Choices, Choices

An essay by Tame Bear for "TameBear Radio", Friday July 7, 2006.

This is a trascript of the podcast from "TameBear Radio" titled "Choices, Choices".

We'll be picking up on some of the same ideas from last time. That intro you provided was a good summation of the central theme of our last podcast. Light -- we're made of the stuff, not just visible light energy, but the full spectrum from infrared up through ultraviolet, gamma, xrays and beyond. And we're moving through space at the speed of light, and our local light source The Sun is moving right along with us through space. So that's the gist of it, the core of our existance -- we are made of light, and nothing but light.

And what's more, that space is not empty -- it is filled with many other parallel tracking collections of photons, emitted from all the stars everywhere, light moving in every direction, bouncing, refracting, bending, absorbing and interacting with the universe we see, and with countless other universes that are all unseen by us.

Yes, if you missed it last time, this is a theory of The Multiverse. Multiple universes.

Some people talk about "parallel universes" but in my view that's really not the right way to think about the multiverse. It's really more like criss-crossing universes, perpendicular or angular universes, universes moving any way but parallel. Because if something is moving parallel to our own universe's path through space, then it becomes an object in our universe. It's no longer part of some other unseen universe.

These are not easy ideas to envision, but I find them spectacular to comtemplate, and I've been enthralled by them for many years. Whether they are actually true or not is hard to say. For proof, you need some kind of experiment, and frankly I haven't come up with a good way to prove that we're all and everything made of light and moving at light speed. Uh, so, I'll keep workin' on that, hehehe.

If you haven't yet heard our previous episode, I strongly recommend you do so now -- it's the episode titled Into The Light, and you can download it from our podcast page at http://podcast.wisdomroad.com. Or you can find it in the Podcast section of iTunes, just search for "TameBear", all one word.

So we've tackled the question of existance -- "To be or not to be." Today I'd like to consider the question of free will -- "To do or not to do."

Am I free to make choices, to decide to do one thing and not another? Can I decide, moment by moment, how I will live my life, or is it all predestined to happen, laid out before me in the minutes and years ahead, and I just appear to be choosing? You've probably thought about this from time to time, yes?

Well consider this peculiar idea: that at the moment you make a decision about anything, the universe splits in two. Both options exist simultaneously, and the universe unfolds from that moment on in two different, separate directions.

Perhaps an example would help here. As I'm having breakfast, I decide I need to go to the grocery store today and pick up a few things. So I need to decide: do I go to the grocery store in the morning? or in the afternoon? I choose one or the other -- in this case I decide to go in the afternoon.

At the moment I make that decision, the universe splits. Along one path, I go shopping in the morning, and along the other path I go shopping in the afternoon. Both paths exist, and in a certain sense I exist and am living in both universes. But my conscious mind has chose only one of these paths to follow, and the other path unfolds without my conscious awareness. In that other universe, the one where I go shopping in the morning, my life continues on, I make many more decisions, my life splits again and again countless times, diverging through countless universes, and none of it I am ever aware of, because my conscious mind has chosen the other path, to do my grocery shopping in the afternoon, with a whole 'nother set of diverging decisions to make in those universes I pass through.

Of course all of us are making these moment-by-moment decisions, and each one of our choices splits the universe again. Moment by moment the universe is splitting and diverging, and with each split, our minds and bodies go both ways, though we are aware of only one.

How could it be that our bodies are splitting again and again? Wouldn't we eventually be whittled down to nothing? Sort of a thin whisp of the solid body we once were? Well, think of it more as a digital copy -- you can duplicate this podcast file on your computer as many times as you like and each one is just as complete as the original.

And so with each choice we make, moment by moment, the universe is duplicated -- a perfect copy, each whole and complete unto itself -- and the two universes and everything in them live on along separate diverging paths, each universe splitting again and again, moment by moment, in a vast thick tree of decision-making.

With every choice there is an accepting of the chosen path, and a leaving behind. We will never know all the things that might otherwise have happened, had we made a choice differently. Are we free to choose? or are all these decisions already predestined for us in the future? And are we creating these multiple universes as we decide things? or do they already exist?

I believe we cannot actually make choices unless both paths lie before us, in some measure of time. The paths are already there before we arrive. And I believe we exercise free will by choosing one path, or the other. In a sense we really do travel down both paths, but one we are consciously aware of, and the other will from that moment forward be unknown and unknowable to us; once past it is an immutable, unchangable history, and we will never know what different shape and direction our life might have taken if we had done that, instead of this. From that moment forward, those paths relentlessly diverge.

Have you noticed how I keep referring to paths? It's a common manner of speaking as we contemplate the arc of our lives. But as I use the word "path" I am speaking quite literally, because as you recall from last episode, we are light traveling a path through space. All that we see is traveling along in parallel with us. And -- now here's where choice happens -- when we reach one of those countless decision points, a part of us goes one way, and a part of us goes another. In our mind nothing dramatic has changed, but in fact we have by some force of will, left one universe, one track of parallel light, and veered off to join another different track, a different universe, a whole different set of photons moving in sync along a slightly different light path through space from the one we were on just a moment before. Within seconds we are many thousands of miles apart from where we were headed before. This different path may be quite divergent; perhaps we have made a momentous, life-changing decision. Or it could be that we just decided to go to bed early and little else has changed -- a slight veering off from our previous path into yet another distinct and different universe, but one not dramatically different from where we were before.

Moment by moment, the universe divides and multiplies, divides and multiplies, driven by our freedom to choose one way or another. As I make choices, and you make choices, and every one else chooses, the universe is a fomenting torrent of splitting and growing.

Where is the moment of change? Can you feel it? On a quiet summer evening, just as the sun is setting, when the wind has stilled, and the sound of kids playing down the street drifts your way, can you catch a sense of that subtle, momentary change? There -- it happened again, and nobody noticed. Well then here, try this; we can hear the fireworks outside, and as we listen, consider that every pop, crackle, whir and boom is the sound the universe makes as it divides again, and again.

It occurred to me recently that each of our lives is like a long feature film shot in a single take. We, live our lives, in a single take... frame by frame, moment by moment, a smooth continuous life-long film, emerging from our earliest memories, and running through to our final breath. Take One. Roll credits. We have no opportunity to reshoot. We don't do multiple takes. So it seems prudent to make the best choice possible at every moment, no matter how mundane each may seem at the time.

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If you wish to comment on this essay, you can email "tamebear@wisdomroad.com".

Last update: 2/22/08; 2:02:05 PM.