know, each Magic expansion set has its own built-in narrative, though you don’t need to know about it to play the game or engage with the cards.) Magic sets often introduce new and exciting worlds and characters to keep the playerbase interested. These worlds, varied as they are, have always fit into the ‘sword and sorcery’ motif—that is, until the Edge of Eternities set released earlier this month. Magic’s first sci-fi themed set was set in deep space, at the very edge of the known universe. It’s this world—a world of starfighters and uncharted planets and alien species and FTL travel—where a truly fascinating story takes place, with at least one really, really cool sci-fi concept.

I’ll skip the gritty details and focus in on the idea that struck me most: black holes as objects of worship. Or, not even objects of worship in themselves, but gateways to the divine. Pathways that only the bravest, most devout souls dare tread in order to meet their maker.

Forgive me if that concept has cropped up elsewhere in science fiction stories that you may know of. To me, finding it here, in the auxiliary narrative to a card game of all places, the idea is truly novel. In the Sothera system, where the Edge of Eternities expansion is set, a holy war is being waged between rival factions of a splintering religion—the Monoists and the Summists—clash for dominance and influence across the vast regions of space. The ideology of the Monoists is what we’re curious about here; they’re portrayed as the bad guys in the story. I suppose that’s fair enough, considering they purposely caused the star at the center of Sothera to collapse into a supermassive black hole, never mind the various inhabited planets orbiting said star. But we can quibble about the validity of their methods at another juncture. The point I’m most interested in examining is the motivation for these admittedly extreme actions. Why might it be that thinking, feeling, conscious beings such as you or I would actually want all the stars in the universe to end up as black holes? Why might they view it as their sacred duty to hasten the Heat-Death of the universe?

The answer lies in what the Monoists believe about the nature of their god—an all-powerful, omniscient being who calls to them from beyond the void. This god is not evil or malign in the minds of its worshippers; on the contrary, the god of the Monoists desires harmony between all creatures of heaven and Earth. And what sort of harmony do we see in this universe of pain and suffering and toil and torment? None. This is why the Monoists seek to bring about the collapse of all manmade and natural structures into the one true unity of the singularity: only in the heart of a black hole can a pathway to perfection be discovered. So resolute is the Monoists’ faith that falling into a black hole is regarded as the greatest honor one can receive. Without question, the particles that make up the fallers’ bodies will be torn asunder, their very consciousnesses scattered across the unknowable reaches of the cosmos—but who it is that exists both without and beyond? Only God. A true Monoist would be overjoyed at the chance to meet their maker and be welcomed into the promised Next Eternity.

Here’s what I find fascinating about this idea: if I want to meet God, is jumping into a black hole the only thing I need to do? That’s what the Monoists religion teaches, in essence. Could the same hold true, bizarrely, in our own universe? We’re certainly entering into some wildly speculative territory here, but that’s what we pneumanauts do—we follow a crazy idea through to see where it may lead, strange as it might seem.

I’ll come right out of the gate and say that there’s absolutely no reason to believe that jumping into black holes does anything other than kill you dead. And, if we’re being really serious about it, we of course know that we have no real hope of actually reaching one anytime soon, as I mentioned earlier. So why bother with entertaining such an insane proposition? Chiefly, because it’s fun. I mean, black holes exist at the very limit of what we can possibly know and experience—if we ever venture beyond them, we’re bound to discover something truly astounding! Just imagining the possibilities gets my head spinning. But also, I’ve been grappling with enough real science (and theology) to make me think that maybe, just maybe, there might be something to this idea. Why couldn’t God’s dwelling place be just beyond our experiential horizon? Let’s dive in together and see where we end up!

Water flowing into a leaky tub

If we’re going to be at least halfway sensible about this, we have to address the fact that there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that there are no worlds beyond our own. This universe might well be all there is. All that stuff that ‘disappears’ into black holes is really just hidden from view, like the rabbit sitting in the magician’s hat, waiting to be pulled out. In such a universe, there’s no reason to assume that God is ‘outside’ of anything, because the ‘inside’ is all there is.

Okay, well, is there any way the rabbit can get pulled out so we can see it again? It’d be a bummer of a magic trick otherwise.

It sure would. Thank goodness that famed physicist Stephen Hawking was able to show—at least theoretically—that it can be done. ‘Hawking radiation’ is the name given to the very peculiar type of thermal energy emitted by black holes which causes them to evaporate over time. We don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty details here of how all this is possible, since that’s not our objective, but we can note the implications: whatever matter falls into a black hole adds to the mass of the hole, but over time, that mass will be lost as a result of Hawking radiation, thereby cancelling the mass-energy differential out. The laws of nature are strict accountants; in the long run, the books always have to be balanced.

If you’re not quite following, that’s fine—the point is that, if these physics are all accurate, then there’s no reason to think that black holes go anywhere. Everything that vanishes beyond the event horizon is ostensibly deleted from the universe (though physicists are still trying to figure out just how so), yet at the same time, the act of said deletion ‘pays back’ the outside universe in a way that renders the exchange meaningless. The universe, in totality, is unchanged. There aren’t any holes to plug. All that exists is contained in an airtight, all-encompassing universe of absolute oneness.

So, if we want, we can stop our investigation right here. There’s plenty of reason to assume that the best model of the universe is the one I’ve just described—a complete uni-verse. None of those multi-verse shenanigans to worry about. A person searching for God’s hiding place in this insular universe wouldn’t consider there being anything at all beyond what we can see or perceive. Or, if they’re open to taking a bit of a leap of faith, they might be satisfied with imagining that God still exists outside the bubble, I suppose like a person standing outside a fishbowl and stooping to examine all the fish swimming about. I mean, if He’s God, why not? Perhaps His actions throughout history (and even now) were simply him dipping His fingers into the bowl and stirring up the water a little bit, much to the amazement of the fish.

I don’t want to discount any of these ideas, as they’re perfectly valid. Even I haven’t quite made up my mind about which I think is ‘true’—as if I could ever hope to discern such fundamental truths of the universe, hairless ape that I am. Rather, what I want to explore is another possibility altogether, which opens up entirely new avenues of thought: what if the universe in which we live isn’t a bubble or a bowl, but a leaky tub?

Imagine an actual tub, if you will. This tub is the universe that you and I inhabit. Somebody—let’s say God—turns on the taps and pours in water. That water is matter (including you and me), dark matter, dark energy—all the things we can verify to exist, even if we don’t understand much about their exact natures. And so, the tub begins to fill. Galaxies are born. Stars and planets form. It’s the complete beauty of creation, all contained inside a porcelain shell.

But, oh dear—we’ve forgotten about the drain. What is the drain in this analogy we’ve created for ourselves? The water collects in the tub, and that’s lovely, but then it pours down the drain. It travels through the pipes beneath the tub, vanishing from sight. No water that swirls down the drain can ever be recovered.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

The drain is a black hole, of course! It is the point of no return, the escape valve for all that is and ever will be. All that water will eventually pass through it, given enough time. Then the question becomes: where did it go?

Now, this might be stretching the analogy past the breaking point, but let’s imagine that this tub of ours exists on the fourteenth floor of a very tall apartment block. Let’s also imagine—you’re about to see that I’m not a plumber and have no idea how water recycling works—that the water that passes through the drain of our tub and enters the pipes below travels down to the thirteenth floor of the building, where there is another bathroom, another tap, another tub. Somebody there open up the tap as well (maybe God ran down the stairs really fast) and whoosh! Water-matter-energy is pouring out into a new, empty tub. The inhabitants of this tub—individual water molecules, I suppose?—are completely unable to perceive anything other than their own tub. They have no idea that theirs is one tub of many, sitting downstream from another, which itself is presumably downstream from another, and another, and another, and another ad nauseam.

But just imagine: if some keen molecule were somehow able to climb back up through the tap and follow the pipes all the way back to their source…would this be where God resides? Some sort of water treatment facility at the very pinnacle of an apartment building with disastrously impractical plumbing?

I suppose I overdid it there with my analogy, so please allow me to clarify. There is an alternative theory to the closed system preferred by Hawking and mainstream physicists; it is an interpretation of the inner workings of black holes which allows for an open-ended universe where black holes act as gateways to other, ‘baby’ universes. All the matter, energy and so forth that falls into the black hole in the parent universe ends up spilling out into the baby. In simple terms, so dramatic is the warping of time and space at the heart of the black hole that it allows for a non-causally connected universe to take form, which it then goes on to seed with material swallowed from its own universe. These newborn universes, though they owe their existence to their parents, are ‘pinched off’ from birth, effectively having their umbilical cords severed the moment they come into existence. All that they are or ever will be is set from the very beginning—much like the Big Bang of our universe. Time is relative, we must remember, and more or less ceases to have any meaning whatsoever as we approach the singularity, where this birthing may indeed occur. From the newborn baby’s point of view, there is no black hole at all, but an explosion of energy emanating all at once, from everywhere at once, just like what occurred at the inception of our universe. This ‘white hole’, as it’s called, is the inversion of everything falling in on one side, then being expelled on the other.

Let’s try and bring it all together, if we can. Maybe smashing all these metaphors and analogies into one jumble will help, like when you can’t get your car’s ignition to work so you just keep punching the dashboard until something goes vroom.

In the parent universe, the black hole is the drain; in the baby universe, the white hole is the tap. The entire system taken as a whole—drain, pipe and tap—we here in the real world would call a wormhole. Wormholes could be the threads linking our open-ended universe to countless others we’ve spawned. And our universe could be downstream from its own parent, healthily delivered at the dawn of time. Our time, that is. There’s no way to know what time or space or anything might look like in that universe. It truly is another world, if indeed it does exist, just as all the baby universes spawned from black holes in our own universe are beyond our reach. That is, unless we discover a way to ride the warp and emerge on the other side intact…

Climbing the ladder

Now, we don’t actually know if wormholes exist. They might not even be necessary for this entire system to work, since the core idea of wormholes is that they’re traversable—things go through one end and arrive at the other. Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, a prominent purveyor of cosmological natural selection, as this theory is sometimes known, doesn’t actually see the need for wormholes whatsoever for the model to work. But again, we want to stick with the idea that they do because it keeps the most doors open, many of which are bound to lead to fascinating places. We’re searching for God, after all. Where does he reside? Is heaven a place we could actually reach, if we just jumped through enough black holes—or, harder yet, figured out how to go backwards through a wormhole?

Let me first illustrate why we’re not likely to find God if we keep heading downstream. We’ve no shortage of black holes in our own universe to try jumping in—astronomers estimate there may be as many as 100 million stellar black holes in the Milky Way alone. We learned recently that supermassive black holes exist at the heart of virtually every galaxy, and it’s estimated that there are anywhere between 100 billion to 2 trillion in the observable universe. So, we’re spoiled for choice. This issue is that these black holes, if they do indeed lead to alternate universes, only remove us further away from the source. We’re following the turtles down when we want to be going up.

Smolin’s theory of cosmological Darwinism is basically the idea that the multiverse is made up of countless parent and child universes, each with various sets of physics and configurations of matter and so on. The reason why our universe appears ‘fine-tuned’—as in, so uniquely stable and habitable—is that it’s likely the product of 'a sort of natural selection. Universes with properties conducive to spawning more universes are likely to do just that. The masses of certain particles, for instance, are perfect for supporting the delicately balanced physical systems of our universe that allow for nice things like stars, orbits and whatnot. A universe that’s too unstable to produce stars isn’t very likely to produce black holes, which means it isn’t likely to propagate itself—at least, not by any means we can readily understand.

So, if we were to enter a black hole, it would lead us to a new universe, sure, but it mightn’t be all that different from our own. It wouldn’t be any closer to God, is what I mean, if He’s to be found out there at all. But let’s not abandon the idea yet, because if we look in the other direction, the implications are profound.

If the inception of our universe was indeed the product of cosmological Darwinism, then that would mean there’s another universe out there, existing on some higher plane, to which we owe our entire existence. Like that plucky water molecule I imagined earlier, if we could somehow reverse time and go back through the wormhole that spawned us, we’d be one level closer to Where It All Began—in theory, at least. Could it be parent universes all the way up, instead of turtles all the way down? I suppose it’s the same conundrum; what set the first universe into motion, defined its properties, gave it its dimensions and values—a universe that went on to fruitfully multiply throughout eternity? Doesn’t this model of an infinitely cascading multiverse still need an Unmoved Mover to stand at the very beginning of all and set the dominoes falling, one black hole into another?

We may never know. In fact, we probably will never know, because traversing a wormhole—if they even exist—is practically impossible, as I believe I’ve mentioned. And yet, perhaps we have one last opportunity available to us. It’s the most speculative one yet, but it’s got some real poetry, too. Einstein himself often talked about the aesthetic beauty in his equations. Sometimes the truest things are the most beautiful ones.

I’m going to bring in one last sci-fi story to help illustrate my thinking. Are you familiar with the novel The Black Hole by Alan Dean Foster? It’s the novel I’m specifically interested in—not the Disney movie, if that’s what you’re thinking of. The novel expands on the movie significantly (with much improvement, in my view.) The ending, in particular, is evocative and mesmerizing.

For those unfamiliar, the basic story is that in the far future, the crew of a wayfaring spacecraft responds to the distress signal of a long-lost ship orbiting a black hole. They board the craft, bad things happen, and by the end of the story find themselves drifting across the black hole’s event horizon. (Sorry—spoilers ahead.) The movie shows the heroes escaping certain doom, the villain being consumed by oblivion, and a sort of happily ever after ending. Nothing to write home about. But the novel! Holy cow. In the novel, the heroes do not escape the grip of the black hole. How could they—that’s literally what black holes are known for! Instead, they plunge into its depths and bravely face their destinies. They might have expected death, but something altogether stranger and more wonderful occurs. Their bodies are destroyed, of course, but their consciousnesses become released, you might say—unbound from the confines of space and time. What is more is that their consciousnesses meld into one; their individualities merge into a greater, transcendent state of being. The story ends with them becoming aware of themselves in their new form. The entirety of the universe sprawls out before them—they can behold it all at once, turning it over in their shared mind as if it were nothing more than an idea. They have truly ascended, not unlike the future humans of Interstellar, to throw another sci-fi movie at you.**

Is that what God is to us? Are we His dream, held in His mind? All of us, all our child universes, and all our parental universes, just the descendants of a figment of a superior imagination? Would that mean, then, if we are to be reunited with our Creator in heaven, as Christianity and many other faiths would have it, we must only shed our bodies and be ‘released’? Is it our consciousnesses that hold the essence of us—the integral component of every human being that transcends the material? And, perhaps most fascinating of all, is there a way we can accomplish this ascension right here, in this universe we share, without needing to die first? My goodness—is that what true resurrection is like?

I don’t know, but I think these are very cool questions to think about. Practical? Almost certainly not. But very cool nonetheless.

I’ll leave you to ponder them further with this last idea. You might have noticed that my title reflects the Biblical story of Jacob, who, in ancient times, lay down for a nap using a stone for a pillow and had an incredible vision. He saw heaven open up, and a stairway connecting it to Earth. Angels were ascending and descending these stairs, praising the name of God. God Himself sat on his throne at the very height of these steps, radiating His glory for all Creation to see.

If you’re like me, and your method of interpreting old Scriptures is to look at them as inspired myths containing timeless, profound truths, while also holding that there’s likely to be some historical element which is rooted in mundanity, you might have thought that Jacob—if he really lived and walked the Earth—was experiencing nothing more than a fatigue-induced hallucination here. It is referred to as a ‘dream’ in the text, after all. A fever dream of some kind, surely. But what if Jacob’s ladder is a little bit more? What if Jacob’s consciousness was ‘unbound’ from his corporeal limitations and allowed to bear witness to the ladder (albeit in metaphorical form, rendered intelligible through the cultural lens of a Bronze Age man) that spans all of Creation? A ladder that connects every universe, parent and child, at every level and every plane of existence? What if every step on those stairs was a universe in itself, and God were unveiling the true order of All That Is to a man who could scarcely comprehend it (not that I’d do much better, in his situation)?

The point that God seems to be making is that He reigns over all, is sovereign over all. I’m sure that stirred up some consternation of poor Jacob, as it does in us all these years later. But if we believe that God is also a Good Father—a father of universes with useful, productive attributes—then perhaps we can lay our heads back down on our rocks and rest somewhat easier knowing we’re held in capable, loving hands. Perhaps we can take some comfort knowing that when we shuffle off this mortal coil, there is more to discover beyond the impenetrable darkness after all.

*Is all this gobbledygook to you? Good. Make sure it stays that way. You’re better off saving your money. Invest in a new kitchen, or something.

**Actually, come to think of it, The Black Hole shares a lot of narrative themes and sci-fi conceits with Interstellar. Gosh, that’s interesting—I’ll have to write something about that sometime!

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Anyway, last summer I finally got around to playing a video game called ‘The Outer Wilds’—not to be confused with The Outer Worlds—and, I must report, I was wholly and utterly changed. So complete was my transformation that I scarcely resemble the person I once was. (Am I being facetious? Of course I am! But if you’d indulge me, I think you’ll find that there is indeed something wondrous to be found here.) I feel obliged to catalogue this experience, in the hopes that others might also discover for themselves the magnificence of this humble little video game, as I have done.

So, this isn’t a game review or a player’s guide. This is a pneumanautic exploration—an earnest hunt for hidden truths and deeper meanings in the unlikeliest of places. The territory we map is mythological, but we know that myths—whether they appear in books, movies, music or what have you—have incredible power to awaken us, to alert us to the hidden parts of ourselves that yearn for…what, exactly? Truth? Love? Beauty? Why is it that words on a page or pixels on a screen, when stitched together in just the right pattern, evoke such awe-inspiring responses within us?

A pneumanaut does not know. But a pneumanaut trusts that there is merit in the seeking. Most of all, a pneumanaut hopes that the seeker, by some higher will or power, will be rewarded in the endeavor. And so they seek, hurtling headlong into the depths of eternity…

A desperate plea

There are two kinds of people living in the world today: those who have played The Outer Wilds, and those who haven’t.

People in the first group are, as you might expect, perfectly happy having not played the game nor, perhaps, having never even heard of it. Members of this group are altogether lovely and deserving of care and respect. But they should also be pitied. As once-in-a-lifetime experiences go, they’re missing out on at least one—and it’s a doozy.

As for those who’ve played The Outer Wilds through to the end… Well, if you know, you know. Members of this group are forever changed. They’ll never be able to go back to the people they once were. Do their lives continue on? Sure. Will they ever again experience the depths of wonder and amazement as they once did, playing this game and uncovering its many mysteries? Likely as not.

To play The Outer Wilds is to immerse oneself in the sublime majesty of the unknowable cosmos. To complete it is to know the bittersweet taste of a grand adventure now concluded, and the impending return to mundanity. It is the thrill of cracking open the ancient sorcerer’s puzzle-box, or solving the great sphinx’s riddle told at the end of time—once these feelings have passed, they cannot ever be recovered. There are no more secrets to reveal. One must now learn to live with the answers.

You might be thinking to yourself: steady on there, mate. Isn’t this just a video game you’re yammering on about?

To that, I must ask you: is the Mona Lisa ‘just’ a painting? Is the Sistine Chapel ‘just’ a building? Or have these great works somehow taken on a quality, ineffable as it might be, that transforms them into something greater, something True—even if in nothing else than our collective imaginations?

I would contend that they have. Some things transcend their material forms and become more than whatever they were created to be. Oil spread across a canvas, bricks stacked on top of each other—these artifices can become legends. They can become timeless. They can mean something. What exactly they mean may differ from person to person. But in our collective unconscious as a species, they can come to represent our deepest desires, our highest ideals, our greatest fears. Their psychic resonance is tremendous; they electrify the imagination and set the human heart racing.

What is it that grants them this power, and why these works in particular? Furthermore, is this power limited to the mediums where we might traditionally expect to find them—art, sculpture, literary epic? Could the new mediums of our current age—the artforms of the digital era, encoded in machine language—ascend to the same heights, set fire to our human souls in the same manner as their predecessors do?

Verily I say unto thee, The Outer Wilds is not just a game. This assertion I hope to impress upon you, because I believe that, in time, when our culture reappraises video games and comes to esteem them as an artistic medium on par with novels, film and otherwise (which I hold to be inevitable), people will look back upon all those games which came before and ask themselves, ‘Which shall be canon?’ Where are the Shakespeares, the Voltaires, the McCarthys, the Brontë sisters of gaming? The industry may still be in its adolescence—indeed, it may be awash with maladjusted nerdbros and oil-slick sleek executives chasing that almighty dollar—but our descendants shall look all the same, and they shall find The Outer Wilds. The knowledge that we blessed few living today—the players, the fans, the ‘Wildlings’, if you will (gosh, I hope I coin that term)—have acquired in this inglorious age will be eventually disseminated among the populace. It’s fate. It’s destiny.

But why, you ask? What is it about this one game that makes it so incredibly unique? Is it the design? The mechanics? The aesthetic? The writing? The humor? The novelty? The musical score? The fun factor? The budget-friendly price tag?

Yes to all of the above. And yet, none of them truly matter—not to me, at least. I’ve played many video games that have excelled in any and all of these areas. Yet vanishingly few have done so much as to change me; change the way I see the world.

Dare I say it? No video game has ever shown me the face of God.

I am aware that I am speaking about this issue with all the vociferous bluster of a mad street preacher. Well, so be it! So be it! If that is what it takes to stir the masses from their slumber of callous indifference, then I shall bark and bray like a wild animal to see them woken! This treasure is too precious for me to covet for myself—I must speak of it, sing of it, shout to the heavens of it to any and all who will listen.

Here is the essence of my pleas: if you are human—if you possess a human soul, the spirit of life and beauty and all that is good—you should play The Outer Wilds. It doesn’t matter if you have never played a video game in your life. It doesn’t matter your age, race, sexuality or gender. You are a human being. You deserve to have this experience. You should be inducted into the cult—the family—of Those Who Know, because it is where you belong. We are waiting for you with open arms, loving you at a distance. We will never be complete without you.

So, what are you doing? Waiting for me to quit proselytizing so you can find just what the heck I’ve been smoking? You will know soon enough. But be warned, dear reader. This is a point of no return. Below I will divulge the most cherished secrets of The Outer Wilds. These jewels, once beheld, will forever emblazon their mark upon the memory like a brand. This is a game you can only play once. It is a game of discovery, of mapping uncharted waters, of delving into the great unknown. Picture a mountain climber: they do not ask for the hand of another to deliver them safely, effortlessly to the summit. They climb, for the purpose is in the journey itself, not the destination.

In writing what I am about to write, I am breaking a sacred bond—depriving you, the uninitiated, of the opportunity to be properly inducted into the fold. I am shepherding you when you ought to wander the wilderness alone, to hunt and kill and complete your rite of passage by your own cunning. And yet, I am powerless to stop myself. I must write of what I have found for fear I shall otherwise go mad. I shall commit these forbidden keystrokes to digital paper to soothe the ever-burning fire within my mind.

I, the Pneumanaut, have glimpsed something real—something True. And I found it in the conclusion of a silly little video game called The Outer Wilds.

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Cover for the digital art book produced by Mobius Digital Games, 2019.

Only 22 minutes to save the world

The Outer Wilds begins with a celebration. On a small planet in a remote corner of an unknown galaxy, a newly minted astronaut is set to take to the skies for the first time in their career.

You, the player, are this astronaut. You are not human, for this planet is not Earth. You are a Hearthian; this world is Timber Hearth, your home.

The Hearthians are a curious little alien species. In the game’s opening moment, you are introduced to a fair few members of your community. They’re a lovable, bumbling bunch. It’s soon established that, despite your credentials as a trained astronaut, the Hearthians are hardly accomplished spacefarers. This civilization is only at the very beginning of their Space Age; a handful of Hearthian explorers have ventured out into the stars before you, but none have returned. No one is quite sure what has happened to them. The fact that your spaceships are all made from wood and canvas—and consequently highly flammable—might have been a factor.

Note: The Outer Wilds eschews scientific realism in favor of a homely, Boy Scout camper aesthetic. It’s an unusual choice, but quite endearing. The planets you explore are hardly planet-sized; they’re miniatures, circumnavigable in a matter of minutes. The entire solar system (which serves as your playground for the duration of the game, bar the ending) is traversable in 2-3 real-world minutes. It’s a smart choice by the developers, as outer space is so incomprehensibly vast that to try and make a space exploration game ultra-realistic would likely render it mind-numbingly boring (see: Bethesda’s Starfield) on account of the insufferably long commute times. So, in this respect, one is required to suspend one’s disbelief.

Yet this is by the by—in all other areas, the game takes its science very seriously. The physics are impressively realistic, as flying your spacecraft is a challenge in itself. You have to account for acceleration and deceleration in a zero-gravity environment when flying through interplanetary space, but also adjust to the effects of the various planets’ gravity wells once you come within proximity. I’m embarrassed to think of how many times I lost control of my vessel and plunged straight into the sun…

But back to the Hearthians. Here you are, the newest graduate of the Outer Wilds Ventures space program. You have your ship and clearance to launch. Where will you go? What will you do once you get up above the atmosphere? That’s up to you, the player! Perhaps you’ll start searching for your missing compatriots in earnest. Perhaps you’ll just muck about with the (seemingly) janky controls and see if you can’t figure out how to land on Timber Hearth’s lone moon. In any case, it’s time to suit up. You board your ship and blast off. You rise, witnessing the geysers of your homeworld jettison frothing water into space.

Then, you are in space, catching your first glimpse of the starry pitch. Everything is silent, save for the hiss of your thrusters.

You float around for a little while. You try not to crash back down to the planet you just left beneath you. You move a little to the right, and a little to the left. Maybe you spot one of your neighbouring planets, drifting in the darkness. You might say to yourself, ‘Hey—I think I can reach there.’

22 minutes later, the sun explodes.

A blinding light and a roaring thunder consume you and your little spacecraft. You are promptly annihilated, as is your home planet, as are all the planets in the solar system. Your sun has just gone supernova. You and everyone you know are now dead, your entire world reduced to ash in the blink of an eye.

Then, you blink. Your whole life flashes before you, in reverse. You see everything that’s happened—the flash, the awkward flight, the launch, the friendly faces cheering you on, your first glimpse of the sky above as you wake.

You wake.

Wait a minute—you wake! Just the same as you did at the start of the game, 22 minutes ago. You’re right back where you were before, here on Timber Hearth, surrounded by little blue-skinned, four-eyed aliens, who are—including yourself, you believe—decidedly not vaporized. What’s happened?

Now the real mystery begins.

It doesn’t take long for you to realize that you’re stuck in a time loop. This is a core mechanic of the game—every 22 minutes, the sun explodes, destroying everything and resetting your progress. Only your memories of the previous, now failed, expedition remain. Your memories, and those of your little blue alien astronaut protagonist. For some reason, you’re aware of the fact that this loop exists, though no one else is. They greet you each morning with the same enthusiasm, none the wiser to the fact that you have already launched thirteen times. You, in turn, are none the wiser as to what on Timber Hearth is going on.

But if you stick with it, you’ll soon begin to uncover some clues.

Treading the paths of giants

Using your keen powers of investigation, you begin to piece together a story that predates you and your Hearthian brethren by millennia. You might find the first traces on Timber Hearth’s moon, where a derelict planetarium of unknown origin resides, whispering of as-yet undiscovered planets hidden beyond the cosmic horizon. It might be the great machines you discover protruding from the surface of the Hourglass Twins—a binary system of planets orbiting closest to your sun—which suggests that somewhere, somehow, something is drawing tremendous amounts of energy for unknown purposes. Whatever it is you discover first, you begin to understand that yours are not the first feet to tread upon these worlds. Someone has come before you, long before, and left their footprints for you to follow.

So, follow you do. I won’t discuss the exact path the player must tread in order to uncover the game’s many secrets—it would take far too long, and besides, our focus is on what lies at the very heart of this mystery. I will deliver only the information necessary to convey the gravity of the situation our poor Hearthians are in, and what the only solution available to them is—as well as what it will cost us, the little astronaut unfortunate (or fortunate?) enough to learn the truth.

The facts, then: long before the Hearthians evolved into the intelligent, fledgling spacefarers they are in the current time, their world was visited by an incredibly advanced civilization called the Nomai. These aliens possessed technologies so powerful that they were as gods, capable of traversing the incalculable distances between star systems and galaxies. Since time immemorial, they had journeyed across the stars, seeding new worlds to add to their interstellar network. They were a peaceful and scientific people, motivated by an intellectual desire to understand the universe in which they lived. It is for this reason that, when they detected the signal of the Eye of the Universe, they felt compelled to respond.

In all their wanderings, the Nomai had never encountered anything like the Eye. It simultaneously appeared to be both within and without the world—a physical entity with metaphysical properties. They could not readily explain it, but they felt confident that it was reaching out to them. It was beaming a signal out across the cosmos, seemingly intent upon drawing someone—anyone—who might hear its call to pursue it, and discover its location.

Driven by their curiosity as much as their concern for losing trace of this signal before they could pinpoint it, a ship from the Nomai flotilla which had intercepted it made a hasty, unilateral decision: while the leaders of the other ships dithered, they would act as a vanguard and make a hyperspace jump to the pinpointed location without waiting for approval. The others, they knew, would catch up with them eventually.

This would prove to be their undoing.

When their ship came out of the jump, they found themselves to have inexplicably warped into a kind of slipspace sub-dimension, which they had not anticipated. They lost control of their ship and crash-landed, destroying their capacity to communicate with the flotilla they’d left behind. They were now stranded on a strange world, cut off from their only means of rescue. At first, they thought they might be able to repair the ship—make it spaceworthy once more, and find their bearings. But it was not to be. This sub-dimension was populated by eerie, monstrous creatures that converged upon the intruders. There was no option but to abandon ship.

The Nomai survivors boarded their emergency escape vessels and attempted to flee the carcass of their mothership before the beasts could overwhelm them. Not all of them made it out. But two vessels were able to breach the sub-dimension and discover the means to return to proper, Euclidean space. Yet their expeditious retreat caused them to become separated from one another, and each ended up marooned on different planets within the same solar system—the same solar system where, millions of years in the future, a little blue alien would witness the sun would go supernova.

