Monday late afternoon I had a date. It was to see the movie "Arrival" at the local multi-plex, and when we got there on a Monday at 4:30 PM there were not many people - five, to be exact, including my date and I. It would have been a perfect time to make the first nervous move towards romance, but seeing that I was with my wife of many years, we stuck to eating popcorn and actually watching the movie. My, how times have changed.
Or had they? The movie dovetailed with the last blog about time and prophesy - in fact, time was the central scientific concept in this sci-fi thriller about the arrival of 12 alien - very alien - craft that positioned themselves around the world. We were moved to ask: why have they come?
It was a good movie, but Hollywood none the less, and we found that something approaching world peace was at stake. We found that the aliens, which looked a lot like The Simpson's aliens (again, a dovetail with the last blog) but much, much larger, communicated in non-linear time, and thus lived in a universe that was already done. Our heroin, a linguist who learns to communicate in this non-time language, discovers that she is living both past and present, over and over again. She learns what her life will be and lives it in dreams and in a reality of cycles that seem to never end. But here is the crux: knowing what her future will be - and it is filled with heartache - she chooses to live it anyway. In that, we are supposed to find pathos and wisdom. We also learn that the aliens MUST play out their part, even though they know the outcome. Again, they, too, must have had the ability to decide, to change the future, but chose instead to run with it as it had already played out.
Overall, we are presented with the possibility of choice, even though choice seems to be an impossibility in a world that is already set for all time. In a Hollywood movie one would not expect to hear resonances of the Judaeo-Christian theme, but there it was, as inescapable for the plot as an already-lived future would seem to be. In a world beyond time, where everything is said and done at once, the movie tells us that we must have choice, just as the morality of religion under the aegis of an omnipotent god MUST have choice, or no human morality is possible. Choice must be to make any sense at all, just as the movie could not move, could not have drama, without the possibility of choice.
The question then arises: although we cannot contemplate in one thought a universe already made, and one that we must make, we try anyway. Is this because we have been conditioned for it from our religious heritage, or is it because we intuit its reality, which is why we put it in our religions? But it is not only us, we of the Judaeo-Christian epic, who do so. Myths - particularly those religious stories of tribal peoples - do not run in linear time. In fact, a simple reading of them makes little sense to those outside the traditions when interpreted from linear time. Could it be, then, that this all-time is the real real, and that our linear sense is only a simplification of that reality? And could it be that we understand that in some deep part of ourselves?
It seems to me that the spiritual part of us lives this split impossibility with ease, while our daily selves suffer from an ignorance that makes this greater reality impossible - even as we try to make sense of it. It also seems that time might be the fundamental essence of "original sin"; that is, that without time, we would be immortal and perfect even though still human. Here, if we were fully a part of that non-time world, our choices would be automatic, as we would live in harmony with all-time; here, we would be beyond morality, because we would be living in a world as it was designed to be.
But we live in linear time, with all its sufferings and choices. Here, we can make the wrong choice, and in so doing, separate ourselves from the grand design that will - again, paradoxically - unfold anyway, as if linear time were only a stream that diverts from the river, only to join it again later on.
And so we return to the wisdom of our heroin, and to the core of our religions. It is not God or the gods who have made a difficult world for us, one filled with pain and death, but our inability, which is somehow our choice, to see it all at once, as a masterful and perfect plan. Our heroin and the aliens grasp this, but we run astray, bumping our heads against this wall and that, suffering because we refuse to see that the maze we live in has already been figured out. We have instead chosen choice - what the Bible would call a rebellious choice - and so must suffer the consequences.
Which makes me think: maybe I could have chosen to be young again at the movies last Monday. It would have been more exciting. But time has made that choice for me, and somehow, I'm OK with that. FK
Or had they? The movie dovetailed with the last blog about time and prophesy - in fact, time was the central scientific concept in this sci-fi thriller about the arrival of 12 alien - very alien - craft that positioned themselves around the world. We were moved to ask: why have they come?
It was a good movie, but Hollywood none the less, and we found that something approaching world peace was at stake. We found that the aliens, which looked a lot like The Simpson's aliens (again, a dovetail with the last blog) but much, much larger, communicated in non-linear time, and thus lived in a universe that was already done. Our heroin, a linguist who learns to communicate in this non-time language, discovers that she is living both past and present, over and over again. She learns what her life will be and lives it in dreams and in a reality of cycles that seem to never end. But here is the crux: knowing what her future will be - and it is filled with heartache - she chooses to live it anyway. In that, we are supposed to find pathos and wisdom. We also learn that the aliens MUST play out their part, even though they know the outcome. Again, they, too, must have had the ability to decide, to change the future, but chose instead to run with it as it had already played out.
Overall, we are presented with the possibility of choice, even though choice seems to be an impossibility in a world that is already set for all time. In a Hollywood movie one would not expect to hear resonances of the Judaeo-Christian theme, but there it was, as inescapable for the plot as an already-lived future would seem to be. In a world beyond time, where everything is said and done at once, the movie tells us that we must have choice, just as the morality of religion under the aegis of an omnipotent god MUST have choice, or no human morality is possible. Choice must be to make any sense at all, just as the movie could not move, could not have drama, without the possibility of choice.
The question then arises: although we cannot contemplate in one thought a universe already made, and one that we must make, we try anyway. Is this because we have been conditioned for it from our religious heritage, or is it because we intuit its reality, which is why we put it in our religions? But it is not only us, we of the Judaeo-Christian epic, who do so. Myths - particularly those religious stories of tribal peoples - do not run in linear time. In fact, a simple reading of them makes little sense to those outside the traditions when interpreted from linear time. Could it be, then, that this all-time is the real real, and that our linear sense is only a simplification of that reality? And could it be that we understand that in some deep part of ourselves?
It seems to me that the spiritual part of us lives this split impossibility with ease, while our daily selves suffer from an ignorance that makes this greater reality impossible - even as we try to make sense of it. It also seems that time might be the fundamental essence of "original sin"; that is, that without time, we would be immortal and perfect even though still human. Here, if we were fully a part of that non-time world, our choices would be automatic, as we would live in harmony with all-time; here, we would be beyond morality, because we would be living in a world as it was designed to be.
But we live in linear time, with all its sufferings and choices. Here, we can make the wrong choice, and in so doing, separate ourselves from the grand design that will - again, paradoxically - unfold anyway, as if linear time were only a stream that diverts from the river, only to join it again later on.
And so we return to the wisdom of our heroin, and to the core of our religions. It is not God or the gods who have made a difficult world for us, one filled with pain and death, but our inability, which is somehow our choice, to see it all at once, as a masterful and perfect plan. Our heroin and the aliens grasp this, but we run astray, bumping our heads against this wall and that, suffering because we refuse to see that the maze we live in has already been figured out. We have instead chosen choice - what the Bible would call a rebellious choice - and so must suffer the consequences.
Which makes me think: maybe I could have chosen to be young again at the movies last Monday. It would have been more exciting. But time has made that choice for me, and somehow, I'm OK with that. FK
RSS Feed