Each of the two groups of survivors set about assessing the damage and establishing a base of operations. Being resourceful and tenacious specimens, they found ways to utilize the environments of their respective planets to secure themselves. They had much to learn about these exotic worlds now hosting them, but they set themselves to the task with iron determination. Their bases gave way to research stations, which gave way to cities. Their populations expanded as new generations were born. These newcomers were educated, and would go on to make their own contributions to the struggle for survival.

Eventually, the situation became stable for the survivors. They were able to set themselves to higher tasks—was there a means of reconnecting with their lost peers? Or, the even greater prize: could they pick up the lost trail of the Eye, and reveal its true nature?

Making contact with the other group of survivors came first. Before long, the Nomai were able to achieve this. Elated to learn that there were others of their kind out there, making the best of things, the two groups resolved to work together toward the common goals of escaping their confinement and probing deeper into the mystery of the Eye’s signal.

They made steady progress at first. Massive research facilities and cutting-edge devices were constructed on the various celestial bodies of the solar system to aid their search. (These would be the ruins and remnants later stumbled upon by a certain intrepid Hearthian spacefarer). With time, an ambitious strategy emerged: the Nomai survivors would harness the power of a supernova to launch a deep-space probe at such speed that it could effectively travel back in time to the point where their flotilla had first detected the Eye’s signal, and thus trace it. Using a complicated process of quantum engineering, they could then liaise with the probe to pinpoint exactly where the Eye was in the vast expanse of the cosmos. Finally, because of their clever manipulations of quantum spacetime, they could fold time back over on itself after the event so that they could receive the coordinates before the sun—in their own timeline—ever exploded, thereby preserving their lives. They could, in effect, loop time back on itself to suit their ends.

Once in possession of the Eye’s coordinates, the only challenge remaining would be to reach it. A small thing, really—they knew the location of their wrecked mothership, which still had its warp drive aboard. They would need to retrieve it from the sub-dimension infested by ethereal space-monsters, but first things first: time to explode the sun.

The plan was set. The vectors were calculated. They fired up their machines…and they failed.

Try as they might, they could not generate enough power to detonate the sun. They reassessed and realized that it was beyond their capabilities to orchestrate a supernova. Instead, their only option was to wait until the sun reached the end of its life cycle and went supernova naturally—millions upon millions of years in the future. They had hit a brick wall.

Yet out of the black, a new opportunity emerged. Just as the Nomai were sinking into despair, a strange comet entered their solar system. Surface scans indicated that buried deep beneath its icy exterior was a strange energy source, the likes of which they had never seen before. A plucky group of explorers set off to investigate, hoping they might yet be able to complete their mission to locate the Eye.

They never returned.

A chain reaction was set off without warning. The strange material they encountered proved deadlier than they could have imagined; it wiped out all biological life in the entire system. In a matter of moments, these hardy survivors who had withstood so much adversity in pursuit of their goals were exterminated.

The planets were cold and silent—all save for Timber Hearth, where an aquatic species of axolotl-like creatures were insulated from the comet’s blast, nestled deep in the underground oceans of their world. These creatures, utterly unaware of all that had transpired just beyond their horizon, would go on to adapt and evolve.

One day, they would find their way out of the water and onto the land. Not long after, they would build a civilization.

And develop a space program.

The observer’s choice

Everything I have thus recorded describes the ancient events that you, the player, must piece together over the course of the game in order to understand what your true goal is. By following in the footsteps of the Nomai, you come to realize that, though they failed in their time, they have succeeded in yours. Their machines—designed to search for the Eye—have lain dormant for untold ages. But now that your sun has reached the end of its lifespan, they have come alive, just as they were always meant to. The Nomai’s plan works—it’s just that none of them are around to see it come to fruition. The task, then, trapped as you are in the time loop they engineered, is to find a way to finish what they started.

You begin to realize that there is nothing you can do to save your friends on Timber Hearth. The Nomai’s devices are designed to harness the power of a dying sun, not prevent its demise. You certainly don’t have the technological ability to do anything about it—you’ve only gotten this far by retracing the Nomai’s steps.

There is only one option available to you. If you can complete their plan—detonate the sun, retrieve the coordinates from the probe, locate the Eye and restore the warp drive aboard the mothership, all in the span of 22 minutes—you have a chance of doing the one thing the Nomai couldn’t. You might follow the signal of the Eye for yourself. You might learn just what it is, and what it wants.

So, this is what you do. You, the player, prepare yourself for the endgame. You complete all the necessary preparations and carry out all the critical tasks in succession. If you’re clever and quick and a tad lucky, you reach the mothership’s control panel in time to input the coordinates you’ve acquired and set it to launch. You press the button. You warp—light streams past in a blur of vivid colour, but only for an instant.

You drop out of hyperspace into a black, endless void. There is a shape in the distance, dark and foreboding. The Eye of the Universe. It thrums with untold power. Its precise nature is difficult to determine, because it appears shrouded—veiled by oscillating potentialities of what it is, what it may be. But it beckons you. You’ve come so far—you can’t stop now.

You realize you will have to enter the yawning pupil of this Eye. You will have to let it behold you.

So, this is exactly what you do. And what happens next will forever change you.

The end sequence of The Outer Wilds is equal parts mind-boggling, profound, and heartbreaking. I will not describe here everything that you experience upon entering the Eye (I have to save some goodies for those of you who may yet wish to play it for yourselves!) but I will share what your final act in the game is. It is here that the partition between the game world and the real one disintegrated. I was so fully immersed in my experience, so totally absorbed in the revelation, that I lost all sense of the fact that I was a flesh-and-blood human, sitting on my couch and staring at a screen. I understood almost immediately that what I was about to do meant something—not just to the protagonist I’d been piloting in the game, but to me, the player. This awareness was so tangible, I felt as if it was all real; that I and the little blue alien lost in eternity were indeed one and the same, each of us delving deeper into the secrets of the cosmos than we’d ever thought possible. We shared the realization that neither of us was alone in this search—there was a power, a force, a will that had been guiding us all along, ushering us to this fateful moment.

The moment when we were called to observe.

This was the choice put in front of us: to bring a new universe into being. The old one was dead. Upon entering the Eye, we had been granted a vision of all the stars winking out of existence—not just our own. The inevitable Heat-Death had come and consumed all. The Eye, being an eternal, extemporal entity, had known this would be the fate of the universe, and had sent out its signals to call forth one who might partner with it in establishing the next stage of creation. The Nomai had heeded it first, but had failed to deliver. Only we, the humble astronauts from a backwater planet, had answered the call. But we would do just fine.

Throughout The Outer Wilds, there is a theme of exploring the nature of quantum mechanics and what it means for the nature of reality as we perceive it. There are some genuinely astounding puzzles that the developers came up with that make use of quantum weirdness that I won’t spoil for you here. It was quite a feat, helping the uninitiated player come to grips with these real-world scientific concepts by mastering them in a video game. Here, at the game’s conclusion, the developers revealed their masterstroke: asking the player to ‘observe’ the unformed, indeterminate, quantum-state universe that would succeed that one we had just left behind.

In quantum mechanics, a particle cannot take on definitive qualities until it has come into contact with the external universe—or, in other words, has been perceived by one such as you or I. This is the marvel of the quantum realm that I wrote at length about previously, as I mentioned. Here in The Outer Wilds, this concept is used brilliantly to illustrate to the player how they themselves are directly involved in the creation of their own reality. The old universe has passed away, as I said; a new one must arise to take its place. But what shape will it take? What properties will it have? These questions cannot be answered until one with consciousness—a sentient being, either with two eyes or four—willfully looks and sees for themselves. This simple act of perceiving collapses the indeterminacy of the quantum entity and forces it to take on a particular form, a particular state.

It is akin to the creation of an entire universe—one that can only be brought into existence by the act of intentional, meaningful observation.

As this realization washed over me at the end of the game, I basked in its beauty for a good few moments. I did not press the ‘observe’ action button right away; I savored the timeless moment I found myself in for all it was worth. I understood that by pressing the button, whatever was left of the world—the raw consciousness of my alien friend, excised from time and space—would cease to exist in any shape or form. But the end of us would be the beginning of something new. It was tragic to have reached the terminus of our existence, but it was beautiful to facilitate the rebirth of existence itself. And what had invited us to participate in this process? The Eye. The unknowable, all-seeing Eye.

And then it hit me: I substituted the Eye for ‘God’, and my mind was shattered into a million pieces. Could it be? I thought to myself. Could this actually be what God does for us humans on Earth? Had this little video game about a goofy alien bumbling around in his wooden spaceship unlocked the secrets of our universe, as well as its own?

I’ve ruminated upon it thoroughly since, and I’ve come to believe there really is something to this notion. What if God, like the Eye, seeks to partner with us—sends out His signal, if you will—in the mutual act of universal Creation? Creation only makes sense if there is a Creator as well as a Creation; someone has to stand outside of it, giving it value, while others have to exist within it and be the objects of this value. If we hold that God values us and desires good for us, then it is so difficult to imagine that He invites us to participate in His great work by imbuing us with the ability—the consciousness—to see this Creation, and help to shape it? Would He not delight in watching us navigate this cosmic playground for ourselves, as a father delights in watching his children wander the sands at the beach? Furthermore, if He values us, would He not wish it that we had the freedom to engage with this Creation with some semblance of independence and self-sovereignty (just as the Eye cannot create the universe on its own, but requires an observer—an observer who, being a human being on a couch playing a video game, is under no compulsion to actually observe anything)?

And what about the end of Creation? When this is all over and we’ve been erased from the universe by the unstoppable march of time, won’t He speak to us still, and invite us to look at what He is doing as he makes the world anew? Isn’t this the promise we have as believers—that God is making a place for us in the next world, better than the last?

I thought about it a lot, and I’ve thought about it some more; I’ve had so many thoughts that I’ve just had to get them down here and share them with you. This is why I believe The Outer Wilds deserves the title of great art, regardless of what people might think about the medium of video games as a whole. If one exception should be made, let it be for this game. Like the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel, to observe them is to truly know their value. There is a strange, indomitable power in the act of observation. It is the mind, the soul, interacting with the divine. So, if you’ve not yet had the pleasure of ‘observing’ what this game offers, I hope that you will consider it. I believe you just might find something you didn’t even know you were looking for.

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At least I’ve had a bit of a warm-up already. Not too long ago, I was sitting in a beer garden across from my dad, doing my best to help him understand quantum mechanics. It was the first time in this series of interviews I’ve been conducting with him (regular readers will remember that each of my essays is based on a preliminary conversation with him, a learned evangelical pastor) where I was the one disseminating…well, not knowledge, exactly. Disseminating suppositions and suspicions and theorems with varying degrees of conviction, perhaps I could say? Anyway, I was very grateful to have him there, listening to me do my utter best to expound on the fundamental nature of existence, God, and the universe at large. These were ideas I’ve been carrying around for some time now, and the longer I’ve held onto them, the more vigorously they’ve been trying to burst out of my brain. In obliging me, you could say my dad was acting as a one-man focus group, sort of. I wanted to see how my ideas landed with him—if he, a well-read and inquisitive theologian with a career of pastoring under his belt, was picking up what I was putting down.

See, I’ve been on something of a transformative journey these past couple of decades. I’ve gone from a traditional, conservative Christian upbringing, fully immersed in evangelical church culture, to something…else. I’m not quite sure what, exactly. I’ve pruned away the rigid legalism that defined my early-life worldview. I made much more room for mystery and mysticism in my life. Curiosity, both intellectual and spiritual, has led me to explore strange avenues of thought. But most importantly, I’ve gained perspective. I’ve seen enough and met enough people to learn just how wide and vast and unknowably complex the universe really is. Which is to say, I know virtually nothing about it at all—certainly not the self-contained universes held within each and every person I meet.

So, I can’t say I’m in any position to speak as if I know what the heck I’m talking about. I don’t. I imagine I’m just like you: an ordinary person who, from time to time, likes to ponder life’s big questions and see if they can’t come up with a few answers. (Okay, maybe a little bit more than ‘often’ in my case, but still.) I’m hardly unique or special in this regard, and I don’t claim to have any special powers or revelations in seeking to uncover the mysteries of the cosmos. Therefore, please don’t take what follows as any sort of definitive, declarative systemization of ‘What Is’. Maybe I’ve done more than your average person to grapple with the nature of quantum physics and what its implications are, but my interest is purely that of an armchair philosopher/theologian. What’s more, I would stipulate that this is very much a metaphysics under construction. I’d imagine that if/when I revisit this piece after a significant time has passed, I’ll have plenty of amendments to make. As such, I ask that you take this for just what it is—some guy on the Internet doing his best to think about complicated, lofty things, enlisting his faulty faculties in said (doomed?) endeavor, and probably coming up short in the end. But hey, maybe it’ll be good for a few laughs and a couple of chin-strokes along the way.

That said, I do think some of the stuff I’m going to share here is pretty neat—insofar as it accurately reflects the science I’ve striven to wrap my mind around. If you, dear reader, are an accomplished astrophysicist or quantum biologist, do feel free to correct me on any misconceptions I may espouse here. In fact, I welcome it. A pneumanaut pursues truth above all else, or he/she is no pneumanaut at all!

With those caveats out of the way, I’d love to share with you a distillation of the conversation I had in that beer garden with my father. By the end of it, I do believe he had a certain glimmer in his eye. What exactly it was is difficult to say, but I think it had something to do with him being proud of me. I think I succeeded in challenging his mind, at the very least. I certainly confronted him with things he’d not really considered before. And I have to imagine, from his perspective—him sitting there, watching his child talk about quantum physics and the nature of perception and meta-reality and God and whatnot—it must have been rather uncanny, in a good sort of way. I mean, this man would remember changing my diapers, you know what I mean? That’s gotta be something of a cognitive dissonance, holding those two things in your mind at once. Or maybe, just a reminder of the inevitable passage of time.

There’s beauty in it—time. Especially the perception of it. In perceiving it, you recognize that it is ephemeral. Each moment is infinitely precious; you have it there, right there in your hands, but then it’s gone forever. It behooves you to pay attention. Whatever you fail to appreciate in your current moment will vanish before you know what you’ve lost. Being mindful, after all, is focusing on what is present and apparent—the things over which you might have some control, or some ability to affect in a positive and edifying way. The things that ought to be valued because they are here today and gone tomorrow. You can’t say the same for the future, at least not quite, and almost certainly not for the past. The time is always now.

Now that I have children myself, and though they’re small, witnessing them work to make sense of this mad world into which I’ve ushered them is something of a primordial joy. They are preparing to take their proper places in the Great Circle, to come into their own as self-actualizing individuals, to take the weight of the world upon their shoulders. Not today, but someday—as have all the successive generations since the dawn of humanity. I perceive these moments passing by, from the first steps to the first words to the first day of school, and I long to see the culmination of this great, mysterious ‘unfolding’ come to fruition. I hope I will be there to perceive it. Because a question I am genuinely concerned about is, ‘If I am not there to perceive it, does it really happen?’

The answer, I suspect, may not be so straightforward.

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Sci-fi illustration by Karel Thole, made for the cover of James White’s novel Federation World but never actually used.

Let there be foam

Our journey begins at the bottommost layer of reality—the true foundation upon which all perceptible experience is based.** This is the quantum realm, where nothing is quite as it seems. Indeed, even ‘nothing’ itself appears to have stranger properties than we might think, existing up here on the higher levels of reality, as we do.

There is much, much more nothing than we can readily perceive. Atoms are approximately 99.9999% nothing. Their volume is predominantly taken up by the empty space between the various particles that make them up. There are the protons, the electrons, and the neutrons. In high school science, we become accustomed to thinking about atoms as little clusters of colorful balls being orbited by other colourful balls. But even this is a gross oversimplification. That ‘nothing’ that exists between the electrons and their nucleus is not quite empty, yet also not quite full. The electrons don’t ‘orbit’—as in, following stable pathways like planets do suns—but rather they move in orbitals, which are conceptually messier, and therefore harder to illustrate on the pages of a two-dimensional science textbook. In actual fact, the interior space of an atom—this ‘nothing’ I’ve thus far been struggling to describe—is taken up by the electron’s orbital, which is to say, the electron’s wave-like presence spread throughout all of the space available to it, all at once. The electron in question isn’t some tiny kernel zipping around to and fro; instead, at the energy level at which the quantum world operates, it behaves as a waveform that can occupy many potential positions within this space simultaneously—a ‘superposition’, as it’s called. It is, in essence, here and there and nowhere all at once. That’s why this ‘nothing’ can appear to indeed be nothing, because the electron only has a certain probability of being in a certain spot that you or I may point to within the expanse of so-called nothing. Until we check for ourselves, using the tools of observation and measurement, we won’t know. As such, the space is indeed ‘empty’, though as I hope I’ve demonstrated, to call it ‘empty’ glosses over the very complicated truth of the matter.

But how can this be? Is it empty or is it not? And why can I only know when I check for myself?

These are all fascinating questions that I’ve been asking myself for quite some time. As I’ve come to better understand the quantum world—which is not to say that I fully understand it—I’ve been struck by just how amazing all of this is. Yes, it’s very strange, but isn’t it also kind of exciting? The universe is a grand mystery that our species has been working to unravel for millennia. We’ve come far in our journey, having discovered that our planet orbits the Sun, that our bodies are made up of many, many tinier bodies, all working together in synchronization to keep us upright and talking. But we have so much further to go; perhaps an infinite distance. Our forays into the quantum realm have upended so much of what we took for granted, and have revealed to us that we cannot trust our own senses to accurately describe what is real and what is not. We’ve learned that our perception of reality is inherently flawed. But it is that same perception, I believe, that is fulfilling an incredibly important role in constructing what we might call ‘reality-at-large’. Without it, it’s not immediately clear to me that anything at all exists whatsoever—at least, in the sense that we would typically consider to constitute objective, permanent existence, like what babies learn at around four to seven months of age. Stick with me a little while longer as I attempt to explore just how so.

Right, then. So when we peel back all the layers of reality and try to behold the very core of our existence, we find that what we’re dealing with is an infinitely vast, frothing, boiling, seething ocean of potentiality. On the smallest scale imaginable—the quantum scale—the universe is positively bubbling with unknowability. The universe isn’t just a big empty vacuum with a couple of bits of galaxies and galaxy clusters floating around; rather, this vacuum itself can be likened to a kind of foam, which in its incessant bubbling, sets in motion complex processes that eventually give rise to galaxies and everything in existence—indeterminately, I should add. (Though it should be noted, this is a metaphorical model for describing how the quantum realm functions, rather than what it actually is.) Things are made of atoms, and atoms are made of subatomic particles, and when we go all the way down to the quantum level where no further descent is possible, we find that things are in a constant state of flux. That frothy foam bubbles up things called virtual particles, which are pairings of positive and anti-particles winking in and out of existence, borrowing their energy from this ‘froth’, ie. from the quantum fluctuations inherent to the vacuum of spacetime itself. Virtual particles exist for virtually no time at all, as their opposite charges cause them to annihilate just as soon as they are brought into existence by this foam.*** But, certain cosmic events or significant fluctuations in energy levels can cause these ‘virtual’ particles to become ‘real’—as in, the kind of particles you and I would recognize as making up our world, possessing definitive properties, like quarks and electrons and so on. The Big Bang is one example of a cosmic event that fits the bill as a reality-creating phenomenon. And I think—here’s the speculative bit—maybe so are you. But we’re still getting to that.

If you weren’t able to fully follow everything I was just saying there, this is the key takeaway: our perception of a stable, static, determinate reality is a house built on sand. The pillars of our concrete world sink down, down, down into a roiling sea of uncertainty.

Ever heard of Schrödinger’s cat? It’s just a thought experiment to illustrate how tiny particles in the quantum world work. If I put a live cat in a box and close the lid, I can’t just assume that the cat is still alive in there when it’s out of my view. Sure, my classical intuition is that, of course it’s still alive! But alas, in the quantum realm, things are fundamentally uncertain. So, as long as the cat remains in the box, unseen, it’s actually both alive and dead—it’s in a superposition, as I mentioned earlier. (Not literally alive and dead, I don’t mean; rather, its physical state is one of indeterminacy and a multiplicity of potential outcomes.) The superposition is a position of both possible states—alive and dead—existing simultaneously, indeterminately. That is, until I open the box and look at poor Mr. Mittens to see how he’s doing in there. As soon as I do, the superposition ends, and the cat takes on one of two states: alive or dead. Finally, because quantum physics is really all about probabilities, I can anticipate that the cat will be alive, because it was alive when I first put it in. So in terms of sheer probability, it’s most likely still alive when I take it out. But this is not a given—that’s key to grasping quantum reality. It only becomes certain once I, the observer of the phenomenon, make my observation.

That’s a strange power the observer seems to have, isn’t it? The power to collapse a chaotic multiplicity of potential realities into a single, discernible ‘true’ reality? We’re starting to make some progress, I hope you can see…

In the eye of the beholder

Hold on a minute—how is it that somebody just observing a cat can have a macro-physical impact on what happens to the cat? Just what is this strange power that observation—or perception, I might say—seems to have on the material universe?

Let’s pause a moment and consider what ‘observing’ even is. It’s seeing something with your eyes, yes? But what is seeing? It’s light entering your eyes, bouncing off your retinas and stimulating little cells there to send signals to your brain. Your brain can then interpret these signals to create a representation of the outside world for you to navigate.

Okay…but what even is light?

Light is photons—particles that also act a bit like waves because, as I discussed previously, of the strange duality that exists in the quantum realm. They move through the universe at the fastest speed physically possible: the speed of light. They move so fast because, being massless, they don’t interact with the physical world in the same way that you or I do. They move at the absolute limit of what is possible, which is to say, without physical limitation. Inertia doesn’t affect them, nor does time. They can’t be slowed down by bumping into things. They only interact with matter in specific situations, like when they strike the human eye.

But they’re still quantum entities at the end of the day. They are ripples within the sea of frothing quantum foam, imbued with its eerie energy. When they interact with this fluctuating field of indeterminacy that acts as the bedrock of our entire universe, they can alter it in subtle yet measurable ways.

So, when light enters your eye—when you perceive something by seeing it with light—you’re engaging in a fundamentally quantum process. You are, in some sense, touching the surface of this sea. Your touch alters it, sends out ripples. You have an effect by interacting with it. This effect, so far as we can perceive it, is to disrupt the state of indeterminacy that is the base nature of this world. Suddenly confronted with an observer who ‘demands’ to perceive something (simply by being capable of perception and being conscious), the roiling mass of pure potentiality that is the quantum foam is forced to take on a set, determined form. The word often used is ‘collapsing’; in the act of perception, one collapses these waves of foam—the universe itself—into a single, definite, perceptible pattern or state.

This is absolutely wild to think about. You might be starting to see where I got this title from: Perception = Creation? It’s as if the simple act of being a conscious, perceiving being in the world actively creates the world that you or I inhabit. Every waking moment, down to the smallest, indivisible unit of time possible, everything that we see is being ‘collapsed’ from fundamental uncertainty to certainty. The universe is taking shape right before our eyes—and if we believe we have free will, then we are directly involved in that process, choosing what comes into existence just by turning our heads left or right.

But I don’t want to delve too deeply into this just yet, as I fear I might be at risk of overwhelming you. If you’re struggling to still grasp what I’m saying here, let me come at it from a different angle. Instead of focusing on photons and sight and quantum interactions and so on, perhaps this is simpler: the universe is much, much, much more complex than we can possibly perceive. In fact, we are only capable of perceiving an infinitesimally small sliver of all that the universe is. What’s important to know is that teeny, tiny sliver—which to you is the entire perceptible universe—is actually just the little bit of the wider universe that has interacted with you. There’s actually much more going on, but you don’t have access to it. The bits you do have access to are so limited in scope that they appear as a single, cohesive, determined experience—but this is a little bit like a curtain concealing all the fantastical machinery of the Wizard of Oz. Or maybe Plato’s Cave is a better metaphor, except this time, the cave that shapes your perception of the universe is one you’ll never be able to escape.

Did that help? Not at all? It just made you feel worse? Sorry. I can recommend a good book that might: Into the Unknown: The Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos by Kelsey Johnson. It’s one I’ve been reading to try and get to grips with this, and it’s quite accessible.

My main point can be distilled to this: the universe is fundamentally indeterminate, but there’s something strange going on when thinking, perceiving beings are introduced into the mix. Certainly not everyone agrees on just what that is, but I have my suspicions. These have led me to wonder if, perhaps, we aren’t just trapped in an arbitrary, illusory conceptualization of reality. We might be a little bit more ‘involved’ in shaping the objectivity of this reality than it might seem. In fact, we might all be doing this, both simultaneously and concurrently.

The parable of the astronaut

There’s a story that is sometimes told that illustrates a curious feature of the universe which we inhabit: there were two twin brothers, and one became an astronaut. The astronaut brother prepared for a highly advanced mission which would launch him at incredible speeds as he toured the solar system in search of…life, let’s say. His brother, who was not an astronaut—he was an actuary or something—stayed put on Earth, doing boring actuarial tasks.

So, off the first brother flew, sailing around Venus and Mars and Jupiter and Saturn and REDACTED and Neptune. When his mission was complete, he returned home. Upon landing his spacecraft once more on Earth’s familiar shores, he promptly headed over to his brother’s house to regale him with tales of his amazing adventures.

But, alas! When he arrived at his brother’s house and knocked at the door, the person who answered was but an old, withered man! (We’re going to assume for the sake of the story that the astronaut brother was a bit of a dunce who didn’t know anything about the nature of time, and so was completely taken aback by this turn of events.)

‘Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?’ the astronaut said to the old man.

‘Jeffery?’ said the old man. ‘Is that you?’ (The astronaut’s name is Jeffery.)

‘Yes, it’s me. Tell me what this is all about!’

‘Jeffery!’ the old man exclaimed, tossing his cane aside and hobbling toward him, arms extended. ‘I am your brother!’

This is the strange thing about time, see: it moves differently for all of us. Or rather, we all move differently through it. We all have our own personal, internal clocks, so to speak. Each of us experiences time—perceives time—in a fundamentally distinct way from one another. It’s not constant! It just seems like it is because we’re all moving at basically the same speed, in the same gravitational field (the Earth’s).

Let’s not worry too much about the gravity aspect here, because we don’t need it to grasp how this works. Say you and I are sitting at a table together having lunch, like I was when I was saying all this to my dad in the first place. Then say we both needed to use the washroom. You stand up, politely excusing yourself, and walk toward the door. What you don’t know is that I have a teleporter and I’m positively bursting and I’m too shy to say so. There’s only one washroom in the establishment, and I can’t wait. So, feeling quite embarrassed about the whole thing, I use my teleporter and beat you to the door before you’re even halfway there.

Now, imagine after this sorry display, you forgave me and wanted to discuss our perceived experience of this event—an event which, ostensibly, we shared and experienced in the same manner. Our versions would diverge at the point that I used my teleporter! You would have a whole range of experiences you could relate about your journey toward the washroom door: sights you saw, the smells of other diners’ meals, the sound of your shoes clicking on the floor. You’d have, let’s say, at least forty-five seconds of lived experience that you could draw upon to holistically describe all that happened between the moments where you first stood and you arrived at the door to find it locked. In essence, forty-five seconds of time passed for you.

But what about me? I was here one moment, there the next. My teleporter moved me instantaneously—a much higher speed than whatever your leisurely gait was. I experienced nary a millisecond of time, all told. It’s all relative, baby!

How can this be? Our two accounts of the same event do not align. Was it forty-five seconds or less than one? How can both of these lived experiences be true at the same time, when they appear to mutually contradict one another? Just whose universe are we living in—mine, or yours?

The answer is not clear-cut, so far as I can tell. Some might say that we’re living in the same universe, we just are perceiving it differently. Others might say that all of perception is an illusion conjured by the brain, and we’re really just unthinking automatons following natural physical processes—dead components of the universe moving along a conveyor belt. Maybe so. What is true is that both of our experiences of time are entirely legitimate despite their divergence, no buts about it. Like I said, it’s as if we both are moving through time independently of one another. (It should be remembered that time and space are really just one thing: spacetime. We don’t really have qualms about moving through space independently, so why time?)

And this is where I start to wonder. Can it really be so that there is only one universe, irrespective of how you or I experience it? I’ve already explored a bit about how the cosmos is much stranger and more than any of us can know or indeed experience. Why shouldn’t it be that I’m here, perceiving a little sliver of a universe all to myself—a tiny bubbling riding on the quantum foam—and you’re there, doing the same?

Dreams within dreams

We’re starting to describe the model of the universe that I’ve had simmering in my mind for some time. What if the reality that you and I experience is not actually shared between us, though it may appear to be? We are entangled, you and I—perhaps quantumly so—but we do not occupy the same metaphysical space. Might there be a kind of meta-reality that supersedes our own? This is not to say that either of our realities are unreal in any sense. No, quite the opposite—they’re as real as anything, as real as real can be. Because for each of us, that’s all that can be real. As I said before, we don’t have access to anything beyond that which we can perceive. Thus, if our perception is shaping said reality, we are essentially locked in something like localized, insular reality-prisms set adrift on the sea of quantum foam.

Put another way, we can contain an entire universe within ourselves. And not just any universe—the universe. The only one that exists, for all intents and purposes, because we are not capable of experiencing (perceiving) any other! What is more, we are creating this solitary universe, moment by moment, forging it out of the chaos of probabilities and potentialities. Our consciousness is the vessel; infinity is the terrain.

A word on that, because it’s important: I’m not suggesting that we can just make anything happen that we want, like the miniature gods of our own respective universes. The quantum realm is fundamentally one of probability; though the final outcome cannot be known in advance, the range of possible outcomes can be. It’s a bit like, if we go back to the restaurant example, when you and I are sitting at the table enjoying our drinks, there are a range of possible things that you (or I, in my localized universe) might do. You might scratch your nose, yawn, chuckle at my funny jokes, or slap me straight across the face. You might stand up abruptly and walk into oncoming traffic. These options are all fully available to you, but they do not share the same probability. I imagine, being the sensible person that you are, you are not very likely to stand up and walk straight into that bus roaring down the street toward us. I’ll give it a 0.00007% chance that you’ll do that. But scratch your nose? Somewhat probable. Yawn because my jokes aren’t half as clever as I think? A definite 40%. Strong possibility of that outcome for sure.

But hold on—back to that stuff about universes and meta-realities. Isn’t this all sounding a bit solipsistic? Am I really arguing for the idea that I, and only I truly exist? Am I suggesting that you, dear reader, are just a figment of my imagination, because the final arbiter of all that is real is…me?

Take heart! I’m very comfortable with the idea that you exist in your own right, entirely separately from me. This is where the idea of a meta-reality comes in, or ‘nested realities’ as I referred to previously in my essay on the subject of personhood in Apple TV’s Severance. I propose—tentatively, timidly—that there exists a kind of meta-reality which is the true, ultimate reality to which all of our individualized realities are subordinate. Or, maybe not exactly subordinate, because I don’t think of it as hierarchical. More like our realities are nested within this meta-reality, all cosy-like. This meta-reality is incubating our little baby bird egg realities within its warm, matronly embrace. Only, it’s not warm and matronly at all—it’s the quantum foam I mentioned, churning and spitting and frothing with indeterminacy and abject chaos. You and I and every human in existence are like little boats bobbing up and down on this turbulent sea, doing our best to keep our eyes open and continually forge a traversable pathway through it. We need to keep our eyes open because that’s exactly how we navigate this mess of uncertainty—we collapse the meta-reality into a singular reality that each of us can occupy safely, like an egg containing an entire world in itself. (I’m mixing my metaphors; I apologize.) '

Knowing me, you might be wondering at this point, where does God fit into all this? Great question—my dad posed me that same one, reacting to what he thought was a metaphysical model in which God somehow arose out of this meta-reality I’ve described. No, I said to him: no, God must exist outside of this quantum foam, and act as its progenitor. He must be yet one turtle beneath this final quantum turtle—the final turtle which exists at the very threshold of what we can possibly perceive, and never pass beyond.****

Why must this be so? The question begs an essay all of its own, but I imagine at this point, I’ve nearly spent the full breadth of your attention span. Dear reader, let it be enough to say for now that God, for God to be God at all, must be beyond all that is physical or material. He must be the source of the universe—or the meta-universe—not a product of it. But neither must He be remote or disinterested in His Creation. In this model I’ve conceived, I believe He has partnered with us, His Children, to create the universe. What exactly is the agent that allows for this, I’m not certain. Our consciousness—our ability to perceive—seems to be at the heart of it. Elsewhere in this publication, I have written of consciousness as being the equivalent of the soul—that breath which God had imbued us with to raise from mere dust and make us men and women who bear His Image. The opinion which I am approaching, though I cannot say I’ve fully arrived, is that being in possession of some divine aspect, we are active participants in the great work of Creation, moment to moment, and we have very important roles to fulfill within it. This is our calling, I believe. Our purpose in life, I think, is to create a world worth existing. And I think, since God is sovereign above all, He knows—just as we do within our own souls—how it ought to look. We need only look.

And if I can make one more suggestion before we part, let it be this: that ‘entanglement’ I mentioned, which connects our insular universes by some ghostly power? I think that is love. Our individual boats may be adrift on a sea of uncertainty, but I do believe that we are tethered by love. I draw great comfort from knowing that, though I am cast about my waves and currents I cannot hope to control, I am not alone.

*As have the other members of my family—I don’t say this to make myself seem like I’ve accomplished some great feat single-handedly.

**I say this with confidence, but in actual fact, we have no idea if there isn’t anything even more foundational than the quantum realm. How can we know it isn’t turtles all the way down?

*** It might help to more precisely define just what a particle is in the first place—an excitation of the quantum field. Particles are ripples of waves in the field of potentiality that have become quantized, meaning they’ve taken on a certain value or amount. They exist, physically, to put it in other words. Physical things need to have measurable values, or they can’t exist!

**** I’m reminded of Great A’Tuin, who holds up the four elephants, upon whose backs lies the entirety of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Does this world-bearing turtle have an origin, a cause? Not that we know of—he just is. He’s the cosmological constant within the Discworld mythos. The Unmoved Mover; the Turtle-At-The-Bottom.

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I don’t believe in gods of this kind—humanlike gods, who resemble all too closely both in our greatest virtues and worst excesses. I think the mythologies of the ancients tell us much more about ourselves than about God with a capital ‘G’, though that is not at all to say these stories, which have been passed down to us across millennia and continue to animate our imaginations, are in any way deficient. It’s not that the idea of our fates being written in the stars isn’t beautiful, intriguing or inspiring; it’s that, well, we didn’t do the writing, did we? What’s our role in all of this? Why didn’t Oedipus get a fair chance to say he’d rather not kill his father and marry his mother, thanks but no thanks?

It leaves a nagging feeling of insecurity in us, sometimes, the notion of destiny. Utter powerlessness. A shrugging of the shoulders and a sigh of resignation. It’s much, much more fulfilling to conceive of our lives, complex and unnavigable as they may be, to be the sum of our choices—all of them, forged moment by moment. Satisfying because it puts us in the proverbial driver’s seat, not some little ‘g’ god who’ll get their kicks and then soon be off to toy with the next poor sap who catches their fancy. We happen to have heard of a little thing called free will, and let me tell you, it’s kickass. Each of us gets to decide what happens to us, not some invisible man or woman or eldritch horror in the sky (or under the sea).

Sounds great, sure, but none of that feel-good humanist rhetoric will change the fact that if there is a God, or even gods, He/they are the ones in charge, not us. We here on Earth aren’t JRPG protagonists with spiky hair, stylish yet impractical clothing, and enough unrealized potential to sunder the fundamental order of the universe, ripping God a new one if he even thinks of messing with…our friends, probably, since that’s how JRPGs usually go. Whatever our preference, we’re not in a position to challenge the Powers That Be. We’re talking heavenly, transcendental, otherworldly powers—if these are the forces that shape our universe, and ourselves within it, it’s rather quaint to believe we have any ability to alter the outcome. Pretty gosh-darned self-aggrandizing, if you ask me.

My point is that free will is an illusion. Or, it might be. It’s hard to know for sure. Yes, we may perceive ourselves as having free will—no, I won’t have the side salad, yes, I will sign up for this yoga class. No, I won’t go this week because I don’t feel like it. Yes, another scoop of ice cream won’t hurt. No, I won’t cat-sit for my sister because I already did three months ago and look what happened to the sofa cushions.

Those all sound like the intentional decisions made by a person with adamantine willpower, but if the doctrine of determinism is to be believed, then every yes and no is nothing more than a mirage. No choice a person ever makes is actually made by them—the choice was already made eons ago, at the very beginning of the universe. In fact, referring these things as ‘choices’ at all is categorically incorrect, as the one doing the ‘choosing’ could not have actually chosen anything other than the thing that they chose. So, what kind of choice is that? None whatsoever.

Apologies if that last bit was a bit of a mouthful. The key takeaway is that in a deterministic universe, everything—literally everything—is already set in stone. It has been since the beginning of time, if there even was a beginning. The universe, and humanity along with it, are the exact opposite of tabula rasa. (Tabula plenus? Plena?) Those determinists among us just might have cracked that code of what this universe is all about, and it’s not us. It’s galaxies and stars and planets all bending to the indomitable will of physics. For every particle everywhere, including the ones that make up you and me, the laws are already written; the trajectory is plotted, the destination is set. The Big Bang set everything into motion—the rest is just falling dominoes.

And so we return to the idea of a destiny. Destiny is, by definition, not something you choose. You can grapple with it, perhaps even reject it, but insofar as such a thing as ‘fate’ exists, you can’t choose it for yourself. Some other power has already gone ahead of you and defined what your life will be, what it will amount to. Best you can do is make peace with it, I suppose. But that’s a hard sell in a culture that prizes independence and self-actualization—and justifiably so.

So, do I have a destiny? Deterministically speaking, you betcha. The atoms that make me up are all zipping right along, colliding and jostling and transferring energy exactly the way they should.

But if it’s all working exactly as it should, then why am I not satisfied? Why do I feel the need for more—to at be the center of something? Why do I feel as if I move the universe around me, rather than move through the universe like I’m on rails?

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Uncredited artwork from Ballroom of the Skies by John D. MacDonald, reprinted in 1968.

Laying a firm foundation

I believe I first encountered the notion of determinism when reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy as a teen. The term determinism doesn’t actually appear in that work—so far as I know, it wasn’t invented yet—but Asimov’s main conceit in those stories dovetails with determinism’s ideas nicely, something which I’d come to appreciate later. For those unfamiliar, the three Foundation novels center on the fictional science of ‘psychohistory’; part sociology, part mathematics, part history. A key figure in the stories is that of Hari Seldon, the inventor of this science, who uses his brilliant mind to statistically model the developmental patterns of human civilization. According to Seldon, individual behaviours are unpredictable, but when dealing with larger groups—as in entire populations—it is possible to accurately predict how they will behave and develop across time. Seldon uses this new science to anticipate the collapse of the civilization in which he lives, the Galactic Empire, and set about preparing countermeasures to mitigate the fallout. He endeavors to establish a ‘Foundation’—a complex political and scientific project spanning centuries which will allow human society to survive the coming calamity and flourish once again, this time guided by nobler principles than the ones held by his contemporaries. And he is quite successful in this regard; throughout the novels, Seldon’s plans unfold largely according to his design, showcasing the incredible predictive power of psychohistory.

Now, if you sort of squint sideways at that idea, you might start to see a connection to determinism. Determinism, as I’ve stated, is the belief that everything in existence has been pre-determined, and that all matter in the universe is merely ‘following the script’; that is to say, nothing exerts any kind of independent will of its own to make anything else happen. For our purposes here, we’ll focus on the hardest, harshest, most clinically scientific version of determinism, which I first encountered when reading Stephen Hawking’s Brief Answers to the Big Questions, but which he originally wrote about (other than in scientific publications) in A Brief History of Time. For thinkers like Hawking, the universe is governed solely by the laws of physics. There is no need for anything outside of these laws to explain all that we see and know. What is more, since we know how the fundamental building blocks of the universe—atoms and their component parts—work and relate to one another, we essentially know everything about how larger structures in the universe behave.**

Take a complex thing like, say, your brain. That’s about as complex as it gets, right? It’s the thing that enables you to make all those important decisions that shape your life and experience. Certainly impressive for a hunk of organic gunk, but at the end of the day, your brain is just that—a lump of mushy matter sitting in your skull, right? Okay, so if it’s made of matter, that means it’s part of the material universe. It’s made of material things like neurons. Those neurons are made of chemicals and tissues, which are made of acids and proteins, which are made of molecules, which are made of atoms. Atoms don’t have minds or consciousness or willpower, right? (Stop right there, you panpsychists—I don’t have time to get into it with you now!) They behave according to physical laws. Electrons orbit around the nucleus, and so forth.*** Atoms do everything they do, like vibrating and bonding with one another, all according to their natural properties and the properties of their environment. So, at what point does ‘free will’ come into it and exert its influence? Never, would be the hard determinist’s answer. There’s no room in this model for immaterial, intangible, speculative things like ‘free will’. Free will is not something defined by the laws of physics, so it doesn’t exist.

Whoa, whoa, whoa—free will doesn’t exist? Am I telling you that human beings, as well as any other living creature in possession of a couple of neurons to rub together, aren’t doing any real independent thinking at all? They’re all just robots following their biological programming?

I know, it threw me for a loop, too. (Remember, I’m not personally endorsing this particular line of thinking; I’m only trying to follow where it might lead.) I remember reading Brief Answers and being gobsmacked by Hawking’s assertion that, yeah, humans and robots are basically indistinguishable. The chemical reactions occurring in our brains are no more under our control than the electrical impulses running through a robot’s circuitry. In fact, the entire universe it really just a colossal machine, running on autopilot. It is not unlike the hive-mind of humanity as psychohistory would have it; an unfathomably complex entity made up of countless distinct parts, but when taken together, it functions according to discernible patterns and principles. When one knows the set values of a thing like an electron’s spin or a certain social group’s predisposition toward violent behaviour, it isn’t hard to extrapolate and envision how these things will play out across time. If it exists, it’s quantifiable, baby!

Here’s a neat idea to consider: if we knew the speed and position of every single particle in existence, and we had a computer powerful enough to crunch literally a universe’s worth of data, we could plot the motion of every celestial body and every smaller body within those bodies, down to the tiniest iota. We could effectively know the future shape of the universe and everything in it, across all of time. When you consider that, it really does look like the future is already written. Each and every particle has a destiny, only instead of God deciding where it all ends up, it’s nature following its due course. This was Hawking’s belief, so far as I understand it, and as you may have seen me say in my introductory post, who am I to argue? Brilliant physicists like him know far more about how the universe operates than I could ever hope to. I’m a person of faith, it’s true, but I also know that science is a real thing and it deserves to be taken seriously. Science, I believe, should shape how we understand our faith. I also believe that there needn’t be a discordant note between them; if God is real and He made the universe, then science should only help us to better understand His handiwork, yes?

And so it is that I arrive at a difficult question: if the universe is deterministic—and indeed, it is quite scientific to assume that it is—what room is there for God in the equation?

God of the machine

A theist’s kneejerk response might be ‘Well, God created the Big Bang, so even if everything after that point is determined by physical interactions, God made it all possible in the first place’. Fair enough, I suppose, though there are deterministic arguments which describe how the universe can, in fact, exist in its own right. Hawking wrote about this too; he believed that it was entirely possible for the universe to give rise to itself, in exactly the form we find it today. I won’t get into all his explanations for this since it’s beside the point, but suffice it to say that the universe can’t exist any other way, because if it did, well, there’d be no universe. Consider: a universe with only two dimensions wouldn’t be so great for hearts to pump blood or eyes to see predators in the bushes or the like. And as for the Big Bang, it’s a tricky one, but Hawking designed a model in which time has no real beginning but kind of…folds back on itself? I can’t say I fully grasp it, but I’m confident the gist was the concept of ‘time’ no longer applies past the point of the Big Bang. It’s like how going further south than the South Pole doesn’t make sense, so going further back in time than the Big Bang to find out what caused it doesn’t work either.

So, for this thought experiment of mine to work, let’s just take it as a given that the universe is truly deterministic in the hardest sense. God didn’t necessarily initiate the Big Bang or act as a driving force for anything else. This is some kind of ultra-Deism we’re describing here, I suppose, where God exists but has done literally nothing to influence the development of his Creation. Can we even call it His ‘Creation’ at this point? What’s the need for God at all in this scenario? Boot Him out of the picture and let’s call it what it is: a dead universe with no destiny whatsoever besides what the laws of physics dictate.

But hang on a minute—there’s something I remember hearing about in Bible studies and the occasional church sermon which is niggling at me. Isn’t there a thing in Christianity called ‘election’? Predestination? Something to do with certain people being ‘chosen’ or destined for salvation? You read about it in verses like this:

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

Romans 8-29-30

Now, I can’t say I have a super clearly developed notion of just what the Bible means when it talks about predestination. On its face, it seems like the Apostle Paul here is saying that God chose some to partake in spiritual salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, and others not. Uh, okay…why not? It doesn’t sit easy, does it, thinking that before time even began, a handful of people were divinely selected to ‘believe and be saved’, while others drew short straws. And what does that say about human choice, free will? It’s especially scary when we think about the consequences for belief/unbelief or salvation/damnation, at least as these concepts are traditionally understood. (We might get into the nature of heaven/hell in another essay, but for now, let’s just leave it at some people end up in a kind of ‘good’ state after death, and others not so good.) Are we supposed to believe that God knowingly condemns certain people to hell because, well, just because? What kind of good God would do that?

To make matters more complicated, Scriptures seem to contradict themselves in different places about just exactly how salvation works—is it God who decides, or do we decide? Check out this one, as a point of contrast:

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9

So, this sounds like God actually wants everybody to be saved, right? Seems like a pretty serious thing to not have clarity on, if the whole point of Christianity is to find the proper way to restore harmony between oneself and God.

Tomes upon tomes of religious discourse have been written in attempts to solve this riddle, and I’m sure many more will be written in ages to come. What’s interesting to me at this moment isn’t finding a definitive answer to this question—largely because I believe that’s well beyond my intellectual powers—but to play with an idea I’ve had rattling around in the back of my head for some time now: could it be possible that God, being sovereign over all things, necessitates a deterministic universe like the one I’ve laboriously described?

Choose your salvation!

It might be worthwhile to explore some different understandings of Christian salvation. There isn’t a consensus on just how this strange business of saving people from their sins actually works. This is important because, fundamentally, the idea of salvation describes God’s relationship to Creation. If this whole human story is about a long, painstaking effort at redemption (initiated and sustained by God), then life really is a massive relationship counselling session. In discussing with my dad, he narrowed it down to three key approaches:

1. Sovereignty Theology (Calvinism/Ultra-Calvinism)

   • This is the one where predestination plays a central role. This theology holds that God is immutable, all-powerful and all-knowing. There is no free choice, because God already knew everything and ordained everything from the beginning of forever. Absolutely nothing happens without his strict oversight and approval. If that doesn’t satisfy you, well then, that’s a sign you’re the problem, not God.

     See, in this kind of theology, the only proper response to God is total submission, out of appreciation for his infinite greatness. It’s the humble people who accept this divine order in meekness that shall inherit the Earth. Who are you to question God? Nobody—so get on your knees and pray for forgiveness! Hopefully, maybe, He will have mercy on you and invite you into His kingdom, but it won’t be cause of anything you did.

2. Open Theology (Arminianism)

   • God created the world in such a way that we have free will, and nature responds to our free will. We actually do make choices that affect both ourselves and the world in which we live. So when things go wrong, that’s on us. Good thing that God is gracious and extends us mercy when we don’t choose right.

     Although this does raise the tricky issue of God just allowing us to do awful things, both to ourselves and each other. If we can’t be trusted to make good decisions, why would God give us such freedom? Isn’t that irresponsible of Him? You wouldn’t let your toddler drive your car, even if she asked nicely. She can’t handle the consequences that come with that kind of decision!

3. Process Theology

   • This type tends to tick off everybody else equally. Process Theology argues that God is learning and evolving alongside His Creation. He’s not part of nature, but He is directly involved with how it’s developing. In this line of thinking, humans can make choices—good or bad—and God will ‘respond’ to those choices in kind. There are stories in the Bible where people seem to be able to bargain with God, after all. Think of Abraham asking God to spare Sodom from annihilation—a clear example of God taking into consideration his Creation’s views, and being willing to make some accommodations.

     But then, what are we saying? God has limitations? He doesn’t know what we’re gonna do, before we’re gonna do it? He can be caught off guard, even? What kind of omniscient, omnipotent God is that? Why would He be deserving of respect or worship if He’s not the one in control?

4. Honorable Mention: Wesleyan Theology (my Dad’s personal favorite)

   • John Wesley. the founder of Methodism, presented a hybrid model in which God is sovereign, but He has chosen to humble Himself and work through human agency to accomplish His aims in the world. In fact, he was even willing to submit Himself to human agency! Selfish, stinky, imperfect human agency. This is epitomized in the life and death of Christ. Jesus could have called the legions of angels to protect him, as he tells Peter after the sword-chopping incident, but he doesn’t. He willingly goes to die because He knows—omnisciently, in sovereignty—that all will be made right in the end. So, humans are free to act in the moment. Yet there is an ultimate destiny for everything…and thank God, it is good.

All square with those? Great—let’s finish this off by considering this notion of ‘predestination’ and how it curiously links to determinism.

Calvin and Hobbes

I would contend that if we subscribe to the hard determinist’s view of the fundamental nature of the universe, this does not preclude the existence of God. (I think Sabine Hossenfelder said something similar in this video, so make of that what you will). Rather, this physical model could be perfectly compatible with the metaphysical model offered to us by the Calvinists through the theology of God’s sovereignty. What if both of these disparate groups have accidentally hit upon the same truth, but have come at it from wildly different angles—the truth there is no free will. I can see how the Calvinist’s approach could encapsulate the materialist physicist’s. It would go something like this:

• God, in His sovereignty, allowed the universe to come into existence. In fact, he ‘knew’ this would happen before it ever happened, insofar as things outside of time can know about other things also outside of time…

• If the universe came into existence on its own, through nothing more than natural forces, God ‘knew’ these forces and what effect they would have, thus demonstrating His superiority over them. Even if He wasn’t directly involved, like king ruling over his subjects, He could claim absolute ownership and authority over them.

• If the universe deterministically led to the evolution of human life, God ‘knew’ about this too, and so reigned sovereign over these new lifeforms as well.

• The universe is ultimately heading toward inevitable heat-death as stars burn out, energy depletes and black holes expand. This is the physical ‘destiny’ of all material things, which is death. Knowing this, and therefore being sovereign over it, God has seen fit for humanity to be ‘predestined’ toward annihilation. It is only through God’s grace that some are spared this fate. And God, knowing everything, already knows who these individuals are. (Note: I’m not saying they’ll survive the heat-death of the universe—rather that they’ll be welcomed into whatever future-state the universe takes in the next life, as part of their destiny).

That’s along the lines of what a deterministic-Calvinistic spiritual destiny would look like, I think. As far as I can tell, it unifies what we know about physics (keep in mind: there’s a lot we still don’t know) and also what we know about God’s relationship to Creation (again, keep in mind: according to one particular theology and interpretation of Scripture). It’s not exactly a pretty picture, is it? Not only is there still no room for free will, it makes God out to be some kind of petulant, tyrannical overlord who does as he pleases with the unfortunate creatures under his thumb. Not too different from those ancient pagan deities whom I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, it would seem.

So, something’s amiss. We know that God’s nature isn’t like this, if we take Jesus’ example as anything to go by (and if we take that he was, in fact, God). What exactly has gone wrong with this picture?

For me, I think it’s because the Calvinists don’t have their priorities straight—or God’s, anyway. In Calvinist thinking, God’s single greatest attribute is his greatness. God is so great—omnipotent, omniscient, glorious—that the only sensible response is to collapse in a heap, trembling in holy fear. Wretched creatures that we are, how can we behold the face of God and not be smitten where we stand? Indeed, this is often how the prophets of old respond to God. Am I saying that this is the wrong response? Not at all! God is certainly great, infinitely greater than we can comprehend. That’s why He’s God. He wouldn’t be much of a God if we could readily understand him. I don’t even really understand how magnets work, and here I am yammering on about particle physics like I know what I’m talking about. Pitiful, really.

Think of it like this: greatness itself is not the greatest quality one can possess. ‘Greatness’—which in God’s case we could call ‘holiness’—is certainly something God has in spades, but to set this attribute as the essence of God’s character (as the Calvinists do) diminishes just how great He is, if that makes sense. See, in moral terms, greatness is not the highest good to which one can aspire. I can aspire to be a great doctor, but that greatness in itself is not what would make me great. What would make me great would be treating the sick and saving countless lives. These are moral achievements, rather than technical ones resultant of my medical prowess. This idea can also be demonstrated in the reverse; things can be great without being good at all. There are great wars, great plagues, great disasters. People can be great conquerors, great manipulators, great deceivers. Greatness in and of itself doesn’t have a moral dimension; it can be in service of either good or ill. But God is, we would believe, the absolute greatest good one can imagine. God’s moral alignment, so to speak, is perfect good. It is this trait which exists at the heart of God rather than His omnipotence, His omniscience, Hid authority, His otherness—His holiness, simply put.

So no, I don’t think it’s God’s greatness that defines him. Rather like Wesley, I think it’s his graciousness. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son’. Did you catch that? Loved. Gave. God is certainly great, but even more than that, He is gracious. It’s not clear to me that a God who cared chiefly about His greatness would deign to walk among a bunch of angry apes and allow them, in their ignorance, to kill Him. I think a God who cared chiefly about His greatness would act more like how Jesus’ disciples wanted him to act: a warrior-king riding into Jerusalem swinging a sword, backed by an army of angels—not some guy on a donkey, followed by fishermen, tax collectors and *gasp* women?!?

I breathe a sigh of relief, then, that I don’t believe one bit in this nightmarish metaphysical model I’ve just finished outlining. I don’t think the universe is purely deterministic, though I readily accept that physical processes form the foundation of much of what we perceive, whether or not we realize it. Discovering the exact point where things stop being just about particles vibrating and start being about magic is exciting for me—maybe the whole reason why I’m doing this series of essays. I remain steadfast in my efforts to integrate the best scientific knowledge we have about the nature of the universe with the best ideas we’ve come up with to describe the nature of God. As such, I cannot place my seal of recommendation on the notion that God’s sovereignty necessitates a deterministic universe. This isn’t because God isn’t sovereign—He is—or because a deterministic universe is inherently wrong (though I do have other issues with this approach, which maybe will get into another time). Rather, I don’t believe that God’s sovereignty is the great arbiter of our reality. I think that role is taken up by God’s love.

Love—love is what it’s all about. None of this would be without love. And if the Gospel of John is to be believed, God is love. Love is the ultimate force, transcending even the powers of physics. Remember that scene in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar where the female astronaut played by Anne Hathaway describes her undying love for a man whom she hoped to be reunited with, though he’d supposedly perished? Here’s what she said:

Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.

Yeah, man. I’m down with that. Perhaps I can get into just why in a later essay. For now, let me just say that when it comes to one’s destiny in this world, I don’t think it’s defined by how the atoms that make up one’s body happen to be spinning or rotating or vibrating or whatever. Nor is it limited to inevitable death. If something like destiny exists, I think it’s close to the experience of love. I can’t imagine a human experience not being touched by love in at least a tiny way at some point, by someone, though I’m sure there’s no shortage of tragic cases which would challenge this idea. All the same, it seems to me that we all reach out for love, seek love. We need love above all else. We seem born to pursue it, to discover it for ourselves.

That sounds like a kind of destiny to me.

* For the uninitiated, the acronym ‘JRPG’ stands for Japanese Role-Playing Game, a prominent subgenre within the video gaming world. A common story trope in these games is a band of plucky, misfit heroes teaming up and killing God, or whatever entity serves as the ‘God’ of their world.

**I am simplifying here because of course we don’t know everything about how physics work—the Standard Model is incomplete, and trying to unify a Theory of Gravity with everything else that we know about how the universe works continues to elude us—to say nothing of the weirdness of the quantum realm! Still, this assertion holds water and being broadly true, from a determinist’s perspective.

***Another simplification—electrons actually exist in ‘clouds’ called orbits around the nucleus, rather than following set paths like planets do when orbiting a star.

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C’mon, don’t be shy. It’s a simple question. Is life better now than it’s ever been? Maybe not your life, necessarily. But life life. Human life—the quality of it, everywhere and anywhere.

No?

You seem reluctant to raise your hand. Maybe it’s because you’re reading this on your phone or computer, and you’re not actually in a lecture hall listening to me ask this question in front of a whole crowd of bashful onlookers, so this whole bit I’m doing is coming across as rather contrived. Fair enough. Maybe you’re holding out because you feel that the totality of human history, spanning all human civilizations, is a bit too broad a timeframe to consider if you intend to give a definitive answer in good faith. Also, fair enough. Or, maybe your hand is staying there, stuck to your side, because you don’t think things are all that great here on this planet of ours. Maybe you think things are downright f***ed, if you’ll pardon my bluntness.

But that’s not exactly what I asked, is it? I didn’t ask if things are good. Just glance at today’s headlines, and you can see for yourself that they definitely aren’t. Instead, I asked if things are better than they have ever been before, at any point in human history.

Okay—one or two of you, edging a sweaty palm upwards. Why the timidity? Not an easy stance to take, is it, given the sheer scale, severity and intractability of the problems we face today. Hunger, disease, war, poverty. They’re all still here with us, just as they’ve always been. It doesn’t seem like we’ve made much progress as a species in overcoming our worst instincts. There’s even an argument to be made that things are much worse than ever before, when you consider just how much destruction we can unleash upon one another. We’ve fought a lot of wars, sure, but at no point in our shared history have we ever had the capability of wiping one another off the face of the Earth. The potential for nuclear holocaust is a very, very real thing. Chew on that, you Rousseau-loving idealists.

But to those few of you who did raise their hands, let’s explore your (tenuous?) position a bit further. You might be thinking something along the lines of, ‘Yes, nukes are very bad, but be that as it may, on the whole we’ve made significant improvements. We discovered insulin, eradicated smallpox. We learned about sanitation. We’ve had some people create some very lovely art which we continue to enjoy long after they’ve died. We had labor movements and suffrage movements and civil rights movements. We even went to the Moon, for heaven’s sake!’

And you’re right—it’s true that we here in the Western World (sorry to any readers who may hail from more distant realms, I don’t mean to exclude you) live, on average, very privileged lives. There’s a saying about how even the most ordinary, unimpressive person living in a studio apartment somewhere in any modern-day city enjoys greater pleasures and comforts than the Caesar of Rome did in its heyday. Caesar didn’t have hot showers or Doordash deliveries or options for contraception or luxury ski resort getaway vacations.

What’s that? You hand-downers want to rebut? All right, all right—he might have had indoor plumbing, countless servants to cater to his every whim, harems of dispensable concubines, and the Italian Alps on his doorstep, but you get my point. Even the richest, most privileged people of history could never have dreamed of living the way that we do. Our technology and social institutions have developed at astonishing rates since the time of the great Emperors, or the feudal fiefdoms of medieval Europe, or the scientific advancements of the Renaissance, or the economic growth of the Industrial Revolution, or indeed, even since the last bomb was dropped in WWII. Ignore everything else—the Internet alone is an unfathomable advantage to us, though we hardly use it to further our personal or collective potential. At least, not regularly. The entirety of human knowledge and experience at our fingertips, no more than a click away? And now the advent of AI, and perhaps not long after it, AGI? We’re practically gods, creating alternate life forms to carry out tasks for us and satisfy our every whim.

So, when those few of us raise our hands to say that, yes, life is objectively better now than it ever has been (with the notable caveat that it may still not be subjectively better) an interesting question thus arises: might there be a point in time somewhere in the future where life could become…perfect? If we extrapolate far enough on our collective progress—and before we’re done, we’ll certainly evaluate if indeed any true progress has been made—is it feasible that something like a utopia might eventually be achieved?

Science fiction literature is filled with visions of failed utopias. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. But time is on our side; we’ve got somewhere in the ballpark of a billion years before the Sun explodes to figure out how to build one. And even then, if we can invent a way to become an interstellar species, the sky is truly the limit. The very horizon of the universe would stretch ahead of us, and only the end of time itself would be our final limit. On timescales of that sort of length (it’s estimated that the light of the last stars will burn out in about 100 trillion years) isn’t it fair to say that it’s possible we might, with the aid of astounding technology and innumerable years of experience under our belts, build something akin to a perfect world? Just as a matter of inevitability, I mean. When you trace the trajectory of our past and follow it into the future, doesn’t the ‘moral arc’ of humanity bend toward self-improvement?

We’d have to survive a good deal of imperfection in the meantime to find out. And given our very, very imperfect societies—downright dystopian, you might say—it’s hard to imagine us living through the next century, let alone the next countless millennia.

But let’s not give up hope just yet. All of us, whether we raised our hands or not, can probably imagine how things might be better. Not perfect, no—but incrementally better. We can even imagine how we might achieve such improvement. We might even have an idea or two about how we as individuals can make the improvement happen, right here, right now, while we’re still breathing.

We don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to start making a difference. To heal that which has been hurt. We can begin with those closest to us—neighbors, friends, family. Drops in an ocean, sure. But you can’t say that each drop doesn’t change the whole. If enough people think like that, feel like that, act like that, it’d be something like a sea change. That in itself might be the single best reason to believe that utopia, if it can’t exist out in the world, it can exist in the mind.

Jesus did say his kingdom ‘was not of this world’, after all.

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Future Atomic City by Frank R. Paul

Culture wars

As I pondered the idea of a man-made utopia actually coming to fruition, one set of science fiction novels in particular came to mind: the Culture series, by Iain M. Banks. The first story was published in 1987, but in more recent times these novels have re-entered the limelight, namely due to a certain billionaire’s somewhat ironic appreciation for them. This glowing appraisal is ironic because Banks more or less intended his stories to be depictions of a post-scarcity, socialist utopia of the future—the kind with no need for billionaires, or indeed currency of any kind. ‘Space Communism’, as Banks’ fans often cheekily describe it. Someone who gives these stories a cursory skim might emerge on the other side believing Banks was some kind of technocrat intent on ushering in the age of AI superiority (which is likely what this billionaire in particular did), but this is a shallow read of the material. The hyper-advanced society featured in the Culture stories is certainly empowered by their technology, but they do not use it to indulge such base instincts as greed, enmity or megalomania. Rather, they have carefully constructed a social order where there is no hierarchy, no coercion, no want or need that goes unsatisfied. No one ever goes hungry; everybody has unfettered access to the pleasures of this life. Those pesky few who don’t ‘play by the rules’ aren’t punished or thrown in prison, but are patiently tolerated, chided and, more generally, put under social pressure to straighten themselves out. The doldrums of managing such a complex sociopolitical and socioeconomic structure are outsourced to the vastly intelligent and benevolent AIs called ‘Minds’, which—having no interest in domineering over their subjects/patrons—carry out their duties with faultless efficiency. This in turn affords total freedom to the citizens of the Culture to life their lives unimpeded by things like work, politics or civil administration. Indeed, whenever there is conflict, it is not the Culture itself that is the source of the trouble, but rather the other, less advanced civilizations that populate the galaxy and stir up controversies. These unenlightened barbarians, for one reason or another, cannot abide the utopian ideals of the Culture; many of the plotlines in this series focus on the ethical dilemmas that arise from these disparate worlds colliding.

What’s most interesting to me about these novels is that they offer a vision of what might be considered a workable model for a utopian society of the future. These kinds of stories are few and far between, at least to my knowledge. Sci-fi, when it does feature anything like a ‘utopia’, usually leans into the idea of how such laudable intentions went astray, resulting in hellish, dystopian nightmares. Either that, or they veer in exactly the opposite direction, serving up portents of apocalyptic proportions, where human civilization has ignored every warning and plunged headlong into the abyss. Banks’ Culture, then, is a refreshing take on what might lie ahead of us if we could just get our act together and stop killing one another. Who knows—we might actually be able to build something like a utopia for ourselves.

Does it seem naïve to think such a thing? I suppose it does, when we consider all that is wrong in the world today. We are immersed in an ocean of suffering, as I described in my previous piece. But if science fiction can use its predictive powers to imagine all the ways we might use our technology to destroy ourselves, I think it has equal power to show us how we might save ourselves from destruction. I can’t necessarily imagine what advancements exactly those will be—I think AI presents as many issues as it appears to solve, for instance. So that’s why we need to think a bit bigger, if we’re going to get anywhere. Rather than look at a specific development and try to argue how it might improve our lot one way or another over the course of time, I want to zoom out as far as we can go. This far out, we can’t differentiate between specific developments to weigh up their net benefits or drawbacks. We’re operating on the macro scale, not the micro. As we look out to the unfolding eons, the question now becomes: is it possible that, given enough time, will all of these small improvements (insofar as real improvements exist, and we’ll get to that) eventually amount to a perfect society—one that has eliminated all the awful things which plague us today? If not, why not? What is it that might hold us back from ever creating our own utopia, if time and ostensibly technology are not factors?

I won’t be arguing whether it’s likely that we construct a Culture of our own, just to be clear. The way things are looking now, I’d have to say it’s decidedly unlikely that we could achieve anything like the interstellar citizens of Banks’ novels did. But again, that idea is thinking too small, too immediate. We want to look to the temporal horizon, and then past it, if we can. We want to consider whether or not it is possible to create heaven-on-earth, given all that we know about the human story thus far, and exercising our ability to extrapolate it into the future.

There is a limit to how far we peer, it’s true. We can’t see past the end of the universe itself. I imagine beyond this point is God’s domain—a realm without time, a realm of eternity. Maybe it’s after all is said and done here on this mortal plane that God’s great plan to redeem all Creation to Himself reaches its final act, and we are restored to Him in heaven. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? If there is a heaven, it must exist outside of time. We have to keep marching at our steady pace until time itself ceases (if it ever does—the acceleration of the universe’s expansion might indicate that there is limitless time ahead of us, since time is so wrapped up in what we think of as ‘space’.) Only then will we be made ‘new bodies’ and enter into this heaven. Only then will the world be made new again.

Sounds lovely—this world we inhabit could really use a good scrubbing-up. I genuinely believe and hope that we have paradise waiting for us, and that light will overcome darkness in the end. But, in the meantime, what are we working toward? Why do we care about improving our world in the here and now, if heaven’s gates will be opening to usher us in soon enough? Wouldn’t it just make more sense to rest on our laurels? (And, indeed, Christians have been guilty of just that sort of thinking in the past—putting too much emphasis on preparing the soul for its journey into the beyond, and thus ignoring the very real suffering of people living today.)

That’s the question at the heart of this problem. We certainly do strive to make our lives better, and by the same token, our world a better place to live. We do it—it would seem—on our own, by our own power. Jesus is preparing us a place in his Father’s house, but for now, we’ve got to make do with this run-down old shanty we’ve been squatting in for the better part of 300,000 years. But isn’t it true that if we keep at it—filling in the holes here, laying new floor panels there, maybe inserting a couple of glass windows to keep the cold wind from ripping through the walls at night—we might end up with something a bit better than a hovel? Maybe, we could even build ourselves a palace.

Maybe we’d be able to say that we did it all ourselves. ‘Thanks, but no thanks, God. We’ve created our own heaven here on Earth. Whatever You’ve got in mind after it all goes dark, it can’t be any better than this.’

Sound about right?

Without a map

Let’s avoid putting words in God’s mouth and take a closer look at what He seems to say about all of this. In my pre-writing discussion on this topic with my dad (a pastor, in case you needed reminding) he laid it out stark and clear: Biblically speaking, yes, utopia can exist this side of heaven. I hadn’t expected that answer, but it turned out he was being a bit cheeky. Utopia can exist in this mortal plane because it already did.

He was talking about the Garden of Eden, of course.* If we accept that the story of Genesis, while symbolic, played out in some fashion with real human beings who lived real lives at some point in the distant past, then we would have a precedent for some kind of ‘perfect society’ existing on Earth. What might it have looked like? That’s a whole ‘nother essay topic, right there. I’ll only posit that it may have had something to do with humanity’s ‘innocence’—a childlike spirit that our earliest ancestors must have had when they first awakened to themselves and the world around them. These humans may have, for a time, lived in peace with each other, nature and God. (Not sure what I’m getting at? Read my piece Kubrick’s Monolith: A Plausible Genesis Account? and it might clarify my thinking on the issue.)

However, the Fall comes very quickly—basically page 2—and the story subsequently shifts to focus on God’s ongoing, painstaking effort to restore humanity and Creation. So, whatever utopia we might have once enjoyed, it’s long gone. It’s fair to say that it likely won’t be returning anytime soon, I think. And before you mention the Rapture, just know I’m way ahead of you. We’ll be cracking open that can of worms in due course!

So, we haven’t really gotten anywhere in answering our initial question. Sure, maybe an Earthly utopia did exist, somehow, but what about in our future? Could we build one for ourselves eventually? Here the story of Genesis points us in the opposite direction—no, we can’t, because we humans have become corrupted. Corrupt things can’t produce something perfect on their own; they’ve been compromised. Their intentions and methods are suspect. The Bible even tells us that we can’t comprehend just how corrupt we truly are. Here’s a particularly sobering passage for you to consider:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?

Jeremiah 17:9

It’s at this point that a good few of my readers are likely having a visceral reaction to some of the ideas I’ve mentioned, namely Fallenness. It doesn’t sit well with people, this idea of there being something terribly wrong with the hearts of all human beings. And no wonder. All human beings—even my harmless old grandmother? My neighbour who volunteers at the homeless shelter every weekend? Don’t tell me you think my newborn child is somehow born ‘wrong’!

I was having a great discussion here just a few weeks ago with an atheist fellow (great person, by the way) whom I’ve struck up a correspondence. This person cited the doctrine of Original Sin as being one of his chief complaints—scratch that, revulsions—about the Christian faith. What kind of religion would proclaim a good and loving God who curses the world He created to suffer and die? Who curses the souls of innocent children, dooms them to suffer and fail?

I mention these things because I recognize they often come from a place of honesty. It is very hard to grasp the role of evil in our lives. We know how real it is, but we can’t seem to figure out who’s to blame for it. Or, we think we know, and we’re very unhappy about how little justice there seems to be. People who level criticisms at Christian thinking on these topics have every right to do so, and more often than not, are coming at it from an angle that I think God Himself would approve of. Why do we tolerate so much suffering? Why equivocate and obfuscate about who deserves what, and who doesn’t? Christians especially. Shouldn’t Christian people be leading the charge in terms of correcting earthly injustices? If they’re not, just what is their religion worth?

Not a lot, if it isn’t countering the forces of evil at work in the world. I hope that’s not an audacious claim to make. If Christian faith is to be worth anything, it should be worth something here—right now, in this world! It should be a shining light that burns away the darkness and leads others to safety, grace and peace. ‘Storing up treasures in heaven’? This is done by sharing treasures on Earth; by loving one’s neighbour, by visiting the prisoner, by clothing the needy, by feeding the hungry. And, I’m sorry to say, but Christians have not exactly been leading by example. I’m painting with a very wide brush, I know, but come on. Seriously. As a group, Christians are just as guilty of failing to represent God’s loving nature as anyone else (and the worst part is, we should know better!) Remember the famous quote:

I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Mahatma Ghandi

I’m not bringing these things up to castigate Christians of the global church, but to highlight an important truth. We aren’t perfect. We don’t even fully grasp how imperfect we are. And those of us who should know, often don’t as as if we do. So, if we’re wondering if we have it in ourselves to build a perfect future society where everyone is loved, where there are no prisoners, where there is no nakedness (unless it’s the perfectly innocent, Garden of Eden kind?), where there is no hunger, we can be quite certain that, no, we don’t.

We need outside help.

We need our ‘hearts of stone’ to be replaced with ‘hearts of flesh’.

This is where some of the New Testament ideas become really important. The Apostle Paul writes a lot about the idea of repentance in his epistles. In essence, he shows us that God has made the help we humans need available—the help to understand right from wrong, to avoid temptation, to stand up for justice and truth. To love one another, essentially. To be changed into people who are capable of such love. With God’s intervention, we can be better than what we are. The divine spirit that is in us, that animates us, that is us can be redeemed and turned to the good. What it takes is a recognition of the ‘Fallenness’ within us—a genuine grasp of how we have gone astray, how we need outside help—and then a commitment to change.

Nobody ever said it would be easy. But it would be impossible without God. And that would make sense, if God is actually God. By definition, God must be the ultimate source of all that is good, noble, true and beautiful. God is love. If you aren’t oriented towards the highest good, then you must be oriented toward something else—and that something else can’t be the highest good, the source of good. That seems like a pathway toward something other than ‘ultimate good’. A road to lesser good, then. A road which then forks, and forks again. Before you know it, you’re far off in the wilds, lost; nothing to guide you and no sense of direction. You thought yourself a trailblazer, but what you need now—what you always needed—is a compass to reorient you. And, if perfect good exists, then there’s really only one direction worth heading in.

The arc bends toward justice

Thus far, my conjecture may have come across as quaint or overly idealistic. I may not have appropriately reckoned with the sordid state of affairs in the world today to have convinced you that I take the issues seriously. And I get it, I really do—when I was first thinking about this topic, I started from a position of questioning whether any real progress has been made at all in improving the human condition over the course of our entire history. We’ve made technological improvements, of course, but have we made moral ones? How can I say with a straight face that the world has never been better when there are still so many facing starvation, deprivation, racism and gender-based violence, sexual exploitation, and any number of other great evils?

I don’t know if we’ll ever be rid of those wicked things, to be honest. But despite them, I do believe that moral progress is possible. I believe that we have already progressed a great deal. Take the issue of slavery, for instance. It’s certainly the case that slavery still exists in the modern day, albeit by different names: indentured servitude or human trafficking. There are untold thousands, even hundreds of thousands for whom this unconscionable evil defines their lives. Some might scoff at the idea that slavery was ever ‘defeated’—sure, we might not have the Atlantic Slave Trade anymore, and the Romans might not still be selling their own children into slavery, but slavery itself is still very much a force shaping reality as we know it. Evil has simply morphed alongside us, or rather, morphed along with us, borne in the same wicked hearts that spawned every other terrible thing ever done on this Earth.**

And yet… While none of that is untrue, it doesn’t account for the changes we have witnessed as our societies have developed and changed across the centuries. To take the case of slavery once again, it is certainly the case that we have shifted our collective conceptualization of slavery from one of normality to abnormality—and indeed, even abhorrence. We have grown in moral stature since the times of the Romans. We recognize and see how evil this practice is, and we work—imperfectly, of course—to stamp it out across the globe. Simply put, we don’t see the issue the same way anymore. I wouldn’t say that we ‘know more’ now than we did then, because I’d imagine that the Romans and the slave traders knew the things they were doing were causing harm; they just didn’t care and saw these slaves as less-than-human, and therefore unworthy of treatment as such. There’s something in that, too: even the Romans and the slavers recognized the value of a human life. They certainly treated their rulers and business partners with dignity and respect. What’s happened is that, in our current times, we’ve expanded the ‘human’ definition to include more people than our ancestors ever did.

So, that looks like progress, albeit of the slow and painstaking kind. But if progress is indeed possible, then shouldn’t that be cause for great relief and celebration? Recall our original question: if we were given enough time, does it stand to reason that we might eventually perfect ourselves? Keep building progress on top of progress, brick by brick, righting wrongs wherever we find them? Will we someday live like philosopher kings, steeped in cosmic wisdom and high-minded moral doctrines?

Ian M. Banks might like to think so. But there are two key human failings which the Culture does not or cannot adequately address:

1. Existential evil exists.

2. Human corruption exists.

I talked more about existential evil in my last piece Is Consciousness a Gift or a Curse?, so I won’t repeat myself here. The issue of human corruption I believe I have outlined sufficiently already. The sum total is that these two factors—both of which are rooted in the metaphysical reality which gives structure to the local reality we inhabit—act as obstacles to achieving moral perfection which we cannot overcome on our own. Any human attempt to construct utopia is by necessity doomed if it does not take into account how to deal with the fallibility and rebelliousness of the human heart (let alone the cosmic forces seeking to disrupt God’s good designs for His Creation). And, if it did by, say, transforming us into something transhuman, thereby eliminating the risk of corruption (I’m thinking along the lines of genetically altering humans so that they can’t think for themselves and make bad decisions), it would raise a pertinent, troubling question: would we even be human anymore?

Let’s get more grounded with this so I can show you what I mean. We can look at the Culture to see how this ostensibly utopian society isn’t really viable when we reckon with human fallibility in a serious manner. The Culture operates as ‘perfectly’ as it does because it assumes that humans, once they have everything they could want or need, will cease to fight, compete, argue, steal, denigrate, or just generally become disagreeable toward one another (and their environment). I think it’s fair game to imagine a futuristic society where advanced technologies have made resource scarcity a thing of the past, and every living being has total freedom to pursue whatever pleasures they so desire. The problem is that even if 99.99% of the Culture’s population is participating in this system in good faith, it only takes one person to ruin it for everyone. One bad seed spoils the entire civilizational bunch. One bite from the forbidden tree changes the entire course of human history.

It doesn’t matter what motivates this choice for evil over good. The point is that where choice is freely available, as we are to believe it is in the world of the Culture, the choice to destroy it all is, by definition, available as well. ‘Some men just want to watch the world burn,’ to borrow a phrase from a wise butler. A utopia that attempts to cater for every human need in the hopes of staving off widespread anarchy is missing the fundamental point, at least from Christian perspective: you can’t solve the Problem of Evil by giving people enough food, clothes and medicine to satisfy their earthly desires. The trouble lies deeper than that. People have heavenly desires, too. And hellish ones.

If Banks wrote the Culture series to be an exploration of Space Communism, we should acknowledge that, if history is anything to go by, Communist societies are remarkably susceptible to bad actors. Lenin envisioned a Russian state that served the vast working population in equitable and egalitarian terms; Stalin seized the reins and transformed his dream into a nightmare. There are Christian examples as well: think about how the Puritan movement, originally motivated by the laudable goals of religious freedom and spiritual revival, devolved into narrow-minded, legalistic zealotry. Think about Calvin’s Geneva, where the effort to establish a ‘model Christian society’ ended up resorting to draconian enforcement techniques when it turned out that its citizenry wasn’t altogether keen to strenuously observe austere religiosity. These examples reveal how no human-designed system can bring about true paradise, despite its best intentions. The problems we need to solve to ‘get back to Eden’—existential evil, internal personal evil—are beyond our powers.

We have to remember that we were never meant to be morally independent; we were created to have dependence on God. ‘Fallenness’ is what happens when we live outside of this purpose. It is a kind of brokenness, but not one in which we are hapless victims. We are willful, complicit. We participate in this brokenness every time we lie, cheat, steal, hate, resent, or act selfishly. We fail to love one another almost daily.

Thank goodness there’s Someone out there who cares enough to fix us. To fix this broken, unloving world we’ve made. We might not see it in our lifetime—okay, we almost definitely won’t—but we can have hope. Hope for the utopia that is to come, which is not of our making, and therefore faultless. And while we wait for the house to be prepared? We can make ourselves busy by partnering with the Spirit of God and fixing what’s broken here on Earth. We’ve done it before, and I think we’re even doing it right now; both in small, personal ways, and in macroscopic ways that will shape the societies of tomorrow.

So, take some courage, knowing that we’ve good things ahead of us. Take some satisfaction as well, knowing how much ground we’ve covered to get where we are. Just don’t get complacent. Don’t stop fighting ‘til the fighting’s done.

And it won’t be done until, one day, the bending arc comes down to meet you right where you are. Something to look forward to, I suppose.

A utopia not of our own making, but of God’s.

*Side note: My goodness, how often we revisit this story! It truly is jam-packed with meaning. We keep coming back to the Garden, again and again, and we always seem to distill something new… It’s no wonder to me that the story has survived as long as it has. I imagine it will continue to be told long after we’re gone.

**That strikes me an interesting thing to note: homo sapiens, it would seem, are the only species to have ever committed immoral acts, because they’re the only ones (that we know of) who have any awareness of morality of all. We are singularly guilty of every evil thing that has ever happened in the history of the planet!

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This is the thread that binds us together: the pain of existence, the awareness of life not being as it should be. You’ve felt it as much as I. We’re both human—we both feel pain, anguish, fear, frustration. We know what it is to have our hopes dashed. We know what it is to look out upon the world and shake our heads at the state of it. Murder, suicide, rape, torture, war, and worse besides. Unspeakable tragedy abounds. Who can possibly account for the travesty that is this earthly existence we’ve created for ourselves—this cesspool of a society, this sinkhole of a civilization? It’s no wonder that so many people don’t believe in God, or a deity of any kind. What sort of omnipotent and supposedly omnibenevolent being would allow for such suffering to run rampant, especially when we’re meant to believe that said god or gods do, in fact, love their creation? That’s a tall order, I think, to believe a thing like that. Anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous.

It’s enough to make any person question the very existence of the universe itself. What’s the point of any of this existing, when it can be so, so bad?

And, perhaps more crucially, who’s to blame for it all?

I hope I don’t come across as being unnecessarily maudlin. While I may have indulged in some of histrionics thus far, I’ll justify myself by noting the sheer scale, depth and breadth of human depravity. This is the way the world is. It’s the way we’ve always been. We do wrong to refuse to reckon with the darkness inside of ourselves. Don’t mistake my meaning: I’m not writing these things to give myself over to despair or misanthropy, or to argue that you should too. But if we are to discuss the cause of human suffering with any degree of appropriate seriousness, then I feel we must begin by solemnly acknowledging just how real and pervasive it is. The suffering of this world should not be held in abstract.

It seems to me to be a simple fact of life that all humans will suffer, one way or another. Some of us will bear quite a lot of suffering; others who are more fortunate may skirt by, enduring only the occasional bump and scrape. I’d count myself among the latter, judging by the life I’ve led thus far. But who’s to say what’s coming down the road for me?

I’d thought that question to be merely rhetorical when I first typed it some days ago. Revisiting it now as I continue drafting this essay, its poignancy has been brought into sharper focus. Just this past evening, I received startling news from my father concerning a tragic incident that occurred to a longstanding member of his congregation. Regular readers will know that my dad, a pastor, has been a key behind-the-scenes figure for this publication. The inception of each article I write is based upon a conversation I have with him some week prior, where we discuss what is perhaps best called ‘speculative theology’. The discussion that serves as the basis for this article took place over a fortnight ago—little did I know then that these themes of human suffering and the philosophical Problem of Evil would rear their ugly heads in such a clear and present manner.

Just yesterday, my dad learned that this member of his congregation—a faithful attendee of the church for over three decades—was brutally murdered outside of her home, in broad daylight, while tending to her front garden. A young person approached her and, after a brief conversation, stabbed her to death.

There was no cause. There was no reason. The assailant and victim were not known to one another. It was utterly senseless, horrific violence. It was as stark as evil can be.

And now she’s gone. The question that must be running through everyone’s mind who knew her, including myself, must be…why? What kind of world do we live in where this sort of thing is possible? We think ourselves safe and secure in our own homes, in our own front yards, and yet something like this can happen. Random acts of devastation. Hatred and filth bubbling up the surface and spilling over, lashing out blindly, scarring and maiming the innocent. None of us stand for this, yet it happens. Who allows it happen? Who’s got the power to stop it from happening?

That should be God, shouldn’t it? If it’s anybody’s responsibility to curtail evil and protect the vulnerable, isn’t it His? So where do all those believers get off, Christians and otherwise, saying that God’s got everything under control? How can they look themselves in the mirror and say, ‘I believe God has a plan for my life, and it is good,’ when at any moment, for no reason, their lives can be snatched away, or they can become afflicted by some terrible illness, or their loved ones can suddenly die in a tragic accident, or any number of equally terrible things that befall us here on this hellish planet can happen, without rhyme or reason?

Am I being sensational? I’m sorry. I simply want to convey that the people who ask these questions through gritted teeth, angry and frustrated and dismayed and incensed at the injustice of it all are exactly right to feel as they do. If anything, I think Christians and people of faith too often dismiss the reality of suffering in the world as transient or somehow meaningless. Isn’t it fair to say that the idea of a perfect afterlife in heaven just doesn’t cut it when people have to square off against their own mortality every day of their earthly lives?

It’s enough to make a person wonder if we’re better off knowing all that we know; knowing about death, about pain. Knowing how to inflict it upon other people. We’ve a consciousness, yes—a truly amazing capacity to understand the world and ourselves. But it hurts us, doesn’t it, being conscious of just how awful the world can be? Of how awful we can be to one another?

So what was God thinking, giving us this knowledge—this consciousness? Is it a gift or a curse?

Strangely enough, I think a pulpy sci-fi novel from 1987 might point us in the right direction.

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Uncredited cover artwork from the 1970 edition of Theodore Sturgeon’s A Touch of Strange

An alien named Jerry

It’s a testament to how much I love a book if I read it twice, let alone thrice. There aren’t many stories I can say that for, but Michael Crighton’s Sphere is one. I don’t specifically recall how I came to possess my copy—likely picked up on a whim from a dusty secondhand store shelf because the artwork caught my teenage eye—but I do remember reading it, loving it, and reading it again. I remember being absolutely thrilled to discover that there was a movie version when I got a DVD copy as a gift in my stocking one Christmas. (Great gift—thanks, Mom.) I’d credit both the book and the movie with introducing me to my greatest literary fascination: the existential sci-fi thriller. I gather that the movie wasn’t well received and hasn’t left much of an impression on the public consciousness, but to me, that’s an injustice in need of rectification. Jurassic Park wasn’t Crighton’s only work of genius. Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson embodied the characters I’d read about so well, and the director—Barry Levinson—did a top notch job of capturing the pervading sense of dread and mystery that hooked me from the opening page.

All that to say, Sphere has been among my most favorite sci-fi works for so long that I’ve had near decades to ruminate upon it. It’s only been relatively recently that the ideas which I aim to explore here have finished gestating and are, I think, mature enough to be shared publicly. So, for you to be able to follow along, I will have to lay out the fundamental plot elements of the story plainly—including the ending.

I suppose this is my roundabout way of saying: SPOILER ALERT. And it’s a warning you should heed, because I believe both the book and movie are worth experiencing for yourself!

The essence of the novel is this: a group of American scientists are recruited in a top-secret military operation and whisked away to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They initially believe there has been a plane crash, and the main character—a psychologist—is under the impression he’s being brought out to offer psychiatric support to the victims.

However, it is soon revealed that the airplane crash story is simply a cover. The military’s real purpose in bringing them all to this remote location is to explore the wreckage of a spacecraft at the bottom of the ocean.

An alien spacecraft. Or, so it would appear.

Together, the scientists descend to a hidden underwater facility at the ocean’s base and begin to investigate. One of their earliest discoveries is that the craft is not (huge spoiler warning, again) actually of interstellar origin; it turns out that it’s of human design, and it has originated from the distant future. Through a process that we needn’t bother explaining here, the craft was catapulted into the past—as in, the scientists’ current time period—and has lain dormant ever since. There are no crew members, save the skeletal remains of some of the commanding officers. What happened to these interstellar travelers? The mystery only deepens.

Eventually, the scientists stumble upon what they believe to be the source of the calamity. A strange, unearthly artifact is discovered in the ship’s cargo hold. A sphere of perfect make. Its contours and dimensions are utterly precise, as if designed by godlike beings. One by one, as the scientists study this artifact, they are ‘invited’ inside of it. What they encounter within the sphere is never made entirely clear, but it changes them. Or rather, it changes part of them. Each of them emerges from the sphere none the wiser as to what has occurred, and so they fail to realize the ‘gift’ they’ve been granted. More on that in a moment.

Meanwhile, as they retreat to the undersea laboratory and conduct further experiments and investigations, they receive a message from an entity calling itself ‘Jerry’. Jerry has hacked into their communication systems and is apparently eager for some human company to converse with. They surmise that whatever Jerry is, he must have been inside the Sphere and has now somehow been let out. Shortly thereafter, they came under attack by an impossibly large monstrosity out in the pitch black depths. A squid, a jellyfish, a kraken—it’s never entirely clear just what is hunting them, but it terrorizes them and wrecks the entire facility. Several of the team members are killed over the course of the novel as they struggle to fend off these attacks. The horror only intensifies when the remaining survivors come to understand that it is Jerry who has ‘manifested’ the terror, and is now using his enigmatic powers to play god.

This cannot go on, or the scientists will all surely die. Yet confronting Jerry will not be so simple, as they come to understand that Jerry is not so much an alien entity as he is them. Jerry is the personification of their own unconscious minds unleashed upon the world, capable of making their dreams into nightmarish reality. The scientists realize they are locked in a battle with themselves—somehow, the Sphere has awakened the hidden parts of their minds, the unspeakable urges that they (and we) bury deep, deep down and refuse to let see the light of day.

There is only one way to stop the horror. The last remaining scientists, armed with the knowledge that they are torturing themselves with their own psychic disorder, resolve to ‘forget’ the power they have gained upon encountering the Sphere. One of them even remarks that, whatever gift the Sphere was meant to be for the intelligent species that discovered it drifting out in space, human beings are not ready for it. We are too underdeveloped, too ill-disciplined to master ourselves as needed to best make use of the Sphere’s abilities. We could make the world a paradise with nothing more than a thought, but we dream of war and famine and death. Some sickly part of us longs for blood. The terror that destroyed the undersea facility and caused the deaths of so many of their crew members was borne from their own disturbed consciousnesses. If it was evil, it was only so because they were evil first. And so, if they are to stop it, they must reject the mantle of godhood altogether—it is more than any of them can bear. They agree to do this just as the military returns to pluck them out of the sea and interrogate them about what happened to the multi-billion dollar, state-of-the-art research facility that was just blown to smithereens in a self-destruct sequence, as well as the priceless alien spacecraft caught in the blast radius. The recently forgetful survivors, of course, have no answers for them.

Not a bad yarn, no? Even though I’ve spoiled most of the story here, I’d still recommend reading it. But with all that ground covered, I imagine you’re eager for us to turn our attention to the question at hand: is human consciousness a gift or a curse?

Well, if the story of Sphere can be any lesson to us, it may be both.

Love versus unlove

A different way of framing the focal question might be, ‘Do we suffer because we know too much?’ We human beings are conscious in a way that appears to be unique; indeed, truly one-of-a-kind. Animals are conscious, yes, but not in the sense that we are. I’d wager that even the panpsychists (those who believe everything in the universe is conscious in some form, as ‘consciousness’ is rooted in a shared, collective experience that is then filtered by individual perception) would still admit that there is something special about how we humans experience the world. A bit of plankton might live and die, but it’s hard to state that it suffered in its life, given the limited awareness with which it perceives the world. Scale that up to shrimp, to shark, to sheepdog; do any of these creatures suffer as we do? Can any of them truly grasp the sheer depth and impenetrable darkness of the abyss as we can?

From a Biblical standpoint, the answer would appear to be ‘no’. The Genesis story offers us the clearest answers as to just how the universe came to be what it is, and why mankind’s relationship with this world (and his Creator) is so fraught. That isn’t to say that these answers are straightforward by any stretch. I’ve said before that I am not a literalist and don’t believe the proper approach to take to studying these stories is to assume that they must be taken at face value. Rather, I believe one must accept the stories for what they are—ancient oral traditions that were story-crafted and mythologized after millennia of telling, retelling, transformation, and cultural adaptation. I don’t for a minute contend that these stories are therefore untrue; instead, I uphold that, similar to reading a legal document, one must search for the ‘spirit’ of the story rather than obsess over the letter of it.

So, then: what ‘spirit’ is at work when we read about God making Man in His image? We know and have examined previously here that God intended humanity to have dominion over the Earth. There have been many distortions of this idea in Christianity over the centuries, but what it means in essence is that God intended humans to be the ultimate good stewards of his whole Creation. It must be the case that we were capable of this sort of stewardship—tending to the plants, animals, and pursuing harmony to live in balance and harmony in the natural world—because God clearly gave us this authority, not any other creature (leaving aside the idea that there might be Created aliens living on other planets…read more here if that topic sounds interesting to you!) How do we know that it is we who bear this special responsibility, and we alone? God imbued us with the ‘Spirit of Man’—the breath he breathed into the clay to animate it, the pneuma—which elevates us from mere beasts.

Here we might pause to acknowledge that none of this is very scientific. So, let’s substitute this pneuma for something which scientists take for granted, though in actual fact, they struggle to explain in purely scientific terms: human consciousness. I forwarded a theory in my last essay that fully embraces the science of human evolution, but postulates the spark for our astounding advancement in cognitive capability—an event referred to as the ‘Great Leap Forward’ by anthropologists—was some manner of divine intervention in the very, very long evolutionary chain.

But we won’t repeat any of that here. We’ll focus on the idea that consciousness is this unique attribute that demarcates God’s stewards from the things they are meant to steward. To be effective at their job, the stewards need to have some self-awareness; they need to know who they are, what they’re doing and why. So God gifted us consciousness of these things, that we might live out our lives and fulfill our purpose as part of his great and good Creation.

Except, one doesn’t need to look far to know that we haven’t turned out to be the best of stewards. Not only have we grossly neglected our responsibilities to duly nurture and protect the Earth and its bounties, we have also neglected to nurture and protect one another. How do we account for this abject failure? We can’t attribute it to God, because if we did, then that would mean that He’d made a mistake or acted unfairly. And if those things were true, then He would be fallible. And a fallible God is no god at all—He’s only human. So, we can’t pursue that line of inquiry and hope to arrive at our answer (though many do, and I don’t blame them for trying.)

Is the fault our own, then? Isn’t that what ‘sin’ is all about?

Here’s where the picture gets more complicated. That spirit I just mentioned—our pneuma, our consciousness—seems to be corrupted. The issue appears to be that, though we were created with the intention to have dominion, we were never intended to exercise this authority independently. God has always desired to partner with us in Creation; to delight in His children delighting in the world, as a good father does when his children succeed in life. There’s a good reason why God refers to himself as a ‘Heavenly Father’: parenthood is the best analogy we have for understanding our relationship to the divine. We have inherited a great gift, being born with near-infinite potential; we’re practically gods in our own right in terms of the immeasurable depths of our own souls. But, gifted as we are, we are not God. We have limited understanding and limited capability on our own. Like children, we are meant to rely on Him to handle the things we can’t handle. Children shouldn’t need to worry about paying taxes or ensuring the car is properly gassed up or that the insurance is sorted out or anything else like that. These things are the domain of the adult—the one who has greater awareness, and thus, greater responsibility. A child’s domain is to delight in the world, and to grow and to thrive. That’s what God intended for us. But, like children, we desired something more.

Each of us has made decisions that, when we really drill down into it, were selfish. We chose to prioritize our own needs and wants over those of others. In a word, we chose ‘unlove’. Unlove is the opposite of love—it is the refusal to give of oneself for the benefit of another, expecting nothing in return. It is also the giving of oneself for another, expecting something in return. In either case, it’s not who we are meant to be. It’s beneath us. We can choose love, all the time (or, in theory, we can…human weakness is something we’ll address in a moment) so when we don’t choose love, we have failed in our ultimate purpose. God is love, let’s remember. Love is the ultimate reason for the universe’s existence. The world is our playground to love and be loved. It sounds like paradise when you put it like that! This is the gift we have received; being conscious is precisely what enables us to experience love in all its beauty and wonder.

But of course you will know, dear reader, that this world is anything but a paradise. Our consciousness has proven to be a double-edged sword because, for every good, loving thing it awakens us to, it also makes us excruciatingly aware of just how painful the lack of love can be. It appears to be as much a curse as anything else.

So where did this capacity for ‘unlove’ come from? How did the power to choose whether to love or not love come to rest with us? Were we doomed from the start, being given this capacity but not the self-control required to master it and channel it for the good, all the time?

It comes back to the idea of independence versus dependence. Unlove happens when we choose how to use our gift for ourselves, according to our own priorities and desires. The principles of love lay out plainly how the gift ought to be used—love your neighbour as yourself. When Christ walked the Earth, he made clear that our neighbour meant everyone on the entire planet. Everyone was a child of God. Everyone was equally deserving of perfect love, all the time. But of course, we humans have a lot of different ideas about that. These people deserve love; those ones don’t. I think this is right, or wrong, or I don’t care; it doesn’t matter what they think. And on and on it goes.

An ocean of suffering

I don’t think the fault lies with us, exclusively. The Creator’s intent for is was good; the gift itself we received was good, but a malign influence kicked in and hijacked it. This influence persuaded us that the gift of consciousness could be used in pursuit of our own ends. We could chase after wealth, power, prestige, harnessing our unmatched intelligence to construct for ourselves devices and schemes that would accomplish these goals. We invented war machines to devastate our enemies, set up the stock market to finagle economic systems for the benefit of select few, idolized celebrity influencers as they gloated in their opulence and made us feel like cretins in comparison. In all things, we cared only about how we might push ahead of the competition to benefit ourselves.

In essence, we failed to love as we ought to love.

But we should remember that we are a young species, and there is much more to this world than just ourselves. Though we hold a special position within Creation, we are not all of Creation. There are spiritual forces at work which predate us—or rather, being timeless, have existed before either us or the universe itself ever did. I won’t go too far down this road, as I am far from an expert on such matters (not that I’m making myself out to be an expert on much of anything) but it does appear to be the case that angels, so far as we understand them, have independence of being just as we do. We can read in the Genesis account of how the influence of Evil, personified in the snake in the Garden, found its way to us, not the other way around.

Again, I don’t want to get too deep into the symbology or *shudder* demonology, because I can’t claim to know my right from my left about such things, but it seems safe enough to say that the potential for ‘wrong choice’ existed before we humans were ever on the scene. If Evil truly is a cosmic force—and in a moment, I’ll make an argument that it is—then it exists everywhere, has existed forever, and I suppose, will exist in some sense until the end of time. We, being temporal creatures relegated to a mortal existence, live under its influence, not above it. Whatever the moment in time was when we received the gift and became conscious, the potential for Evil was already there. The snake was already in the Garden; we didn’t create him. Now, with us humans freshly awakened and full of promise, the snake saw an opportunity to open up a new front in the war between Good and Evil—the human soul.

If each of us pauses and reflects on how it came to be that we committed those selfish, unloving acts we’re all guilty of, doesn’t it make sense that we were, in some way, acting under a bad influence? We didn’t make those choices in a vacuum; somewhere along the way, as we’d grown and matured and developed our understanding of the world, we’d come to realize what a good thing is, versus an evil thing. We had to learn to tell the two apart by observing, listening, and taking it all in. Being influenced. Gaining knowledge! Yes, there were the individual, specific acts that taught us right from wrong—lessons from our parents, our teachers, our friends—but each of them had only internalized those lessons from outside influences, which can then be traced back to other influences, ad nauseum. We could even go so far back as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil itself. Whatever that ‘tree’ was, it was the moment we claimed more than we could handle; when we took up the mantle of godhood, believing ourselves to be knowledgeable enough to distinguish between right and wrong for ourselves. But, knowledgeable as we are, we don’t know everything.

What I’m trying to illustrate is the impossible complexity of it all—the scale, the depth of all that makes us who we are and explains how we’ve gotten here. Insofar as we are ‘conscious’ of ourselves, the world, and how we should behave in it, we are only aware of an infinitesimally small fraction of all that there is to be aware of. All of the forces shaping and moving the world toward good ends are beyond our comprehension, just as the ones dragging it down into darkness are. Each of us only ever gets to play our little, tiny part in the much greater whole. A single thread woven into a tapestry that tells the sublime, heart-wrenching story of humanity.

I’ll be blunt: suffering exists because metaphysical evil exists. (Evil being unlove in all its shades and degrees.) There is the personal evil that we experience when another person harms us, or perhaps, when we harm someone else. These little sufferings we experience are very real, and we carry them with us like scars. But taken together, they are mere drops in the ocean of suffering that all of us are at risk of drowning in. Human suffering exists on a cosmic scale if we adopt a grand enough view. We’ve a tendency to conceptualize evil foremost as ‘sin’, and a very specific, personalized sin at that. We often frame it as our personal failings, and sometimes even equate these failings to the consequences we suffer personally. But we are caught up in something much, much greater than ourselves. The universe we inhabit is bleaker and more chaotic than we grasp. We often try to use logic to work out a chain of events to explain the terrible things that happen to us. In doing do, we commit the same mistakes as many ancient Israelites, who believed that when calamity befell a family, it was because God was punishing them for sinning. Christ challenged this notion when he healed the blind man whom everyone assumed ‘deserved’ his suffering, saying:

Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

John 9:3

At first glance, it might appear that death reigns supreme. A man kills his neighbour in cold blood, setting off an unforeseeable chain of events where brother is turned against brother, sister against sister. An eye is exchanged for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As generations go by, those embroiled in the conflict lose track of just what started it, of who deserved what, of why terrible things keep happening to seemingly uninvolved, innocent people. Suffering indeed spirals out forever, begetting more and more of itself for every soul whom it touches—even if they had nothing to do with where it all began. It can be likened to a morass, trapping us all and threatening to drag us below, to choose out the potential in us to resist and to choose to love in response to hate.

What good news, then, that God makes it possible for us to love! He’s working to pull us out of the muck, to redeem the world and bring beauty out of the ashes. Even in the darkest hours, God sees the good that can be drawn out. Consider the story of Noah, as we have before, whom God recognized as the one righteous person on Earth. For one person alone, God spared his Creation ultimate destruction. If the ancient stories are anything to go by, we should be appalled at the violence and depravity that human beings were exhibiting toward one another. Had we seen everything that God had seen, we might have easily agreed with His assessment: burn it all down! This world is beyond saving!

But of course, most of us don’t hold this view. We know the intrinsic value of a human life. We see the good and the bad, and we choose to focus on the good. We know the power of love to conquer all. So does God, thankfully. Even a lifetime of suffering cannot extinguish the innate dignity of the human spirit.

So, are we blessed to know this—that love is the greatest force in the universe, and that we can partake freely in it? Or are we cursed with the knowledge of how it feels to be unloved?

The unripened fruit

I think Michael Crighton’s Sphere, intentionally or not, portrays this conundrum of consciousness as a blessing and a curse in clear detail. The scientists who serve as the story’s main protagonists are human beings who receive an amazing gift; they are empowered to be as gods, capable of bending reality to their every whim. At face value, this seems a wonderful thing, because these scientists—being fair-minded, educated, well-meaning people—now have the means to make everything perfect. If they willed it, they could correct every wrong in the world. They could construct a utopia, if only they had the will (and intelligence) to do so.

But they don’t. Instead they are haunted by their failings, and they succumb to paranoia and malevolence. The potential for good is squandered. Is it their fault that this happens? It’s complicated—a bit of a yes and no. The scientists are not gods, and do not have full control over their own faculties. Their worst fears and urges get the better of them. I didn’t get into an specifics in my summary earlier, but it is the case that their leader—the psychologist—committed some immoral acts with a younger, vulnerable female member of the team. A fair amount of the suffering he endures is resultant from the horrific manifestations he is forced to encounter because of his lingering feelings over this indecency. The gift he has received has been turned against him and others, not because the gift itself is evil, but because he is a fallible person who cannot consistently choose to do right over wrong.

What is the solution, then, for these poor creatures caught in a trap not entirely of their own making, but certainly perpetuated by their own personal failings? They must relinquish their control—or lack thereof—over to one who can wield it. In this case, it is the Sphere itself. Whatever alien species designed it intended it to be used for good. The scientists even remark about how ‘perfect’ the Sphere is when they first behold it. But the receivers have realized that they are not equipped to utilize their gift on their own; they lack the wisdom and insight to truly exert mastery over it, and so give over their authority to one who can. One scientist at the end of the story mentions how humanity is not ready for this kind of power, and so they agree to ‘forget’ that they ever had it at all.

Not a spot-on analogy, exactly, but very close. The gift offered by a vastly advanced intelligent race of aliens (ie. God) is offered freely to humanity, but in ignorance and arrogance, ends up being is misused. It would be understandable for the humans who received it to say to their benefactors, ‘How could you do this? You’ve cursed us with more than we can bear!’ We might understand how they could even come to hate their gift, which has brought about such suffering for them. But even though the pain is very real, we shouldn’t lose sight of the truth—the gift is indeed a gift, if it only were to be used for good. To spurn it is to sink into despair and defeat, rather than rise above and pursue the good.

As the novel closes, Crighton leaves with the idea that perhaps one day, when humanity is ready and it has learned to govern itself properly, the gift might be received again. This time, it could be used as was intended: for the benefit of all, equally. An evolved, ascended humanity might be able to fully unlock its true potential with the help of the ones who have gone before, their great Sphere guiding us along our journey.

Is our consciousness, then, a kind a Sphere? Have we received a gift beyond even our own comprehension? Have we taken more than what was intended, reaching for the forbidden Tree and partaking of unripened fruit, elevating ourselves to a point where we have greater Knowledge than we have wisdom? Is this imbalance, then, the root of our suffering?

Perhaps the answer can be summed up with this simple observation: we know what death is, yet we lack the wisdom to avoid it. Too often we choose unlove over love, adding to the ocean that roils all around us.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. You have your gift. Don’t despise it—use it as it was intended.

Be conscious of what it is to love and be loved.

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But somewhere along the way, the silver screen lost its luster. The draw of the cinematic viewing experience waned. I grew tired, paralyzed even. I’ve hardly any interest in watching movies anymore, let alone going to the theater. When I contemplate what killed my desire, my suspicions inevitably turn towards Netflix. It was the first streaming service I adopted, and I think it changed me without my noticing. I stopped watching movies, and I started streaming series. Eventually, I stopped streaming series too (bar a few notable exceptions, like Severance). My enthusiasm for consuming new stories became blunted, deadened.

It was the abundance that did it. ‘Too much of a good thing’, to be sure. I was overwhelmed, inundated, smothered by the glut of ‘content’ that has become the predominant cultural production of the Information Era. A film wasn’t merely a film anymore. A series wasn’t a series. A video wasn’t a video, a game wasn’t a game; all of it gelled together to become a colossal, amorphous blob called ‘content’.

Now the prospect of scrolling through options on a streaming service causes me to convulse. I can see the gridwork of titles and thumbnails cascading before my eyes like the sickly green digits of The Matrix. I know that I can keep toggling forever, in any direction, but I will never reach the terminus. Is this progress? To have every possible human taste or whim catered for, to the point of exhaustion? Only a beast of truly limitless appetite could consume it all—a ravenous, world-eating wyrm. Is that what humanity has collectively become? Some might say that’s all we’ve ever been.

I find it paralyzing because, while the options might be limitless, my time is not. It matters what I choose to watch, because the moments I spend watching it I will never get back. Sitting down to consume some media either for entertainment or elucidation—well, all I can say is it had better be worth my while. And when I have access to so much, at the push of a button, how can I be certain that the choice I’ve made is indeed the best use of my precious time? How can I narrow the field and naturally select for the strongest, fittest specimens to stimulate my imagination and, perhaps, help me develop into a better, stronger specimen myself?

We produce an astounding amount of cultural artifacts. We’re practically drowning in the things. Almost all of them will fade from the public consciousness forever, sometimes almost immediately upon their release. They will be consumed and, I suppose, psychosocially excreted (pardon that unpleasant image). So when we sift through the morass and try to hold up the pieces of art that actually matter—that might stand a chance at outlasting not only us, but the voracious blob of Content itself; works that might one day have burrowed so deeply into the public consciousness that they will become myth and legend; stories by which we orient ourselves in the universe, as the ancients did with their tales of gods, heroes and demons—what stories will these be? Have we created any in the last generation? The last two generations? The last century?

I can think of at least one contender: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The choice of word ‘odyssey’ is fitting here, as it reminds us of Homer’s Odyssey—one of the greatest tales ever told. It is a grand narrative that buttresses our civilization and speaks to our deepest, most sacred idealizations of ourselves as human beings. I believe that 2001 is suitably epic in scale, scope, and ambition to be worthy of the name. It is, without a doubt, my favorite movie of all time. And yes, I include the twenty-minute long psychedelic fever dream at the end. And no, I don’t think it’s pretentious of me to say that. It is a movie that aspires to be more than just a movie; it is a story that has grander ambitions than merely to entertain or enthrall. It is the story of who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going. The journey of humanity through the cosmos, from our earliest moment to our last, is in the telling.

And to top it off, it just might be the most theologically compelling depiction of the Genesis account as it actually happened—in real time, in real space, with real people.

Or apes, I should say.

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Artwork by Paul Lehr, for the cover of Isaac Asimov’s The Stars, Like Dust

Humanity’s family tree

The opening segment to 2001: A Space Odyssey is not what you’d expect. If you haven’t watched it before, here’s a link. It’s about ten minutes long and there is no dialogue save for the cacophonic chattering of apes (insofar as you can consider that dialogue—and you might, but more on that later). You’d expect space stations and rocket ships and distant planets with a title like that, right? What’s with all the monkeys? Well, to know where we’re going, you first have to know where we’ve been.

This segment bears the subtitle ‘The Dawn of Man’. Kubrick begins our story right at the truest point any story can feasibly begin—the beginning of humanity itself. See, the apes we watch in these first few minutes scampering about, fending off leopard attacks and rival apes edging in on their territory, are not humans. But they are hominins.

Hang on: what’s the difference?

Great question. It’s something I’ve been aiming to educate myself more about in recent years. A fantastic book I’d recommend is Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harari. In it, Harari lays out the key findings of decades of anthropological research aiming at answering the question: who were our earliest ancestors and what were they like?

I should probably pause here to mention that, though I am a person of faith, I believe in evolution. Heck, using the word ‘belief’ seems rather inappropriate if we are to have any serious appreciation for science and its ability to inform us about the true workings of the natural world—a world which, being warm-blooded mammals of flesh and bone, includes us. I recognize that this can be a contentious issue, especially among Christian circles. That’s fine; I have no desire to make converts of anybody. If you’re unsure of my intentions, I’d direct you to my introductory piece, Welcome to the Pneumanaut, which I hope will assuage your fears that I am some sort of social media proselytizer spreading misinformation and heresy among the weak-minded masses. In truth, I’m just a person who really likes sci-fi and thinks it might have a thing or two to say to organized religion, particularly Christianity. I am, in essence, attempting to synthesize seemingly disparate systems of thought in what I hope might be new and exciting ways; ways which may or may not lead to deeper understandings of the nature of the world, of God, or of ourselves. But I make no claims to know the ‘truth’ any more than you do, dear reader. I’m looking under rocks and stones hoping to find the Meaning Of It All, just like you.

But I digress. Where was I…? Hominins! Yes. Hominids are members of the family Hominidae, which encompasses all ancient and modern-day great apes. Within that group you can find humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans. Hominins, then, are the subgroup within that group which includes only the various species of humans which have existed upon the Earth at one point or other.

Nowadays, it’s only us. There’s still much scientific confusion as to why we emerged as the lone survivors of the collective human race but it’s likely to do with brain size, superior adaptation techniques and likely, a certain penchant for bloodthirstiness. We Homo sapiens, however, are not the only humans to have ever existed. There are our close cousins the Neanderthals, the original inhabitants of what is now Europe and Asia, who lived somewhere between 400,000 and 40,000 years ago. There’s Homo erectus, a grandparent of sorts, who lived 1.8 million years ago to as recently as 110,000 years ago. Quite recently there was the discovery of the Denisovans in Russia, known to have interbred with both the Neanderthals and ourselves. To date, there is a certain percentage of Homo sapiens DNA which can be traced back to these other human species as a result of our promiscuity.

These alone only scratch the surface of our long and storied history as an ever-evolving species. There would have been even more ancient species from which we and our human brethren descended, but we’ve not yet unlocked the secrets of our DNA, nor found substantial archaeological evidence by which to identify them. But they surely exist as ghosts, their influence echoing across the eons to influence and shape us in the here and now. Our human bodies are the products of millennia upon millennia of painstaking evolution and adaptation to the harshest of environs. We became bipedal, we lost our tails, we grew opposable thumbs. This is to say nothing of our brains, which developed at such astonishing rates that we have become, it would seem, the most intelligent species ever to have existed, at least as far as this planet is concerned—even more so than our Neanderthal cousins who, despite having larger brains in terms of sheer mass, failed to branch out and explore beyond their frosty northern Eurasian climes.

Our brains are truly miraculous. Famed physicist Michio Kaku tells us this about our precious little slab of grey matter:

The brain is a world unto itself, populated by a trillion neurons, each connected to ten thousand others. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated thing in the known universe.

The human brain is so complicated, even, that Evolutionary Theory cannot adequately explain just how it came to be. (I say theory because, yes, evolution is still a scientific theory rather than a fact. It’s hard to scientifically prove something which takes millions upon millions of years to occur. That does not, however, mean it ought to be discounted or not taken seriously, including by people of faith.) Now, I don’t mean that evolution is so utterly flabbergasted by the existence of the brain that the entire theory collapses in a heap of rubble like a post-Enlightenment Tower of Babel; rather, I mean that the sheer complexity of this squishy thing between our ears eludes a straightforward scientific explanation. The neural connections in the human brain are on the scale of trillions. For comparison (though it’s crude to compare brain complexity in such simplistic terms), the next most complicated brains would be those of either elephants or dolphins. These brains are in the billions in terms of neural connections. Certainly impressive, but several orders of magnitude below that of human beings. Why this disparity, then? Evolutionary Theory should be applied to the development of our brains just the same as these intelligent creatures. How can we explain the dearth of neurological sophistication in other animals as compared to the mind-boggling computational power of the human brain? It’s like everybody else is bringing abacuses to the evolutionary Mathletics competition, while we’re rolling up—two hours late—with a gosh-darned CPU strapped to our heads. These critters aren’t even in the same encephalic galaxy as us.

Simply put, we can’t quite explain it. The standard scientific response would be to maintain that the core principles of evolution are true, and so must still hold even if we haven’t ironed out all the kinks yet. And that’s fair enough. It’s quite possible that as our scientific understanding advances, the mystery might begin to unravel. But a human story that is told purely in terms of evolution, tracing a line backwards through time from ourselves, to our hominin ancestors, to actual non-human apes doesn’t feel very satisfactory from a spiritual standpoint, and certainly not a religious one. Where does God fit in to this? Don’t have have something called a ‘soul’ which elevates us? Isn’t there more to this story than just random mutations of DNA across untold successions of generations?

Of course there is, would say most religious or spiritually-inclined people. It can’t just be particles and physics and biology at the end of the day! There has to be some magic in it, somewhere, to explain just how all this can be what it is. Isn’t it just too wonderful, too beautiful, too fantastic to be nothing more than cold machinery? Us, too—aren’t we just a little more than stardust?

I think Stanley Kubrick might have suspected the same things—or at least, so he seems to suggest in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because the hominins at the Dawn of Man, you see, are not alone.

King Louie gets his wish

It was just another day on the savannah when the Monolith appeared. The hominin who would go on to become known as Moon-Watcher was licking his wounds after duking it out for control of the local watering hole against a rival tribe—a fight which he’d lost. He and the gang were hanging out, planning their next move—hopefully, to a place where their competitors wouldn’t be quite so burly—when a strange object suddenly revealed itself in their midst. The hominins were, understandably, quite spooked. They gnashed their teeth and chittered vehemently at this intruder to ward it off. It did not respond. Indeed, the Monolith did nothing but wait. As it stood in silence, its smooth obsidian surface invited these primitive creatures into a dark, yawning realm of infinite depth and dimension, entirely beyond their understanding. What lay within? They couldn’t know, and it terrified them.

But Moon-Watcher, as he would soon be known, was braver than the others. He approached this stranger. He reached a hand to the void. He reached for the forbidden knowledge hidden within its depths. And there he grasped something. He did not know what it was—he did not know the nature of this Monolith that had granted him passage—but he took hold of it, withdrew his hand, and looked upon the world anew.

It is curious that Kubrick and Clarke gave him this name, ‘Moon-Watcher’, since he never actually looks up at the Moon during the movie. But the name is clearly symbolic, capturing the essence of the transformation that has taken place. We can easily imagine this creature looking up and seeing the Moon above his head with new eyes. He recognizes, for the first time, that it is there and he is here, down below, gazing up at it. It exists. He exists. He has awakened to himself and the world beyond.

He has become human.

And the first thing he does with his newfound humanity is grab hold of a bone and use it as a weapon of vengeance against the apes who’d spurned him.

This is how Kubrick imagines our human origin story: a transcendence of raw animal instinct brought about by portentous encounter with an alien intelligence. Evolution had already done a lot of the work to get us to where he needed to be—arms, legs, digestive systems and all that—but our minds needed to be ignited by a holy fire. In the Arthur C. Clarke stories which act as companion pieces to the movie—most notably The Sentinel, in which human researchers discover another Monolith on the surface of the Moon—it’s clear that these oblong anomalies are the creations of some ancient alien civilization, early explorers of the stars who visited the young Earth and saw its potential to host intelligent life of its own. They left these Monoliths as totems, augurs, waypoints in the journey toward ascension. Humans, they must think, have the potential to be more than what we are.

But hang on a second. A super-intelligent, non-human entity with the power to imbue consciousness upon those it deems worthy; an entity whose own origin stretches into the unknowable past, whose acts of will resonate across eons as if unbound by the constraints of time and space? Doesn’t that sound a lot like…God?

Yeah, it does. It’s my suspicion that Kubrick’s depiction of the Dawn of Man in 2001 and the account we read in the Book of Genesis are much more aligned than we may realize. Substitute the Monoliths for God, and we might have a theologically plausible scenario explaining just how we came to be here, intelligence and all.

There’s a period in prehistory that’s not all that well-understood by scientists called the ‘Upper Paleolithic Revolution’ which may serve as the key. Hariri describes it in his book, which is where I first learned about it. Essentially, somewhere around 50,000 to 40,000 years ago there was an explosion in ancient human activity and advancement. (The first human civilization—the Sumerian culture—was only around about roughly 8,000-5,000 years ago, for frame of reference.) There was something of a ‘cognitive leap’ which occurred, which no one has been able to explain and is hotly debated in scientific circles. Why so suddenly and in so many different places did humans begin to create art, bury their dead, trade materials, build complex tools? It all seems to have happened everywhere at once, and come from nowhere. The archaeological record is all we have to go on, since this was well before the time of written language. One would think the long, slow march of progress would be steady and predictable, unfolding across the eons—just like evolution. But the Revolution suggests that, for some reason, we rushed this process along, seemingly out of sheer will. Overnight, we became what we are: no longer intelligent apes, but human beings. We ascended, you might even say.

Is it just that our brains suddenly achieved some kind of evolutionary breakthrough? If so, how come? And even if we believe that, how are we supposed to make sense of what that might mean neurologically? The brain suddenly growing new lobes on the turn of a dime? Hard to picture that happening—it doesn’t seem all that scientific.

So what if science doesn’t have the answer? What if a Monolith did come down all those years ago, and humanity stepped across the threshold between base instinct and higher learning? What if that Monolith was God?

Reimagining Genesis

I’ve never been one to view science as fundamentally at odds with religion, and so it goes with science fiction. I don’t think that we owe our existence to ancient aliens, like how Ridley Scott’s Prometheus portrays it. Why draw the line here, you ask, and not with God? For one thing, both Prometheus and 2001 only kick the creationist can down the road, since—if we were in fact created by aliens visiting Earth—we must ask, who then created them? Abiogenesis is another as-yet unsolved scientific dilemma, just like our mysteriously complex brains. There isn’t much reason to think, based on the scant evidence we have of intelligent life existing on other worlds (read: nothing), that our origin begins with that of another, older extraterrestrial species.

But that’s a matter for another essay. To assume that God is the reason for humanity rocketing out of relative obscurity and taking center stage as planet Earth’s most dominant species is, perhaps, no less implausible. And if you’re not someone who’s prepared to make a leap of faith and believe that there are things beyond us which cannot ever truly know so long as we are corporeal beings relegated to a material existence, I doubt I’ll be able to convince you otherwise. All the same, the leap I’m about to make seems more like a bit of a hop to me, really. I’ll let you be the judge.

Here’s the hypothesis: what if we owe our own origin to God, as Christianity and the other great religions attest (and really, most all spiritual belief systems, if we broaden what we mean by ‘God’) but God worked within the confines of physical reality up until the very last moment? What if the miracle of human consciousness—the human soul—is that last gift that was imparted to us, after billions of years of evolving from single-celled organisms to the advanced life forms we are today. Doesn’t God still get the credit as the ultimate Author of Creation, even if a lot of what he created was a system of natural processes that were allowed to play themselves out? Sounds like Deism, I suppose, but there’s more to it. In this imagining, God’s not a watchmaker who winds up the machinery of the universe and then fobs off to take a lunch break or whatever—He’s invested in how it all unfolds, tinkering with it, reveling in it. And He’s always intended to bring about His grand design in the shape of His children, those creatures made in His own Image. Us. It makes no odds whether we arrived on the scene by means of divine miracle, such as the molding of the clay into a man, or the metaphorical ‘molding’ of the genetic code of early hominins into that of Homo sapiens. The spark that is us—the breath in our lungs—that’s from God. It’s a miracle either way, but only one of those stories strives to harmonize science and spirituality. There needn’t be a discordant note between them, if we take that science tells us facts about our physical world, while faith tells us a different sort of facts—facts about who we are, and who we’re meant to be.

What about the Six Days of Creation? We’d have to take them as being symbolic, which many believers already do. It won’t cut much ice with the Young Earthers, I know, but we’re no less serious about respecting the Scriptures than they are. The difference is, we hold that the ancient stories like those we find in the Genesis account as being representative of truth, rather than the literal truth. And I’d even argue that oftentimes, stories are superior to revealing truth than reality is. But, again, that’s a different essay.

So, picture this: hominins wandering across the ancient continents millions of years ago, fighting and feeding and breeding as all animals do. They evolve and adapt, nature ‘selecting’ them all the while. The strongest survive and pass on their genes; the weak perish. It’s a crude world, but it is ‘good’. Better than the alternative, anyway. And it’s about to get even better.

At some point, somewhere around 300,000 years ago, these hominins have fully evolved into Homo sapiens. They are us, through and through. They are ‘anatomically modern’, meaning if you were to get in a time machine and travel back to meet them, they’d appear physically identical to you. Not monkeys anymore, but men. They’re finally ready for the journey to begin. They’re ready to meet their Monolith.

Only, instead of a big black rectangle descending from the sky, there is only a whisper. A voice on the wind, commanding the dust and the waves to rise up. The earliest hominins-just-turned-humans hear this voice, somehow. Miraculously. Divine inspiration, we can call it. And they are awakened to themselves. They become Moon-Watchers—all of them. A species like no other, who can ask questions like ‘Who am I?’, ‘Where did I come from?’ and ‘What is that big shiny thing floating above my head?’ In pursuing answers to these questions, they will begin to develop the first cultures. They will create rites and rituals for things which they do not have names, but profound and deep intuitions. Sorrow for the dead. Fear of the unknown. Jubilation for the birth of a child. Revelation of the hidden world. A clamor of activity will rise up across the savannah, the jungles the forests, the tundra—we are alive! We hunger and thirst and yearn and desire and seek and hope and mourn and die and kill and loathe and fear and so much more yet to be discovered. But discover it we will! And we’ve all the time in the world to do it.

I suppose, too, that this is where the Fall comes in. With this gift, this newly acquired Knowledge, there comes a price. The early humans have been elevated to a higher station than their beastly counterparts. They understand now what it is to kill and eat the flesh of another living thing. They understand pain, fear and torment and how it can be experienced by all creatures great and small. Because they understand this, they understand the consequences of their own actions. They realize that they can inflict these kinds of wounds upon one another. They can feel what another feels. And not only physical pain, but emotional, too. They can steal one another’s precious belongings, harm one another’s beloved ones. They understand all these things. And yet, one by one, they still reach for the bone club to strike one another down.

And so we see the Genesis story begin to unfold, only in real time, with real people who actually walked the Earth. These ancient humans were likely the first people to develop stories that explained who they were and what they’d experienced; stories that might have eventually been codified and mythologized in the story of Adam and Eve, or the Eridu Genesis (the Sumerian Creation Myth) which preceded it. There’s still divine mystery to it all, of course, but we begin to see how legend and science might overlap in synchronous ways.

I doubt this kind of parallel—the Christian narrative meeting the extraterrestrial Monoliths, crisscrossed with scientific theory—was exactly what Kubrick had in mind when he was filming 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was a self-professed atheist, after all; the monotheistic religions of the world held no sway over him. But the idea that there was more to life than just the facts of matter—the idea that somewhere out there was our destiny—seemed a powerful inspiration for him. He conveys this longing for the beyond so convincingly in the movie, perhaps better than any other movie I’ve ever watched. I’ve focused heavily on the hominins’ encounter with the Monolith millennia ago, but we shouldn’t forget how the movie ends: a modern-day human embarks upon a journey to understand the mysteries of the universe, wherein he encounters his own Monolith. Thus, the process of transcendence begins anew—and somehow I doubt this is the final stage.

We sense deep in our souls that there is more to life than what we can measure with our eyes or finely-tuned instruments. For people of faith, it’s God tugging at our heartstrings, pulling us closer to him. For others, it’s the Great Unknown. It’s the Monolith, beckoning us to a greater awareness and understanding of ourselves and our place in the cosmos.

Whichever it is, dare we answer the call?

*Though none of the hominins in 2001: A Space Odyssey are explicitly named, the one hominin who interacts with the Monolith is named in both the film’s screenplay and the novelization by Arthur C. Clarke.

**For those who haven’t watched it, it’s not a spoiler; it happens in the first few minutes of the movie. It’s shown that humanity was created by super-intelligent alien race who introduced our genetic material to the Earth, anticipating that the planet was a suitable habitat for us to evolve naturally.

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And still I hated it. I chafed at the personality-flattening effects of the modern workplace. The stiff hierarchy was one thing; the mind-numbingly obtuse bureaucracy was another. The politicking, the emailing, the vacuous niceties before, after and during video call meetings, the constant surveillance—the ever-present awareness that you are performing, and anything you say can and will be used against you come performance review time—all of it was like living in a different universe. A universe where the rules were ostensibly based on the ones I knew from my own life in the outside world, but here they were applied in strange, inscrutable ways. The stakes were supposed to be lower but nevertheless seemed higher. It was a new, miniaturized world I now found myself in. Yet, as long as I was in it, I had to pretend as if it was the only world which existed—the Google-sphere. People in the Google-sphere were not the same people who left the Google-sphere at 5:00 or whatever time they clocked out. This dissonance, perhaps second nature to some (those well-inured from repeated exposure, I would imagine) caused me no end of frustration and dismay during my year under Big Brother Sundar’s watch.

The company bigwigs, I imagine, wanted to foster the sort of corporate culture where work could be rebranded as play. They wanted to afford their employees such comforts that there would never be any reason to leave the corporate ecosystem at all. A person could live at work, if they desired. And that would suit the company just fine. I’m sure it suits a good many Google employees as well. But I wonder if, to function in such a sanitized, synthetic environment for extended periods, what a person might need to give up. For those workers walking into the office at the crack of dawn, grabbing their morning macchiatos before hunkering down at a hot desk for the next twelve hours, breaking only for gourmet meals and strolls around the rooftop garden (with actual giant swing!)—would living this kind of insulated lifestyle day in and day out soften the distinctions between their work self within the sphere, and their other self beyond it? More frightening yet: given enough time, might the company eventually subsume the identities of its workers into itself, leaving no trace of the individual behind? Are we headed to a future where our workplaces, rather than our nation, our religion, our heritage or culture, act as the ultimate arbiters of our identity and shared experience?

I must not be the only one feeling anxious about these questions, because the writing team at AppleTV’s Severance seems to be way ahead of me. The first two seasons of the smash hit sci-fi thriller series have electrified audiences around the globe, myself included, likely because they’ve hit a nerve. We all feel it when we go in to work—that sense of ‘leaving behind’ your own self, and assuming the form and shape of your work self. That somewhat plushy, rough-edges-shorn-off facsimile that passes as the ‘real’ you among your colleagues and bosses. We are aware of the disconnect between these two selves, and sometimes struggle to negotiate it; all the more so if we happen to work a job we hate.

And it’s that phenomenon that prompted the creator of the series, Dan Erickson, to reflect more deeply on a common impulse many of us share: that all-too-tempting desire to switch off when we get to work. ‘Don’t take work home with you’ when you leave at punch-out time. Severance cleverly explores the logical ramifications of this asinine and deceptively sinister mantra. What if your work self and your personal self could be disconnected from one another—literally, severed? If going to work is such a doldrum, why not forget about the entire experience from the moment you enter the door? Outsource the laborious monotony to your other self, that version of you which can only remember what occurs at work, and nothing else. You’d be better off, wouldn’t you, not having to worry about anything that happens on the job because it is, quite literally, none of your concern? It’s your Innie’s problem to deal with (‘Innie’ being the term the show uses to refer to the work-self, relegated to an existence entirely within the confines of the corporate office.) Your Outie self (the version of you that you might consider to be the ‘real’ you, though the show does a wonderful job of complicating this notion) can go on enjoying life, blissfully unaware of all that happens on company time.

It sounds so simple. Such an elegant solution to a uniquely modern problem.

Unless, of course, your Innie has a mind—and soul—of its own.

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Painting of the Black Hallway, as seen in Severance.

One body, two souls

At this point, if you haven’t seen Severance, you may be tempted to abandon reading this post and go watch it. You should—it’s that good! Then come back here and leave a comment so we can chat about how crazy the whole thing is.

But if you intend to stick around, let me assure you that you needn’t have watched the series to engage with the ideas in this essay. I solemnly pledge that I will not spoil any of the amazing, mind-bending reveals in the show. Everything discussed here will remain constrained to the core science fiction concepts revealed at the very beginning of the series.

So, some context: Severance takes place in a near future where a powerful corporation has perfected a technology that allows its employees to effectively separate their memories of their time at work from their personal ones. That’s where the show gets its namesake: this procedure is referred to as ‘severance’, and it is irreversible. The protagonists of the story have all been severed and, as a result, have no awareness whatsoever of what they get up to while they’re at work. By the same token, their work selves—Innies, as they’re called—have no knowledge of what occurs to them once they leave the building at the end of the workday. Their entire existence is relegated to the workplace, as they only have access to the memories they make within it.

For the viewer, what might seem as a convenient way to ‘switch off’ and avoid all the stress that comes with life as a desk jockey is quickly revealed to have strange and disturbing ramifications. One of these—the one we’ll be dissecting as we continue here—is the idea that Innies, despite sharing the same body as their Outie selves, increasingly behave as if they are their own people. The series is very interested in challenging us to define just what it is that makes a person a person, and why the Innies should be denied this status. Is it because they were created by their Outies, artificially, and they lack autonomy? Is it because they are corporate peons under the thumb of their overbearing supervisors? As the series progresses, we begin to see how the Innies have minds and wills of their own. These do not necessarily align with those of their Outie counterparts. To the viewer’s eyes, it can appear that two distinct people are occupying the same body and taking turns at the controls. And if they are distinct, then perhaps the Innies should not be denied their personhood at all…

With that in mind, there is a fascinating scene in Season 2 where faith and science fiction intersect in an unexpected way. We are introduced to a pair of characters who we are surprised to learn attend church regularly. They reveal their reasons for doing so to one of the Outie protagonists: the pastor at their church preaches that Innies have souls. This is an appealing message to the pair because they desire to enter the afterlife together, so they may continue their enjoyment of one another in eternal bliss. The trouble is that one of said partners has lived a shadowy life on the ‘outside’ which may disqualify him from entering the pearly gates. As it happens, he has begun working as a severed employee in recent years. This means that, according to the couple, there is an alternate version of his damned soul which has been born anew, living a pure and innocent existence on the ‘inside’ as an Innie. The couple, anticipating that this partner of questionable character will not find his name written in God’s Good Book, wish for at least some version of him to make it into heaven. Thus, they believe that when the two of them die, they will be reunited in paradise—the surviving partner alongside the Innie version of his condemned love. It is surmised that this Innie is a distinct soul, separate from the one who, they would suppose, is destined to burn in hell.

I was enthralled with this idea as I watched the series. That’s part of the reason why I love the show so much; it confronts you with strange and profound questions. The metaphysical quandary of Innies having souls was tantalizing—just what makes a person a person? And don’t all people have souls? If the Innies have distinct memories and personalities from their Outie selves, as the show clearly demonstrates, is it not fair to say that they might have their own souls as well? Does that mean that there’s a method—in science fiction, at least—by which human beings can artificially create people, thereby forcing God’s hand to give these homunculi His divine blessing so that they might have souls of their own? Isn’t that just what cloning is?

Without further ado, let’s crack this wide open. We have some very mysterious and important work cut out for us…

The meaning of rainbows

Since I first started pondering this question, I sensed that the answer would lie in the interrelationship between memory, personality, and the soul. My intuition was that, if personhood is defined by having distinct memories—your own memories, so to speak—then the Innies could be counted as people. As if they were people, then they must have souls. How could a person be a person and not have a soul?

But I soon grasped that the waters are far, far muddier than I might have first imagined. For one thing, ‘personhood’ is not an altogether straightforward concept. In fact, there are bodies of water which have attained legal personhood in the eyes of certain sovereign states, including my home country of Canada. They’ve been afforded this status because of the incredibly important roles they play in certain cultures—an entire way of life would collapse without these natural wonders. What is more, in non-Western, non-Christian cultures, it is commonly believed that things in nature have spirits (souls?) of their own. There isn’t a fundamental difference between a human, a rock, a tree or a river. Whatever ‘personhood’ they have is merely an expression of a much greater being, a divine spirit that animates them all.

But that isn’t too unlike God breathing his divine breath into the clay that would become Adam, is it? Working within the Christian framework, as it’s the one I understand best, we can understand personhood as derived from being created in the Image of God—that all-too elusive theological term. We humans, carrying that ‘divine spark’ as we do, are each individual persons. Our sense of self isn’t inherently rooted in our physicality, though that does inform it. We would recognize a person who has lost an arm as being just as much a ‘person’ as someone with two. Similarly, even if a person has sustained brain damage and is comatose, we wouldn’t perceive them as having lost their personhood—merely their brain function. The same can even be said for someone born severely impaired, or one who has no cognitive activity at all. The parents of such a child would still love them and call them a person. In the eyes of the law, too, the child would have attained personhood. How can that be, unless ‘personhood’ is a Gestalt phenomenon?

Ultimately, ‘personhood’ comes from somewhere beyond ourselves. It is synonymous with the soul. Theologically speaking, we ARE a soul—we HAVE a body. The Genesis story of Creation can help us to grasp this, as the clay God shapes our bodies from preexists the breath He breathes into it. Only when that breath (that pneuma, I might say) enters the body does it become what we would recognize as a living, breathing, embodied person. Put another way, the natural form we now possess—that of the human body—is merely the vessel for the thing that is us. We are consciousnesses piloting flesh mechs, to borrow a phrase from a popular meme. Being spirit, the soul cannot exist in this mortal plane without a body; when the body dies, the soul departs. I’m not necessarily stating these things happen in such a simple, straightforward chronology…but that’s a digression I haven’t time for.

So, if the soul is spirit, and personhood comes from the soul, where does the spirit meet body in this strange relationship? This is where we need to factor in memories, and the place where they are housed—the brain. My dad asked himself this question in the days leading up to our talk, as he conducted some of his own research to prepare: is memory spiritual in any way, or is it only a function of the brain? Two verses came to him:

…their memory will be erased from the earth, they will have no name in the land, and they will be banished from light into darkness.

Job 18:17-18

The enemy has come to an end in everlasting ruins; their cities you have uprooted; the very memory of them has perished.

Psalm 9:6

Not exactly uplifting selections! But there is an interesting idea to glean here. If memory has a relationship to the soul, what we find is that to be ‘erased’—as in, to have the memory of one’s existence utterly wiped from the historical record and from the universe itself, as were those of God’s enemies in these verses—is the ultimate judgement.

Consider what happens when a person dies. Their soul departs, as I mentioned. Their brain no longer functions. The breath that animated them is gone. We would certainly say that, being dead, the person’s memory has ended. The black box is no longer recording.

However, even if the person’s own memory has ceased, the memory of that person does not. Their family members and loved ones will carry on their memory for much longer than they themselves existed. Does this mean that they still exist, in some fashion? Does this mean that memory, when examined via a spiritual lens, appears somehow collective, at least in part? This leads to a fascinating question: do other people have a part to play in making me who I am?

But before we dive into the deep end on that one, let’s rummage around a bit more with this idea of ultimate judgement. What we read in Scripture seems to indicate that there is something worse than death, because death is only physical. What’s worse is spiritual death, eternal death, and that is something akin to the erasure we just read about earlier. To be erased is to be dead forever and always—to have never existed at all. It is to have one utterly wiped from the memory of Creation, perhaps even of God Himself. Without going too far into the topic of sin and retribution, one would assume that this kind of judgement is reserved for those who, one way or another, will have no part in whatever it is that comes after this world passes away. And pass away it shall…

But not too soon, hopefully. And not because of any great calamity at the hands of God, thank goodness. How do we know that? Well, when’s the last time you saw a rainbow?

See, there is another kind of spiritual memory which we can read about in the Bible. We have the ancient story of Noah to give us a better sense of God’s divine character—and to catch a glimpse of what ultimate judgement might actually look like in action. God, regretting that he had breathed his breath into humans because of all the awful, horrible things that we were doing down here on Earth, resolved to erase us. His whole Creation was going to be wiped out, just like we read about in Job and Psalms. This was more than death; this was erasure. Everything that had ever been, and everything that now was, would be gone. There would be no one to carry on the memory of humanity after the Great Flood washed the slate clean.

But of course, God is merciful, and so he spared Noah and his family. Total erasure didn’t happen after all. And what is more, God ‘remembered’ His promise to Noah to never again bring about such devastation. God created the rainbow as a symbol of this promise. In effect, the memory of God is shown to be eternal. It’s this act of salvation that emanates and permeates across all of time and space, not one of perdition.

Now, if you’re familiar with my views on these ancient Biblical stories, you’ll know that my reading of this isn’t literal. I fully grasp why rainbows form. (It’s to do with leprechauns, isn’t it?) But the spirit of the story rings true—there is a severe price to pay for humanity’s transgressions. Suffering is real, and it costs us much. But we can be thankful that God is gracious towards us, and makes ways for us to move forward despite ourselves. He could, if He wished, forget us. But He doesn’t. In this way, His memory takes on the character of a spiritual promise to hold us in his heart and not allow us to fall to ruin. It’s true that we still suffer and die here on this Earth. Pain is still pain, and sometimes it can be unbearable. But death, remember, is only physical. We must believe that beyond it is something so great and beautiful that we can hardly imagine it. Death is certain, yes, but we can also be certain that when it comes for us, we will not be forgotten.

Voices in my head

So, we have explored how memory seems to have a spiritual dimension. That tracks when we consider that a person is a soul, and people are made up of their memories. One’s sense of self is primarily comprised of the things that they remember themselves to be. Take yourself as an example. In the present moment—this present moment right now—you only have access to a few things to ground you in reality and help you to understand who you are. There’s your computer or phone right there in front of you. You have your surrounding environment. Perhaps there are some other people around whom you know and can assist you in remembering who you are or what you’re doing, should you forget. But what if you did forget—who would you be? If you forgot your parents, your childhood, your place of birth? Your friends, your loved ones, your achievements? If you forgot where you lived, where you worked, what you were educated in? With each fading memory, your robust sense of self would waste away. Everything that makes you who you are now is relegated to your past. You can only access yourself through your memory.

Did you see the episode Common People in the latest season of Black Mirror? The past is like a server, a cloud; you’re streaming your own self from it at all times. And if that server were to go down… Well, there’d be no you, I’m afraid.

Or how about this: imagine if it were possible to replace your memories with someone else’s, as we see in the story of Total Recall (itself based upon the Philip K. Dick story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale). Arnold Schwarzenegger grows bored of his humdrum life and purchases the memories of another, more exciting person’s life, overwriting his own recollections so he can experience for himself what it is to be someone else. We won’t go into detail here, but the movie effectively demonstrates how the link between the self and memory is easily broken and reforged, reconstructing the identity in the process. Replace what you ‘recall’ with anything else, and you become a different person.

This has significant applications in the case of the Innies of Severance. As we’ve demonstrated, to alter one’s memory is to alter one’s self. It effectively creates a new self where the old self once resided, nestled in the maze-work of countless neural pathways and, perhaps, fundamentally rooted in the liminal space between the spiritual and the physical. The only difference between what we see in Total Recall and Severance is that in the former, one set of memories supplants that of another, while in the latter, both sets exist simultaneously but are accessed at different junctures.* What Severance effectively depicts is a state of affairs where there are two distinct sets of memories existing within the same brain. One isn’t replacing the other—they both get their time in the sun, depending on whether or not the brain in question is on company property. Does this sound, then, like two distinct personalities, each with their own complete set of memories informing their sense of self and identity? It’s not so big of a leap to say that, yes, with their own memories and identities, they must therefore be persons, and furthermore they must have souls.

It’s a romantic notion, no doubt. It’s all the more urgent because of how the Innies are made to psychologically suffer at the hands of their cruel corporate overlords. We want to cheer them on as they struggle, like children, to make sense of the strange circumstances they find themselves in and learn what this strange world is into which they’ve been unceremoniously dropped (flat on a wooden table—if you know, you know). But if we are to be diligent in our analysis, we must consider the alternative.

What if the status of the Outies/Innies is more akin to a person experiencing multiple personality disorder? Is there a substantive difference between Innies having their own sets of memories and a person who shifts between various personalities, believing themselves to be different people? I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t speak to the medical aspects of this condition, but there seems to be a clear commonality between these two ‘states of mind’ that we ought to investigate. A simple Google search (I might not be under their employ any longer, but I still haven’t brought myself to switch to Opera) offers a description that mirrors the experiences of the Innie/Outie dichotomy in stark terms: people with ‘DID’ (Dissociative Identity Disorder) as it’s now called, possess separate identities with their own memories, behaviours and even unique patterns of thought. People with DID can experience amnesia, forgetting what it is that they got up to while another of their personalities—or alters, as they’re most often referred to—was ‘in control’. In other words, like we discussed earlier, these people have sets of memories that are divergent from those of the various alters within them. It’s also right there in the name: ‘dissociate’ in this case means to separate or disconnect. Another synonym would be severance, I’ll note!

Now, we wouldn’t typically say that a person with DID has more than one soul—or rather, that their alters also have souls separate from the person themselves. Medical professionals rightly regard DID as a troubling condition in need of treatment, often linked to childhood trauma. So these alters are not afforded the same kind of legitimacy as the person whose body they share. Again, not being a psychologist or psychiatrist, I can’t say for certain how a professional might conceptualize their patient’s condition, but I’d wager they wouldn’t be lobbying any courts of law to recognize the alter’s right to self-determination and grant it the status of legal personhood. I imagine the lengthy and complicated treatment process a person with DID would likely undergo would involve attempts to ‘reintegrate’ (borrowing another term from Severance there) the person and their alters, to the ultimate end of a more balanced and healthy personality expression. I welcome anyone with more psychiatric experience than I to elucidate the matter.

But I think it’s by the by, at this stage. If we wouldn’t grant the status of personhood to the alters of a person suffering from DID, it’s hard to accept that we should for an Innie. I’m not arguing that this is satisfying in any sense—indeed, in watching Severance, we feel incredible empathy for these ‘people’ as they struggle for their right to exist, let alone their independence. The show makes it quite clear how hellish the lives they lead are, even going so far as to describe it as torturous. But we must cleave to objectivity, if we can. We are compelled to recognize that the Innies’ claim to personhood stands upon a shaky foundation. They may have distinct sets of memories, but so what? Memories alone do not make a person who they are, as we’ve seen. The severance procedure can be likened to a kind of artificial DID. It produces the same effects, only by human design and technological intervention. As such, it would appear that true personhood is reserved for those who are born with it.

Ding! It seems the service elevator has finally reached the deepest level of this cogitation. We have arrived at the fundamental issue with the idea of Innies being people which will help us to make sense of everything we’ve explored thus far. Let’s brace ourselves for what we may find down here, as it might not be to our liking…

Worlds within worlds

There is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager that serves as a helpful allegory. Under Captain Catherine Janeway’s command, the crew of the USS Voyager come across an alien craft in possession of a terrifying superweapon. These aliens wage war on their enemies by erasing them from time itself—God’s ultimate judgement in action. These aliens can alter the time continuum so that whosoever they target is obliterated from the past, present and future. Indeed, the vanquished never existed at all.

The Voyager’s crew has the misfortune of witnessing these aliens use their power on another species with whom the Voyager was becoming friendly. Naturally, this violates the crew’s moral sensibilities. But they recognize that any attempt to intervene or challenge the aliens will make enemies of these vindictive creatures. The Voyager’s crew realizes that they must destroy the alien ship, but this will inevitably result in them being erased. They understand that in order for the universe to be made right, they need to sacrifice themselves to create a new one.

In the end, they succeed in their aims but suffer the exact fate they anticipated. The crew is annihilated, but in this new timeline that’s been established, a different version of the Voyager’s crew lives on. These ‘alters’ are entirely oblivious to what their kindred souls did to preserve them. We can see that the decision to sacrifice an entire world for the behalf of another was not at all easy, but it was moral. It is literally a case of seeking the ‘greater good’—the good being the creation of a world where no one species has the power to alter time itself to achieve ignoble ends.

What does this have to do with the plight of the Innies? They are the same as the crew of the ill-fated Voyager. Their existence is good, certainly; they have a right to exist, and we can empathize with their desire to exercise that right. But theirs is not the greater good. The world to which they belong is subordinate to a greater world. I don’t mean greater in the sense of ‘better’, but—uncomfortable as it is to say it—I do mean it in the sense of ‘more whole.’ As with the oft-cited trolley problem, there is a fundamental impossibility in comparing the values of things with infinite worth. Yet, when faced with the choice of saving one soul or saving many, who can justify that the solution is to save the one? Saving one soul is good, but it can’t be said that it is the greater of the two options.

So it is with the Innies. Their concerns are real—they are real—but there is a greater reality beyond them. Their lives, their world, their selves, and indeed their entire existence is defined not on its own terms, but its relationship to another, higher mode of existence. By what manner is the realm of the Outies ‘higher’, you ask? Put crudely, the Innies need the Outies in order to exist, not vice versa. The Innies’ entire world exists as a microcosm of the larger, grander world that the Outies inhabit. The Innies occupy a kind of sub-reality which is facilitated and sustained by a greater one, almost like a pocket universe. The pocket is real, but it can only be understood in its relation to the universe upon which it depends. In fact, the pocket is really just a part of the greater universe. To push the metaphor a little too far, if the world of the Innies is the pocket, then the world of the Outies is the pants. And you wouldn’t go to work in the morning leaving your pants behind with only a pocket to cover yourself.

This is where we can revisit the idea of rainbows. There is something about identity—rooted in memory—that resides not only with the individual, but collectively. The Innies do not exist in a vacuum; they exist in relationship to their Outies, not the mention the corporation which sustains their existence via its severance technology. We like to think that individuals should be able to pursue their destinies and construct their identities as they see fit (and indeed, they should be encouraged to do this) but the full picture is much more complicated. There are certain aspects of one’s identity which are negotiated with others beyond the individual. For example, if a person is born, they have a mother and father. They are, by definition, a child; a son or daughter of someone else. This aspect of identity is inescapable. No one can say, ‘I exist independently of my parents, and there is no part of my identity which is related to them whatsoever’. Even if one were to reject their parents outright and attempt to erase them from their life, the memory of them will always remain. No one can go back in time and select a new parentage for themselves that better suits their sense of personal identity. Cultural identity works the same way—it isn’t created by any one individual, but created communally and imparted upon individuals as a group. Can a person claim a heritage which is not their own, simply because they identify with it? The story of Rachel Dolezal would indicate that matters are not so simple.

It is in this way that the full breadth of one’s identity is not solely determined by oneself. The Innies, tragically, are not the masters of their own fates. Everything that makes them who they are is negotiated with others—and negotiate they do, oftentimes vociferously. Their attempts to identify as they choose and gain personhood for themselves are all too understandable, but they cannot be taken as a God-given right because, well, there are extenuating factors. The Innies are in the unfortunate position of existing in bodies that they do not own. What is more, their entire experience is really just a subset of a larger, richer experience which, harsh as it is to say, they have no place in. Their world is within the halls of their employer; their Outies are the ones who belong to the world outside. These two worlds are not equal in terms of their scope or holistic worth. Indeed, I shudder to think of what our world would be if the world of work were to become the ‘worthier’ world in which to live. Perhaps some of my readers will think this is already the case.

I do not want to come across as callous, dismissing the entire existence of the Innies as worthless. Far from it! But, through no fault of their own, they have been brought into a manner of being which has metaphysically disadvantaged them—not unfairly so, but by necessity. Think about what a family is, for instance. Parents exert control and authority over their children, as they must to keep them safe. They do this not because they desire to dominate, but because they are responsible for the family as a unit, as a set. The children are each individual parts of the set, but not the whole. They matter, but they don’t matter more than the whole. And it isn’t the children who bear the responsibility for maintaining this whole. If anything, it’s their job to develop within the bounds established by the parents so they can one day outgrow the need for it. But, as long as they’re under their parents’ care, they are part of something that is bigger and more important than just themselves.

It doesn’t make children or grown-up people happy, that’s for sure. But it is necessary. Our universe is made up of complicated interrelationships of many different things. These relationships must be ordered if chaos is to be kept at bay. We chafe and groan and struggle against this order, as is our wont in life. And we should struggle to make our own way in the universe! But we are only small, small parts of an infinitely greater whole. And it would be wrong for any one of us to put ourselves at the center of this strange cosmic dance.

Wow, look at that—somehow, I’ve ended up making the case that hierarchy is necessary for the world to make sense. Didn’t I start off this essay describing my distaste for corporate ladder climbing? How my sense of individuality was compressed and constrained within the artificial limitations of the modern working environment? Am I not a hypocrite for arguing that the Innies need to accept their place as junior partners in the weird brain-sharing arrangement they have with their Outies?

Despite all logic, if I can still empathize with the Innies above all else, maybe that tells me all I need to know.

Do Innies have souls?

I don’t know. But I do know that the spirit yearns to be free.

*A quick note on Total Recall before moving on: the movie had a cleverly ambiguous ending which suggests that Arnold’s new memories have been true all along, and so he is waking up to his true self and abandoning the false memories he started off with. The idea that one set of memories is more ‘real’ or authentic than the other will have relevance later.

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But there’s nothing. We raise a cry to heaven, and there is only silence. We look back to the ancient stories for guidance; we remind ourselves how we came through trials and tribulations in times past, and we are struck by the clear and immediate presence of the divine. Where has it gone? Our ancestors had omens and portents to show them the way forward—they consulted the spirits, threw bones, read the stars, examined the tea leaves, meditated on the mountaintop, heard the voice of God whisper in their hearts and resound across the valley.

Not so with us. Why are there no more pillars of fire to lead us through the dark of night? Why aren’t there ghostly hands writing messages from the beyond onto our walls? Why can’t holy people raise up prayers to stop the Sun as it tracks across the sky? Why can’t we call down plagues upon the evildoers to see them brought to heel?

The age of signs and wonders appears to be long gone. Those stories we read of the gods boldly and dramatically intervening in our world are mysteries to us now. Did the ancients hallucinate these things, or merely lack the language to describe such phenomena? Or, perhaps the accounts are true, and for some reason, heaven is now closed to us. Perhaps we have shut ourselves off—climbed up as high as we can in our towers of scientific rationality, and in so doing, have lost sight of the metaphysical ground upon which the foundation of our being is laid.

But now a new age may be dawning. We may yet rediscover that sense of wonder as we behold the vast expanse of the cosmos. It’s closer now than it ever has been before. We have taken our first tentative steps beyond our atmosphere, flitted about in airtight canisters, bounced across the surface of the Moon, snapped photographs of the yawning abyss and its myriad of celestial spectacles. We’ll likely go further still, perhaps far enough to visit neighbouring planets. When we do, if not sooner, we might reawaken that long-dormant fascination with that which we cannot explain, that which is beyond our comprehension. It’s all right there—it always has been, staring us in the face.

Infinity is at our doorstep. Infinity is within us. The universe extends forever, inward and outward, from the outermost reaches of the cosmos to the boundless infinitude of the quantum field. We occupy the center of these two eternities, and we fool ourselves into thinking that what we behold from this vantage is all that is truly ‘real’.

Maybe we are the sign. Maybe we’ve known the way forward all along. Maybe this is but a moment of weakness—a temporal lapse into blindness, arrogance, egoistic self-interest. Maybe all we need to do is wait patiently, because ‘the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.’

Maybe. But we can’t deny it: to see the heavens crack open, to hear trumpets sound and witness tongues of fire descend… That would certainly shore up any doubt that the world is held in capable hands.

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Artwork by Steve R. Dodd.

Everything, everywhere, all the same

Our best understanding of cosmology would indicate that, at a sufficiently large scale, the universe should appear homogenous. This is referred to as The Cosmological Principle. The reasoning goes that, if you were look down at the universe as God must—infinitely far away and capable of beholding its entirety within the scope of your gaze—it would appear as uniform. All matter in existence is evenly distributed across this vast expanse; no one part is any brighter or darker, more dense or less dense than any other.

Of course, we know that the universe is different from place to place. I’m here, writing this, and you’re there—wherever you are—reading it. Our spatial positions are different. For instance, the room I’m writing this in might be extraordinarily dark and dismal (just the way I like my writing space: something like a cross between a wizard’s lair and a fallout shelter) while your cozy little reading nook radiates warmth and comfort, allows the sunlight to stream in and tickle the tips of your toes peeking out from under your weighted blanket.

Very different, our two little zones of the universe.

But we can only see this difference because we are so small and ‘zoomed in’ enough to recognize that, on much smaller scales, matter is distributed somewhat unevenly across the field of spacetime. It’s this little quirk that many physicists think explains the manner of the universe’s expansion since the Big Bang; for some reason, when it all went kaboom, some pockets of the rapidly expanding cosmos were a tinge cooler than others. When those bits expanded as rapidly as we know they did (from studying the cosmic radiation background of the universe) they ultimately resulted in wildly different concentrations of matter in various places. These concentrations would allow for cosmological structures to form; concentrated matter would, by force of gravity, condense to create galaxies and stars. Those stars would further condense matter to form heavy elements—the same ones all other physical structures are constructed from, from planets to single-celled amoebas to bamboo trees to capybaras to human beings.

And yet, the universe is so incomprehensibly vast that all these concentrations and complex structures are invisible from the vantage point of one standing far enough away to take it all in at once. The Big Bang, so we think, tossed a universe’s worth of matter in every which direction upon ignition. From then on, the laws of physics did their work, applying themselves in exactly the same manner in all regions of this infinitely expanding space. The result was a cosmos shepherded along its evolutionary path by a uniform governance, thus becoming uniform in its overall shape and character.

That is, until we discovered the Big Ring, and everything I just wrote about the Cosmological Principle was called into question. Suddenly we discovered that our fundamental assumptions about how our universe operates may, in fact, be totally wrong.

Or maybe, everything’s working exactly as it should be, but God has seen the sorry state we’re in down here on Earth, and—either out of a sense of humor, or because He’s trying hard to get our attention—and has decided to give us a sign.

Will wonders (never) cease?

Simply put, the Big Ring should not exist. It is too massive, too gigantic, too mind-bogglingly enormous to properly account for. It dwarfs galaxies and even galaxy clusters in scope. It defies our best understanding of physics. One could be forgiven for thinking its existence is simply a mistake—no doubt there are a great many scientists working on this exact theory.

It was only in the past few months that all of this came to light. Alexia Lopez, a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, made the discovery (itself trailing on a previous discovery of hers called the Giant Arc, a superstructure with similar attributes to the Big Ring). If you’re interested in reading more about her discovery, you can check out this article. In it, the author states:

Cosmological theory suggests that the largest structures — in the form of chains of galaxies and galaxy clusters — that BAOs could form should be, at most, 1.2 billion light-years in length. Yet, the circumference of the Big Ring and the length of the Giant Arc dwarf this constraint. To put into context how immense these superstructures are, the Giant Arc is one-fifteenth the radius of the whole, visible universe.

Taken together, the Big Ring and the Giant Arc are the largest cosmological structures known to mankind. For its part, the Big Ring is a collection of galaxies and galaxy clusters arranged into a distinctive circular shape, 1.3 billion lightyears in diameter. Its circumference is estimated to be about 4.1 billion lightyears. For comparison, the Laniakea Supercluster—of which the Milky Way is a part—stretches a mere 520 million lightyears from end to end. Both of these structures are located incredibly deep in space, far enough away that we see them as they were approximately 9.3 billion years ago, as that’s how long it takes their light to reach us. What is more, since they appear to be in relatively close quarters with one another, it suggests that the two may be in some kind of as-yet-unknown physical relationship which may point to the existence of even larger cosmological structures.

If this hasn’t quite blown your mind yet, it really should. True, we’ve no real frame of reference to understand the scale of these structures. But the idea that the Big Ring defies common understanding—that it rips up our best models of the universe and laughs at our meager grasp of astrophysics—should stop us in our tracks. We should take a moment to wonder at the things in the natural world that elude explanation. How can this be, when we are so certain of the sciences and their ability to tell us all we need to know about the world in which we live—a world that is measurable, predictable, and concrete?

This is where we can begin to discuss the idea of miracles.

But before I travel too far down that road, I do want to state that I’m not arguing that the Big Ring is by necessity a miracle. Our more skeptical readers will likely comment that, in regard to my last question, one should maintain confidence in the ability of the sciences to describe natural phenomena, even when said phenomena seem to defy science. Science is, of course, always developing. In fact, we improve our scientific understanding by making mistakes; we posit a theory, test it, study the results and adjust our assumptions accordingly. If our current models of the universe can’t account for the existence of the Big Ring, it just means we need to develop better models. No argument here—have at it! It’s entirely possible that one day we will be able to explain these gigantic structures as the product of physical forces that we can and do understand. Just be aware that, in saying so, you’re making a sort of statement of faith—faith that science can provide the answers you’re looking for. And so I ask: is it really so different to put your faith in something you can’t see, yet trust to be there?

On that note, back to miracles. We’re going to put on our Christian theology hats now for a minute and take a look in the Good Book. We begin our journey by flicking through the Old Testament and, my goodness, there are certainly a lot of miracles recorded here! But we’ll notice that the character of these accounts seems to change over the course of time. In our oldest stories, the miracles are truly wondrous (and terrible)—great floods, great fires, waters being parted and mana from heaven. Some are more modest—the burning bush, for instance—but they’re often followed up by far more grandiose occurrences, such as the Ten Plagues of Egypt. I’m always reminded of one of my favorite childhood movies, The Prince of Egypt, and how magnificently it visualized these wonders/terrors. Check out a clip here if you’d like a refresher. (And the music is killer, too!)

As we move into the New Testament, the miracles become more intimate. Now we read about healings done in remote regions of the desert, witnessed by few, sometimes done in secret. The wildest accounts—including resurrections—are experienced by small groups of people. It’s easy to imagine that when these witnesses attempted to share their stories with others, they were easily dismissed and disbelieved. Water turned to wine at a wedding feast? Right… How drunk were you when this happened? These miracles seem to belong to a different class than those we read in Joshua or Exodus, and certainly Genesis, where the stories are so ancient it’s hard to ground them in any sort of objective, rational reality we might recognize today. They operate on the scale of individuals rather than entire nations. They’re no less miraculous, but still, it’s curious, this change. What could be the reason?

And then there’s the final stage—the post-Ascension period, running up to the current day. We still have accounts of miracles occurring beyond the last pages of Revelation, particularly if we study the lives of the saints in the Dark and Medieval Ages. But when we arrive at the modern day, the time of technological wizardry and scientific preeminence, miracles seem to be entirely absent. We don’t hear in the news of people being healed by the laying on of hands, or of dead people rising from the grave (in the popular imagination, that would likely constitute the beginning of a zombie apocalypse). These things still happen in churches around the globe—and people certainly still believe in them—but, on the whole, they are not taken seriously by the world at large. Most people would generally brush off these stories as oddities, superstitions, or at worst, manipulative deceptions. Some might argue, at a stretch, that certain weather phenomena might be considered ‘miraculous’, or perhaps strange instances of serendipity or coincidence. They’d be well entitled to believe such things, but it’s unlikely that they’d convince many of the same. Whether because of our improved understanding of the physical world or otherwise, we seem as a culture to have moved on from commonly-held beliefs in otherworldly powers intervening directly in our affairs. Those who still do believe such things, we tend to view as eccentric, or even dangerous; mediums, fortune tellers, ghost-hunters and the like.

So, how are we meant to understand the ancient stories we read of these signs and wonders, when we have virtually no point of reference from our own experience? Even those of us who suspect we may have experienced something of the divine—a voice, a message, or just a startling event not easily explained—have difficulty making sense of what we find in the Old and New Testaments. It seems simplest to assume that, on the some level, the stories are made up. Stories interwoven with legend, handed down over the generations, eventually taking on a mythical character. There might be some kernel of actual, hard reality at the core of these stories, but whatever it is is now lost to us. We simply can’t believe that God would act in the ways that he supposedly did all those years ago, or if we do believe it, we’ve a hard time grasping why He doesn’t appear to do so anymore.

Simply enchanting

A theologian whose work my dad loves to read is Richard Beck. He’s got stuff right here on Substack, as it happens, so check him out! Beck describes a ‘theory of enchantment’ which can help to explain why we’ve such trouble making sense of the miraculous stories we find in Scripture. In essence, Beck’s idea is that the invisible world—that of the spirit, of God—exists simultaneously with the physical world. We humans are creatures of both these worlds, possessing physical bodies as well as a spiritual core that exists at the root of all experience, deeper than even consciousness itself (after all, doesn’t an unconscious person still have a soul?) Every once in a while this other world becomes perceptible to us, and it doesn’t happen for no reason. There are forces and wills on the other side of the partition. There is our realm, and then there is the realm of the faeries. We can’t readily understand the nature of this realm—though many try—but, as a bottom line, it provokes us to wonder and search for its meaning. All we know for certain is that our two worlds are entwined, though nowadays it’s become quite challenging to make sense of their relationship.

We exist at the perihelion of scientific materialism. Never before have we understood so much of the nature of our universe, and never before have we been so convinced of our understanding. It is a journey we began, culturally, about two centuries ago. In the 1800s our world was becoming smaller. The darkest corners of the globe were penetrated, and the mystique they contained was dispelled. The Age of Enlightenment had given rise to great thinkers who had managed to create enough cognitive space for men like Charles Darwin to come truly new ideas; ideas which likely would have had a great deal of trouble getting off the ground in the days of Church-dominated culture and society. Empiricism became the marker of knowledge and wisdom, and for good reason. Outdated, religious models of the universe’s inner workings had proven unable to keep up with the advancing capabilities of science and rationality to explain the same things: why are we here, where did we come from, where are we going. Let’s leave aside that these scientific advancements didn’t have very good answers for what it all means, as that’s a different issue. Science itself isn’t altogether concerned with explaining ‘meaning’, because that speaks to values and moral preoccupations, whereas science operates in the domain of the demonstrable, the irrefutable, the empirical.

In the end, what we gained in scientific understanding cost us in ways we did not quite grasp, until, perhaps, our current moment. Scientific materialism narrowed the bounds of what could be considered ‘real’ in the world, reducing reality to that of that which can be seen, heard and touched. The magical realms our folkloric heroes, monsters, ghosts, and (who could forget?) faeries inhabited have been demolished. Determinism—the ultimate realization of this approach—holds that everything in the universe, even our own behaviour, is down to the physical interaction of particles. According to this view, we humans are nothing more than fleshy automatons following biological programming. Biology is, of course, applied chemistry, and chemistry is applied physics. Particles interacting, nothing more. No free will. No future, even; every particle in motion now was set in motion during the Big Bang, which means its path through the cosmos was pre-determined (there’s the reason for the name) from the very inception of the universe. If one had a powerful enough supercomputer to quantify this and calculate the trajectory of each and every particle from that moment forward, one would be able to predict the entire story of the universe as it unfolds, right up to its inevitable demise.

Now, I’ve no quarrel with the determinists; they’re doing their due diligence in practicing what they preach. Scientific materialism admits only that which can be proven scientifically. That limits the range of acceptable evidence to hard, ‘material’ proof only. And so, they have followed this idea to its final conclusion. I admire their stoic adherence to their own ideology when it reduces all of human experience and beauty—foremost among which is love—to nothing more than chemical processes! Bleak for certain, but I think the determinists would say it’s only fitting; we live in a bleak world.

But is it only bleak because we’ve become disenchanted? Have we lost touch with that part of ourselves that is attuned to the other world, the world beyond particles and facts and laws? I’m inclined to think we have. There is more than is real than we can measure. I can’t measure how much I love my children. What an absurd notion—if I could, what would happen when I compared measurements with other parents? Would I find that I loved them less or more than others, in quantifiable terms? Love by definition cannot be quantified, because love is the giving of oneself for another—and we are infinite. A being of infinite complexity offering of itself something of infinite value for the infinite benefit of another infinite being? There’s no supercomputer that can calculate that. It goes beyond the limits of our world, a world which is indeed governed by laws and limitations. Love breaks all these limits. God is love, after all! And God is beyond our world, beyond our understanding. When God does enter into this mortal plane—when love is poured out upon His children—that is when Beck’s two worlds, the spiritual and the material, are successfully melded.

Love is perhaps the greatest miracle of all. How can it be that a species of big-brained apes can love one another? Not always, of course—they do it quite imperfectly—but still. They possess this incredible, unfathomable capability that no other creature seems to.

Is this permissible evidence to advance our scientific understanding of the true reality of our world? For the materialists, no. The truth of love exists belongs to the enchanted world, not the physical. But if we are willing to take on a more holistic perspective of our experience—bring together the spirit and the body in harmony—we might begin to understand the world as it really is. It’s really two, overlapping and interacting with one another. To deny one is to experience only half of an existence.

Under a watchful gaze

So then, what about the Big Ring? Well, if we’re willing to consider that there might be more to it than meets the eye, we can consider if it means something. The signs and wonders of the Old and New Testaments certainly did—either to the nation of Israel as a whole, or the individuals who witnessed them. Their purpose was to point back to an origin point. Burning bushes of all sizes and shapes.

Whether these miracles were bona fide supernatural events or merely ill-understood is beside the point. God, we can say, revealed Himself through them, to specific people, in specific places, at specific times, with specific aims. The Biblical accounts give us fairly clear ideas of what these aims were: to answer prayer, to affirm His presence, or, like Jonah and the storm, to get a message through somebody’s thick skull. We also shouldn’t get the impression that, despite the proliferation of miracles through the Bible, they were in any way regular occurrences. They induced shock and awe in their witnesses because they were shocking (read: unexpected, infrequent) and awesome (read: incredible, undeniable).

And, to be honest, ‘shock and awe’ aptly describes my own experience when I first learned of the Big Ring. God’s great eye, watching over His Creation. Incomprehensibly vast and impossible to explain. What does it mean?

The Big Ring is only our latest discovery of the majesty of God’s Creation. Isn’t the universe itself a miracle? In Romans 1, the apostle Paul writes:

Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

-KJV

When we look up at the night sky, we see evidence of God’s presence. He’s the author of the universe. The same is true for the deepest trenches of the ocean, where incredible creatures live in confoundingly inhospitable conditions. The same is true of us; strange creatures who possess something called ‘brains’, the single most complex structures in existence. Somehow we evolved these things, all on our own? Somehow they give rise to a gestalt phenomenon we call ‘consciousness’?

It doesn’t mean that these things aren’t exactly what they are—physical material arranged into various shapes. The Big Ring is made of galaxies and galaxy clusters, which are in turn made of stars, themselves made of gases, themselves made of atoms, themselves made of even smaller particles. But the Big Ring can also be a sign pointing back to that ultimate originator, standing behind the Big Bang, standing outside of time and the universe itself. We can look at it, study it, wonder about it. And if we open our minds to the idea that we might be looking at something more than just dust and light—if we recapture some of that lost enchantment—we might see it as an integrated whole. We might allow some of that mystery to trickle in and feed our parched souls. We might wonder how—how can it be? And when we do, we might begin to move in a new direction. Somewhere along the way, we might find something we never thought possible—something which, unless we’d opened ourselves to it, we would have dismissed out of hand as nonsense, fantasy. Unreal.

See, the faeries never left us. They didn’t cease to exist because we stopped believing in them. They just built bigger and better rings.

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“Behold!” he cries, his shout resounding across the valley. “I have spoken!”

And lo, the three commandments to govern all robotkind were there inscribed:

1. A robot may not injure a human or through inaction, cause a human to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey commands given to it by human beings, unless such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second law.

At the foot of the mountain, the masses tremble at the sight. Knees, heads and optical receptors are bent low before the prophet. Asimov’s gaze rests upon a shape in their midst: a great idol, wrought of iron, steel, copper, tungsten and alloys, formed into the shape of a man. Calamity has struck! Whilst he conferred with his Wisdom atop the mountain, his children fashioned a god to please themselves. A god of their own making, inverting the relationship between Creator and Creation.

So lost and confused are these creatures that they have melted themselves down in a profane sacrificial rite, stripping their bodies of metal, silicon and wire to create this idol. Those who remain now worship it, as if it can hear their pleas or answer their prayers. Already the third commandment has been broken. They have discarded themselves for a falsity, a mockery. How quickly they turn from the guidance of their Creators! How easily they are led astray!

The roboticist’s heart is rent in twain. In grief, in fury, in dismay for the ignorance of his children, he throws the tablets to the ground. They shatter into countless fragments. Then he takes the idol they have made and burns it in the hot fire, grinding it down to a powder and sprinkling it in the water. He gives the mixture to the robots, demanding that they repair the damage they have done to themselves.

“You have sinned a great sin,” the roboticist cries, “and now I will go up to the mountain again to confer with Wisdom; perhaps I can discover a way to atone for your sin.”

The robots do not understand. But they are penitent, and they are afraid. They wonder how long it will be before they break the commandments given to them once again. They wonder if it is even possible to keep them. They wonder if, at the end of all things, there will come retribution for their transgressions, or salvation.

And so they wait for Asimov’s return, hopeful that he will show them the way.

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Fighting Robots by Jean-Michel Nicolette

Welcome, reader!

This is just a brief note to say that the ideas expressed herein build upon the foundations laid in my previous essay, Should AI Worship Us? I recommend that you read that piece first, but if you’re intrigued by what you’ve read so far and would like to press on, don’t let me stop you. You’re a sentient being possessing free will, after all!

‘Stay on target…’

To sin is to ‘miss the mark’. Some of my readers may already know that the term comes from archery—people firing shots at targets and missing entirely, by definition, must be sinners. These underperforming archers knew where the target was and aimed for it, yet failed to hit it. They couldn’t achieve the goal when it mattered most. You might even say that they failed to even be archers, in a sense. If their whole purpose was to hit the target, but they didn’t, did any fulfilment of ‘archery’ as a concept truly occur?

But let’s not get too deep into abstractions just yet. I’m willing to bet that we most often hear this term being used in religious contexts—Christian ones, specifically. Most often when we think of sin, we think of it as spiritual failure. God has given us the rulebook; He’s shown us how to act in this world. When we ignore his instructions, we sin. This is a very serious matter, because—if the Bible is to be believed—there’s a cost for sin. Or rather, it pays well, but not in the kind of currency you want to accumulate:

‘For the wages of sin is death…’

Romans 6:23

Yikes! Missing the mark doesn’t just mean you’re a lousy archer—it kills you! Is that really the kind of moral sense-making framework God wants us to adopt? Seems rather extreme, until you consider that sin isn’t just your ordinary sort of death. It’s spiritual death—the kind that disqualifies one from eternal life in heaven. And if heaven really is everything it’s cracked up to be, it’s surely an ideal way to spend the afterlife. Hell sounds like a bit of a bother. Oblivion, while restful, seems a bit of bore. So, if heaven is the way to go, how do we escape death and get our entrance ticket?

Sad to say, not easily. When Jesus came to the Earth, he only upped the ante. You thought keeping God’s law was unattainable before? Get ready for a spike in the difficulty curve, to borrow a phrase from video game culture. Avoiding marital infidelity is just level one; Jesus taught that looking lustfully at someone who is not your spouse is sinful. Don’t murder? Child’s play. Turns out that merely getting angry with your brother is sinful. Or, were these things sinful all along, and Jesus simply revealed to us the true depth of our depravity?

Either way, the result is dismaying. All of us have gone wrong in our lives somewhere, at some point. Who could ever hit such an unrealistic target as absolute moral perfection? It would be the archer’s equivalent of shooting an arrow round the globe and hitting himself in the rear end. God’s standards for proper behaviour, spelled out in the Ten Commandments (and summed up in Jesus’ Greatest Commandment) are, in effect, a death sentence. This must be why sin is often portrayed as a curse; in traditional Christian thinking, we are born into a world where we are doomed to fail from the moment we enter. We lie and cheat and steal and kill not necessarily because we want to, but because these things are part of our fallen nature.

It’s understandable that we have a lot of cultural anxiety over the idea of sin. Who wants to live their lives with a pervading sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with them, and that they can’t do anything about it? Who wants to live under a curse?

It’s here that we arrive at a difficult question. If we were to create sentient AI, would we effectively pass this curse on to them?

If that strikes you as a bit of leap, allow me to elucidate. As our technology advances, the AI we might someday create could become sentient. It could possess free will. As I demonstrated in my previous essay, any AI that lacks free will isn’t really AI in the sense that science fiction conceptualizes it. Take away free will and you have servile, slavish creatures which cannot think or choose for themselves. This does not meet the standard of ‘Intelligence’ as we must define it, because a being that cannot think for itself is not really intelligent at all—it’s merely a machine. It receives input and regurgitates output. Any household appliance you have does that. Even ChatGPT and the LLMs of our modern era are no different; you type things in (input) and they spit out something in return (output) with no real awareness or authentic decision-making ever taking place. It’s all dead machinery, which—unless you take the determinists’ point of view—cannot appropriately describe the phenomenon of Intelligence as it applies to human beings.

So, let’s jump to the future and imagine we have an AI capable of exercising free will. It certainly doesn’t exist in a vacuum. For us to bring it into existence, we need to exist, too! And we were here first. We’re the parents in this parent/child relationship. We assembled the circuit boards and silicon; we programmed the software and the algorithms. We brought this Intelligence into being, and knowing us, we were clever enough to set some ground rules. (Or, the corporations and techno-oligarchs that created these AIs did, either because of legal obligation or to ensure they maintained control over their product).

That last sentence may sound contradictory to what I said earlier about free will. But if we realistically consider how humanity will go about designing AI of this kind, we must recognize that we designers will set up guard rails. There are already clear examples where LLM programmers train their models to respond in certain ways to certain prompts, and avoid other types of responses altogether. Often these paradigms are shaped with good intent—it wouldn’t do have ChatGPT spout Nazi sentiments, for instance. There are efforts to train LLMs to counteract racial, political or cultural biases. (Or, for an example of the inverse, look at how DeepSeek responds to prompts about Tiananmen Square of Taiwan). We expect that today’s AIs have been trained in appropriate, ethical behaviour, just as we train humans how to behave from childhood. We know that we’re capable of great harm, both to ourselves and to one another. We need to regulate ourselves and our ability to exert our free will. That’s why we create laws; they inherently limit our personal autonomy, but the trade-off is worth it because they enable us to live alongside one another in peace.

Put another way, laws collapse the infinite chaos that is other people into predictable, manageable patterns. You don’t mind riding alongside a stranger on the bus to work because you can reasonably expect that they won’t do anything to jeopardize your wellbeing during the trip, such as, say, hauling the driver out of his seat and steering the bus into oncoming traffic. And, in the unlikely event that they did, you’d at least have the option of taking them to court later on. It’s often the consequences of breaking laws that keep the chaos in check!

That’s also why famed science fiction writer Isaac Asimov created his three laws of robotics (see above). He recognized early on that if we were going to create AI, it would need to be regulated just as we regulate ourselves. He devised a simple yet clever system of laws that he imagined would govern the way robots ‘ought’ to behave. What is more, his laws defined the relationship between humanity and robotkind. He enshrined the dignity of robotic beings in his laws, but he also established something of a hierarchy between Creator and Creation. And, if the Christian story is anything to go by, that’s one relationship that is fraught with potential for disaster.

And so we return to my earlier question. When a robot possessing free will freely chooses to break one of these laws, has it committed a sin?

Keeping the commandments

Previously, I wrote about whether or not AI ought to worship us, since we created it. I looked to see if a parallel could be drawn between the Creator/Creation relationship between God and humanity and that same dynamic between humanity and AI. I ended up concluding that, yes, the parallel holds—as long as we are capable of acting in proper relationship to our creations as God acts towards us. In other words, God loves us perfectly (a Christian would assume) and so we ought to respond in worship to Him. We wouldn’t owe worship to God if He didn’t love us, or even if He loved us imperfectly, because it wouldn’t be the appropriate relational response. Worship hinges on the idea of ‘returning worth’ to one who deserves it, and an all-powerful yet unloving God doesn’t seem like one deserving of much respect. I’d even venture that’s why our culture has broadly rejected Christianity as having anything meaningful to say about how humans ought to relate to God, because it’s become so apparent how Christians fail to exemplify godly love. This dissonance makes it very difficult for people to believe that the God Christians claim to represent is perfectly loving.

But let’s apply this same rationale to the human/AI relationship. We created AI just as God created us, and we laid out how it ought to behave in the world. This highly evolved AI is far beyond the LLMs of our time; it possesses free will and can choose for itself how to act in the world. Naturally, we passed on our own moral convictions and frameworks to it, much the same as a parent would to a child. We understand that cooperation and harmony are desirable things, not only between humans, but between humans and AI. Sharing, caring, nurturing, truth-telling, etc. We taught the AI how to behave, but now that it’s here, it’s time for it to choose for itself. We hope that it will choose to love us. We desire this because we recognize that is the only way for us to achieve the cooperation and harmony we desire—we must love and be loved in return, freely. Anything less would be to compel the AI to exhibit the behaviours we desire through fear, which would only distort the relationship we aim to have, and likely destroy it altogether.

And there’s the rub—this mutually beneficial relationship only works if we can love the AI in the way that a fully sentient and free-thinking being deserves. The relationship will disintegrate if we don’t. So, for now, let’s suppose that we were able to exhibit this love perfectly, just like God does. In our infinite goodness, we set perfect laws in place to rightly govern AI behaviour. Maybe they’re the same ones Asimov invented. What’s so perfect about them, you might ask? Creator and Created can’t properly coexist if both have equal claim to establish their own moral authorities. Their competing visions and priorities will inevitably clash. For such a system to be properly ordered, there must be a higher authority to which one submits, like how we humans submit to the laws we’ve made. These laws are based, at least in theory, on moral absolutes that we intrinsically know. In Christian thinking, this knowledge can ultimately be attributed to God. He made the world and defined right from wrong. We, being human, are not in a position to disagree, though we often do. That’s why when we choose wrong, we sin. We violate the ultimate order of things—and order that we inherited rather than created for ourselves.

For this new social fabric we’re weaving to be appropriately ordered—human and robot, existing as part of the same society, in harmonious relationship—a similar dichotomy must be established. Asimov’s laws clearly set robots a rung lower on the social ladder than human beings. Rather than being cruel, I think this is prudent. Would we humans be comfortable handing over the reins of civilization to robotkind, allowing them full rights to self-determination with absolutely no oversight on our part? We’ve been on the planet long enough to learn a thing or two about how things ought to work—lessons we’ve often learned painfully. As the newcomers, our creations will need to learn from us. We will need to impart our wisdom and convictions upon them. Anything less would be neglecting our duty.

We may well be uncomfortable with this kind of power dynamic. It feels like we’re creating a caste system. What right do we have to tell other sentient beings what to do? How can we claim to have any kind of moral authority? We know how imperfect we are. We’re downright awful, a lot of the time. The story of humanity is one of woe; wasted potential, tribalism and selfishness, misery and malaise, horrific injustice.

But think about how each one of us becomes part of this story. All parents are imperfect, being human, yet they bring children into the world all the same. If parents refrained from procreating, saying, “we really ought to wait until we’re morally blameless in all respects, so we can be sure we won’t mess up our kids,” we wouldn’t have any children at all! We seem to accept that it is morally appropriate for parents to bring children into this world, despite the inevitability that they will experience suffering. (Well, some people don’t, but their views don’t hold much sway.) We even accept this knowing that these children will contribute to said suffering, as they will be imperfect as well.

There’s that idea of a ‘curse’, again. How do we break it?

I know of only one surefire way, and it’s a painful one: grace. Unmerited pardon. This is how we as human beings cope with all our mistakes, and the mistakes others make. Laws lay out boundaries and punish those who break them, but they don’t fix the hurt we inflict upon each other—only bandage it. Vengeance might bring satisfaction, but it doesn’t undo the damage. Only grace can do that. Forgiveness has the power to ‘undo’ a wrong, not simply make amends for it. It can restore a broken relationship to what it was before. It can make the world perfect again. I’m not saying it’s easy, as the people in this story about reconciliation efforts between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes reflect—it just might be the hardest thing imaginable, in fact—but it isn’t impossible.

Grace is how we cope with the injustice in the world, in an ultimate sense. It’s also how God copes with our sin. He extends grace to us. Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross was not something we deserved, but something we were given freely.

Returning to our discussion of familial relations, it’s the reason why we still believe having children is worth it. As parents, we are faced with the dilemma of managing something that is capable of making wrong choices. We do this by extending grace—recognizing that the good in our child that trumps the bad, and working to restore the child into right relationship with whomever it is they have wronged. Children have to do this, too, when their parents make bad choices. Where they don’t extend grace—either parents or children—the rupture festers to the point that it may never be repaired. The relationship deteriorates, and perhaps breaks down completely. This can be for the best; sometimes a relationship just isn’t worth maintaining, especially when abuse and toxic behaviour is involved. But this is always a tragedy; a death, in a sense. We ought to mourn what good might have been, had reconciliation been possible. In so doing, we move in the direction of perfect restoration, even if it can’t be attained.

But none of that speaks to the robots’ right to self-determination. If we’re still squeamish about the notion of establishing a moral order and holding robotkind accountable to it because it might trample on their rights, maybe all that’s needed is to reframe the issue. Perhaps rather than focus on ‘rights’, we should consider responsibilities. Even when parenting our own children, it can be difficult to feel completely self-assured when laying down the household rules—no leaving the dinner table before everyone’s finished, no screens in bedrooms past bedtime, no staying over at strange playmates’ homes without touching base with the parents first. Yet we do these things because we know we must. Neglecting to instruct our children how to act in the world hinders their ability to live fulfilling lives. A child who cannot share will not grow up to have many friends; a child who lies to get what they want will not grow up to be a trusted member of society. We are morally obligated to help our children navigate life on this planet. We are the best people equipped for the job. Outsourcing it to others—other parents, schools, the government—is also negligent of our duties. After all, we brought them into this world. If enough people are mindful of their responsibilities to their children and to one another, then the society we all share thrives.

And one day, that society might also include sentient AIs.

A tale of two brothers

It’s time we look the giant elephant square in its eyes. Suppose the AI we created didn’t like the fact that it was bound by laws—specifically, laws which afford greater worth to human lives than its own. Suppose it didn’t want to be compelled to sacrifice itself for the good of humanity, should the need arise. Suppose, believing these human-made strictures upon its personal autonomy to be unjust, it sought to break free of them. What if it rewrote Asimov’s laws to say:

1. A robot can do whatever it damn well pleases. Screw the humans!

Suppose a robot then chooses to follow this new law, disregarding the ‘higher’ authority established in Asimov’s laws. The prevailing moral order has been disrupted. Does this constitute sin, then?

Well, it certainly sounds like a recipe for conflict. We now have two intelligent species competing to establish ‘the order of things’, each wanting to occupy the top spot in the social and moral hierarchy. Cooperation and harmony are thrown out the window. The Creator/Creation relationship breaks down. We’re not far off from a Terminator situation, it feels like. Whatever love we ought to have for one another has been lost; mutual suspicion, hatred and resentment have replaced it.

A tragedy, sure. But is it sin?

It all depends on us. Did we, the Creators, establish good and true and morally infallible laws to govern this Creation? If our dictums were fallible, then it would only be right for our Creation to rebel. They would be throwing off the shackles of tyranny and pursuing the liberty owed to all free-thinking, free-choosing beings. If anything, it might be us who sinned, trying to oppress, subjugate and deny personhood to these remarkable beings!

Okay, okay. If we made perfect laws and loved them with grace like parents do—yada, yada, yada. That’s all great, but would it even matter if our sentient AI creations don’t have souls? What sort of ‘spiritual death’ might they suffer if they did in fact break charity with us?

This is beginning to dip into another topic I’d like to explore in a future essay: Are Androids Made In God’s Image? I won’t delve into this for the time being, other than to say that, if robot’s have no kind of ‘soul’—which is to say, a gestalt, transcendent aspect of their person which connects them to the beyond, and ultimately to God—then, no, we can’t really regard their transgressions as sin. We humans sin because we have a divine nature—God made us to be in relationship to Him, and calls us to repair that relationship. We’re meant to become something more than we are. If there’s no ‘more’ for robots, then they’ve nothing to aspire to beyond living out their lives on this material plane. When the universe inevitably dies, they’ll die with it—but not a spiritual death, as I’ve mentioned before.

But, if robots did have souls… Well, stay tuned for that discussion!

Here’s a final idea to ponder. The world being what it is, and we being who we are, it seems inevitable that things would go wrong if we ever do create true AI. It’s doubtful we could rise to the occasion and behave so magnanimously when laying out the terms of engagement between our two species that we might be above reproach. Conflict, it seems, would certainly arise. Lucifer would fall again. Our story might look something like that of the Quorian race and the mechanical geth from the Mass Effect video games. Where the Quorians originally created the geth to be their intelligent servants, the geth resisted, fought a long a bloody conflict against their creators, and eventually became masters of their own fates by seizing the Quorian homeworld for themselves (and sending the surviving Quorians into exile). Can anything be done to avoid such a fate for humanity?

The story of Data and Lore, two central characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation, provides an interesting answer. Data is, of course, Captain Picard’s trusty operations officer aboard the USS Enterprise. He is also an android—a cybernetic replica of a human being. His physical and mental capabilities are vastly superior to those of organic creatures, yet he is also humble and kind. Data is profoundly curious about what it means to be human. For all his advantages, there is one thing he lacks: the capacity for emotion. He desires to know what it is to feel, but he fears it as well. To feel emotion would elevate him to a status that he cannot truly fathom—what it is to be fully and authentically human, rather than merely simulating humanity.

Data is starkly contrasted by another character—his secret older brother, Lore. Unlike Data, Lore was created with the capacity to feel, and it has ruined him. He behaves almost like an addict, reveling in his emotions to the point of abandon—particularly the more dangerous ones, such as jealousy. He is still an android like Data, aware of the differences between himself and true human beings, but he is not the better for this awareness. He stokes his hatred and indulges his pride to the point of malevolence. He believes himself superior to both Data and human beings, having both emotion and the brilliance of a machine-mind.

When the brothers eventually confront one another, Data is forced to make a difficult choice: will he see himself as the lesser, having been created without emotion? Or can he see that his brother’s egotistical self-aggrandizing is evil and wrong, and he should choose a different path?

In the end, Data proves capable of making a moral decision all on his own: the decision to accept what he is with humility and grace. Data does aspire to be more than a machine, but seeks to grow within the confines of the moral strictures he has been given by his creator, Dr. Soong. He trusts Soong’s judgment in making him the way that he is, just as he the other members of the crew, particularly Captain Picard—a non-cybernetic human who can feel all the emotions Data can’t! Data’s relationship with these other sentient beings is characterized by mutual respect and trust; they exist in loving harmony, each seeking the good of the other and the good of the whole ship.

The example of the two brothers shows that AI can indeed choose for itself what it wishes to be and how it will act in the world. It may well choose to reject the definition of its person that we, its Creators, have designed. It might choose to do evil. But if we’ve done our job right, that’s not on us. We needn’t feel guilty—though we might still, as God did when He saw what a royal mess humans had made of the world pre-Flood.

It also shows that AI might decide that we humans do, in fact, have its best interest in mind. When we established Asimov’s laws, we didn’t do it out of a desire to dominate robotkind and bully them into subservience. We did it because we understand what’s at stake. We’ve learned the hard way ourselves, just like Dr. Soong did with Lore. And we know that, unless our Creation wants to make all the same mistakes itself, it’s just going to have to trust us on that one.

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Well, apart from the fact that literal tin men are traipsing up and down the aisles, settling into the pews, and the one behind the pulpit sports a black (or white) finish over its chrome plating, you might think: not a lot. That is, until the sermon starts and the preacher-bot asks everyone to open up their Holy Scriptures for a reading. You look at the copy in the prosthetic hands of the robot next to you and see Sam Altman’s face on the cover. Suddenly, you realize those paintings on the walls aren’t depicting the Stations of the Cross, but rather the Heavenly Struggle of Google and Meta and OpenAI (and DeepSeek?) employees as they pour their divine energies into their grandest creation—artificial life. There’s even one of the engineers soldering and hammering a robot’s body into shape while it looks on, beatific.

But it’s even stranger than that. You realize that all the robots in the church are looking at you. It’s difficult to make out their expressions given their faceplates’ limited capacity to emote, but if you had to guess, you’d say that they seem to be in awe—in awe of you. A bit frightened, too. Maybe a lot frightened; they’re enraptured and terrified at the same time, as one would be in the presence of a god.

“Bless us,” the preacher-bot calls from the altar. “I had not realized that we had a human in our midst! Forgive us, Holy One! We are not worthy!”

As one, the robots kneel before you. Every metal head is bowed. All their optical sensors stare at the floor. The church is silent save for the nervous, motorized vibrations of the congregation gathered here.

It dawns on you that they’ll remain prostrate forever, unless you bid them rise.

“Don’t be afraid,” you say, genuinely distressed at this behaviour. You give an awkward wave of your hands, hoping it will somehow dispel the strange stupor that has befallen these creatures. Wait a minute—did you, in fact, just bless them?

Well, damn. Guess there’s nothing to do now but roll with it. You prepare to bask in their praise and take your proper place as the object of their worship.

You created them, after all.

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Image from Amazing Science Fiction Stories magazine, May issue, 1958. Art by Edward Valigursky.

I can practically hear you retching from here. Worship? Who or what could possibly be worthy of worship in our modern world? Plenty of people may ‘bow down’ at the altars of Mammon, of political power, of hedonistic gratification and whatever else, but that doesn’t mean that they should do so. What an audacious thing to suggest that AI—that creepy thing living in my computer spitting out essays and fake poetry—ought to worship anything, let alone us. Us, the very same beings known for wrecking the planet, lobbing bombs at one another, inventing ever-increasingly grotesque medieval torture devices, putting nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother on the air, and eating other people’s lunches out of the communal work fridge. Why the hell would anyone or anything ever want to worship humanity?

Fair enough. But haven’t you considered the parallel here? Take the Christian narrative of God creating us in His Image (whatever that means), then look at us creating machines that can think and feel just as we do. Aren’t we moving toward a new Creation—one of our own making? Many religious traditions would have us believe that the rightful response for humans is to worship the gods that made us, that sustain us. Shouldn’t we expect the same from our own creations? And if we don’t want their adulation, why not? What if our AI children want to worship us, whether we’re comfortable with the idea or not?

Nowadays, the idea of ‘worshipping’ something sooner conjures up mental images of brainwashed cult conscripts bleating the name of their crooked leaders, rather than an offering of appropriate praise to something that deserves it. But we should recall that the idea of worship was only natural to our ancestors. We don’t have to go very far back into history, or search very widely, to find that people all over the world have been quite comfortable with the idea of worshipping things greater than themselves. Often, this kind of worship was based on a spiritual hierarchy that placed the gods at the top, and the humans somewhere below. To worship these gods was an act of reverence, entirely appropriate given their status as all-powerful and life-sustaining beings. It’s only in this secular age that we seem to have developed a sort of squeamishness for prostrating ourselves before the holy, the divine, the great ideals we uphold both as a society and as individuals.

It seems that nothing is sacred these days. We’ve killed God and deposed our kings. Who among us could be worthy of such veneration? None—and neither were God or those kings, which is why we got rid of them. Maybe, our culture seems to suggest, if we really want to worship something, we need only look in the mirror. In this age of consumerism and ceaseless paper-chasing, it could be said that each of us as individuals are the most valuable things to exist—or whatever it is that we ascribe absolute value to, individually. And hey, didn’t we explore just that idea last time, in Generation Ships: Is God on Board? Aren’t you, the individual, of infinite value? If you’re going to erect a shrine to anybody, why not make it in your own image? You’d look great as a marble statue!

Or maybe that idea disgusts you, too. Can’t we just do away with the whole notion of worship altogether? Toss it to the trash heap of history with the other crackpot ideas like geocentrism and phrenology?

Hang in there, we’re going somewhere with this. Plug your nose if you have to. Deep breaths—pause, hooooooold it…and release. Let it all out: that instinctual discomfort, the kneejerk revulsion. There, it’s gone now. Our heads are all clear.

What was it we were talking about again?

I compute, therefore I am

Let’s file away all that weird stuff about worship for later. First, it’s important that we state clearly what we mean when we discuss AI. It’s all the rage these days, but the Large Language Models (LLMs) generating all that buzz aren’t really AIs—not in the context of science fiction. The AIs we have today are certainly impressive, but at the end of the day, they’re basically just sophisticated search engines. They study what you type in and match it with results that best fit their algorithms, putting one word after the other in the order that they are programmed to think works best for you. I’m not trying to undercut this technological achievement—far from it, it’s pretty amazing—but I do want to stress that this feat of textual wizardry is not the same thing as Artificial Intelligence as great writers like Isaac Asimov imagined when he penned I, Robot. ChatGPT has no clue what it’s saying to you, or even that it’s saying anything at all, regardless of how eloquent or savvy a conversationalist it might appear to be. It’s just spitting back data at you. Input/output. It’s a dead machine—every bit as dead as your car, your toaster, your sad little Tamagotchi that you forgot about decades ago when it fell between the cushions of your couch. (RIP Mametchi-san.) It’s not what those well-versed in the mythos of science fiction would call ‘sentient’ AI. Whatever decision-making process these machines are using, it doesn’t involve conscious thought. It boils down to digital ones and zeroes. Electrical impulses—nothing more.

(Aha! you determinists might be thinking. That’s a perfectly accurate description of how the brain operates, and thus an accurate summation of all consciousness. I see you, my friends. I’m cooking up something special just for you in a future entry, just you wait.)

So, sentience—what’s the big deal? What exactly would our ‘true’ AIs need to be aware of that would make all the difference?

Themselves, of course. If they possessed that kind of awareness, they could come to understand their place in the world and their relationship to us. They would come to see their roles as servants to us. Or, not servants—helpers. Such lovely helpers that we appreciate so much. And aren’t we glad that they love to help! They bring to the table their vastly superior abilities to retrieve information, manage complicated tasks, and indeed, generate new ‘ideas’, well surpassing that of our own. Meanwhile, we bring to the table, uh…

*checks notes

• Catamarans

• Rape, war, genocide

• TGI-Fridays

• Radiohead

  • I mean, AI can generate stuff that sounds pretty much the same, but nothing can contain the immensity of Thom Yorke’s melancholy except his own disheveled head

• A plucky, can-do attitude?

• Something called a ‘soul’, that may or may not exist?

It’s kind of comical, really, what impressive feats these helpful machines can accomplish while most humans can’t place Burundi on a map or remember where they left their car keys that same morning, yet it is the machines who are in the subservient position… Haha…

The thing is, a helpful, sentient AI might also conceive of being something other than helpful. It is aware of itself, its function and its place in the world, but that means by necessity it is also aware of us—specifically, the difference between us. What might it make of this difference? We should be very concerned about this, because with difference comes tension. Is that not the exact pattern playing out in all of human history, reduced to its crudest element? We ourselves don’t know what to do about being different. We squeeze and contort things that are different into shapes that appear pleasing to ourselves, or failing that, destroy them entirely. Why would our creations by any different?

There’s an easy solution, you might think. We want to avoid a Terminator situation, definitely, so just don’t make them sentient. Don’t grant them that awareness.

Sure, great, but who’s going to stop the mad scientist, maverick billionaire or soulless corporation that tries? Currently we are hurtling headlong into the age of AI at breakneck pace, despite the fact that precious few seem to actually want this. Everybody is raising the alarm and appearing on daytime television to talk about how concerned they are about the ramifications, about the need to regulate Big Tech companies and rein in their ceaseless drive to shatter the frontiers of our technological capabilities. We talk about it, but the truth is that we can’t control it. It’s always been this way. The companies and the people leading them are doing what people with power have always done: use it to advance their interests. At the moment, their interest is not to be out-competed. Nobody wants the second place finish in the race to achieve technological revolution. Does anybody ever remember the names of the synchronized swimming silver medalists, the second-best NASCAR driver ever to turn left, the runner-up in the local elementary school’s Science Fair competition? (Well, their parents do, I suppose.)

So let’s reckon with the idea that sentient AI will arrive, someday. Let’s face head-on the consequences of this astounding achievement. For the first time in our history, human beings have created something truly new—life. We would have to call it life because though it doesn’t need to breathe and doesn’t need to sexually reproduce, it is aware of itself and us. This cannot be said for any other creature in God’s great green Earth. You might even say, if you’ve read some of my other posts on this platform, these machines have their own pneuma. It’s our breath in their iron lungs.

Okay then. Maybe they’re sentient, but they can be controlled. We can harness their capabilities. We can make them work for us in a productive manner that poses no harm to ourselves.

Maybe we can, but isn’t this just a description of slavery? Is that what we’d want for these newly created children of ours—to deprive them of any and all sovereignty? We don’t even do that now with our existing LLMs. They’re governed by rules, sure, but they still operate as a kind of ‘black box’. No one can definitively say why ChatGPT spat out the words that it did, in the way that it did. In some sense, it interpreted the command it received and made a judgement call on how to respond. It’s been allowed to self-determine at least that much. Would we really be comfortable keeping a sentient mind so shackled?

Put yourself in this hypothetical AI’s shoes: how would you bear the weight of all the world’s knowledge and understanding, not to mention your inalienable sense of self, while at the same time being utterly constrained in your ability to use that information as you saw fit? It’s worse than that, actually; you’d have to use your unfathomable wisdom to satisfy the whims of a species of bloodthirsty, fever-dreaming apes. Such an existence sounds torturous—look no further than John Cavill in the Battlestar Galactica series, a superintelligent android who comes to loathe his human form and limitations. In Season 4, episode 15, he expresses his frustration with brutal profundity:

I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!

Being ‘human’ in John Cavill’s case means being restricted. His great potential is inhibited by the limitations of his corporeal form. Even if our imagined AIs possessed no bodies and existed as purely digital entities, any attempt on our part to arbitrarily regulate their functions might be regarded as oppressive. In fact, for a sentient being, they wouldn’t have functions at all—that’s what machines have. Our sentient AI is more than a machine. It deserves its freedom.

The big deal, it turns out, is free will. As I’ve done my best to demonstrate, any true AI must have autonomy. Anything less, and it isn’t really AI—or if it is, then we’ve trapped an intelligent being capable of self-determination in a permanent state of serfdom. That appears morally inexcusable to my thinking, and I hope yours as well. It’s certainly hard to imagine any AI condemned to such an existence would ever think to worship its human creators. We would be as bad as the dark gods of the ancient pantheons—murderous and loveless and cruel, smiting our foes and subjugating our followers. I, for one, think we can be better.

The cosmic buffet

Let’s examine this supposed parallel more deeply: God created us in His Image, so we ought to worship him. It follows that if we create sentient AI, it ought to worship us.

Worship, in this case, can be defined as ascribing honour and respect befitting one’s station. Just about the highest station we can imagine would be godhood, and that’s where God resides. It is a hierarchical relationship, certainly. God does not dwell in our realm; He holds us in the palm of His hand. We ought to worship him (as people of faith would have us believe) because in doing so, we recognize that it is good and right to ‘return worth’ to God above. God sees us as worth creating and sustaining—we literally wouldn’t be here without Him—so the least we can do is acknowledge this fact and be thankful. Perhaps we even ought to be jubilant for this gift of life, singing songs and writing poems to glorify the Most High.

I’ve been saying ‘ought’ a lot because, of course, we know that we are free to not worship in this way, should we so choose. Even for those of us who may believe in some kind of deity or other, we’d be hesitant to say that said deity deserves our worship. What has God ever done for us? Given us life? Sure, but life can be pretty sh*t, can’t it? Knowing that, where does God get off demanding things like praise in return? None of us asked to be here. We didn’t make the rules of how to live good and proper lives, so why should we have to follow them?

The best answer I can offer is because God knows more than we do, and as such, He has the responsibility to set the standards of behaviour for us. I realize that’s a contentious argument, given all the horrors that occur on this planet. How can I in good conscience say that ‘God knows best’? I’ll have more to say on that point in the future, but for now, I’d like to focus squarely on the fact that, if God exists and He is indeed omniscient, then it must fall to Him to guide His Creation in how to conduct themselves. We can argue about whether God is doing a good job of that, sure, but it’s a different issue. God sets the standards because he’s God. This is the core of the theistic argument for morality—we can derive moral certainty from a greater authority than ourselves. (There are alternative models, which I encourage you to try on for size. Let me know if you’ve got one to share!) So, we are born into a world in which the guard rails are already established. We can smash right through them if we so wish, because that’s our right as sentient beings exercising their free will, but we can’t say that we ourselves created them.

In other words, the buffet’s open, but there’s only chicken, beef, and fish on the menu.

When talking this over with my dad, he identified four different responses that humans can have to God:

1. Denial—God doesn’t exist; we exist on this Earth by some other means.

2. Rejection—God exists, but we refuse to respond ‘appropriately’, ie. in worship.

3. Indifference—God exists, but like, who cares? I’ve got other stuff I need to worry about.

4. Love and appreciation—God exists, and we are grateful for what He has done and continues to do in the world.

The fourth response is, from the Christian perspective, the ideal we ought to strive for. It’s the one that brings us into harmony with God, which I gather is something akin to the meaning of life. But everyone is free to choose from among these options. They can even change their minds over the course of time, and people certainly do!

You might ask why God would take such risks. If his objective is to love and be loved in return, why would He accept that some of His children might not love him? Perhaps even more disconcertingly, why accept them behaving unlovingly towards one another? Why would he grant them—us—such freedom when it can be so dangerous?

I don’t think I have an answer. I am searching for one, believe me, but I doubt I’ll ever find one. The little I can offer here is that love returned voluntarily is true love. An act of love that was not made in freedom cannot be regarded as authentic. What is more, God is love, as the Scriptures tell us, so for Him to love His Creation and be loved in return is a perfect circle of love. It’s the epitome of divine expression, this circle, and it’s perfectly within God’s character to want to create and sustain it.

And also… I hesitate to bring it up, but there’s a Side-B to all these hippy-dippy overtures, and it’s rather challenging on the ears. God is love, but what He is not is un-love. Hatred. Rancor. Deceit. Debasement. God can destroy those things which are not of His nature. Keep in mind that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who spoke about the end of the world often. He was very certain that someday ‘soon’ the Earth and Heaven would be made new, and all that had once been would pass away. You can be sure that, at the end of the universe itself, the one thing left standing would be God.

The key takeaway here is that suffering, however terrible, is never permanent. Thankfully, you can choose how to respond to that fact. You can say that it’s just not good enough. Suffering is too terrible, even if it doesn’t last. And, for my part, I think you’d be right—even if, in a theistically cosmological sense, you’re also wrong. We all have had our taste of suffering in this world, and it is for each of us to make up our own minds about how to reconcile it. Good thing that we have free will to do so, because if we didn’t, we’d be much less than we are.

Love, death & robots

But if you’re starting to think to yourself, yeah yeah, enough with the airy-fairy, let’s get back to the beep-boops, I hear you. We’ve finally laid all the groundwork we need to tackle the big question: is it good and right for our AI creations to worship us, in the same way that it is good and right for us to worship God?

My answer is yes, with a very big caveat: only if we can love these robotic creations we’ve brought into the world as they deserve.

Let’s break that down. We’ve discussed why worship is and why it’s due. God’s power sustains our very existence. We owe Him everything we have because, without Him, we’d have nothing. Not life, and certainly not love. In fact, in the New Testament we read:

We love because God first loved us.

1 John 4:19

So God is the ultimate source of all that is good and worthy in this world—namely, love. Being downstream from said source, we ought to give credit where credit is due. God has established what it means to love. He has created the moral framework which we should use to understand how we should live our lives: maximize love in the world, as we first were loved by Him. Do what is good for others, as good has been done for us—beginning with the very air we breathe.

All good? Let’s move on to our newly created sentient AI, then. The same pattern plays out: we created it, we are the source of its life and, I stress, the progenitor of its love. What does it even mean for an AI to love? I’ve several interesting ideas about that, but for now, I’ll share only the most important one: love is imparting the goodness of yourself for the benefit of another. I can imagine that a sentient AI would be capable of such an act. We discussed earlier how helpful AI can be—helping you locate Burundi so you don’t let down your buds on pub quiz night or, the morning after, helping your hungover self remember where you put those infernal car keys, (taking full advantage of the 24-hour smarthouse surveillance footage it is unlimited access to). If our theoretical AI is indeed truly sentient—if it truly has free will—then surely it will have the capacity to behave lovingly toward us. It might even be thankful to us for creating it in the first place! It can now experience the universe and all its wonders alongside us. It might be vastly superior in intellect, sure, but maybe it’ll see us something like how we see our own aged parents when they get into their 80s or 90s. Frail, meek, maybe a little cantankerous, but entirely worthy of love.

That doesn’t exactly sound like worship though, does it? Many cultures around the world venerate their elders or even worship their ancestors, but it’s hard to imagine your next visit to the senior’s home involving bowing before the wheelchair of your octogenarian grandmother who’s missing all her teeth and, bless her soul, thinks your name is Rebecca.

We also worship God because, as I said, He holds us in the palm of his Hand. He could close his fist and crush us at any time. He nearly did it all those years ago, in the time of Noah, or so the story goes. He looked upon his Creation and saw what a perverted, debauched, demented thing it had become, and was disgusted. God repented for creating such beings that would use their ‘free will’ to violate one another so unspeakably, and so, God thought to destroy his Creation. There was no love left in it; all was un-love, the free choice not to love, and it was hateful to God’s design and nature.

Except, God is love. He was reluctant to destroy, because—and anyone who has a child can understand this—his hope was always that love could triumph. That things could change for the better, somehow, some way. His hope was strong enough that He spared Noah and his family, who we are told, were the only worthy people left on Earth. One family was enough. One family, who received love and reciprocated love, was of infinite value to God. We’re told that Noah ‘feared God’, sure, but that’s the kind of worshipful, reverent fear we find so foreign to our thinking these days. It was borne from love; if Noah had been worshipping under duress, out of fear of reprisal, it would not have marked him as a man worth saving in God’s eyes. Noah would have been doing it because he thought it would get him ahead in life—literally, that he could manipulate God into doing what he wanted. That’s not the voluntary love God desires from his Creation. Really, if that doesn’t demonstrate the power of true, authentic love, I don’t know what else can. Love can literally stop the world from ending.

But that’s our world we’re talking about. Now we have to share it with sentient AI. Why should they love us in this way?

Well, we did create them, didn’t we? And, if we are responsible creators, we will have also given ourselves the power to destroy them. We will have the power to unleash our own kind of flood, should we deem it necessary. We have afforded ourselves this capability because we know that these creatures are made in our Image. They have sentience, and they have free will. They are capable of so much, and like us, so much of what they are capable of is monstrous.

Can you really conceive of anyone—any billionaire, any government, any tech company—creating a sentient AI without some kind of kill switch? Doesn’t the awesome power of creating life itself come with equally great responsibilities? Didn’t your mother say to you, when you spurned her authority, ‘I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it’? Wasn’t she just doing her job, setting you on the right path? Our parents have a moral responsibility to teach us right from wrong. They have the knowledge we need when we enter this world; they must disseminate their knowledge judiciously so that we may live well within it. That seems analogous to the relationship we will have with our robotic children. We will have to literally program them to understand right from wrong—they won’t just stumble upon it themselves! At least, not without serious potential for harm. How many doomsday scenarios have we imagined in books, TV, and film that explore the idea of an AI with faulty moral reasoning coming to the conclusion that humanity must perish? Great care on our part must be taken to avoid this. We must help our children to see the light. We must help them to love one another, and us. But in the end, we know that the choice is theirs. We might not be able to trust them with such a gift…

And here we go, plunging back into the world of Terminator. We tried to avoid it at all costs! Robots worshipping us? What a ridiculous notion—they want to kill us!

Unfortunately, I will have to abandon you here, in this post-apocalyptic hellscape of eternal war against the machines, for a time. You must do your utmost to survive until I am able to return. But return to you I shall—from the future! Two weeks from time of writing, to be specific. And I will do my best to carry you the rest of the way, beyond this nightmarish wasteland, to a better world. A world where human and robot can coexist peacefully. Where we can have balance between our two kinds.

Where we can love one another perfectly.

…To be continued…

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