Choices of the Seafarers

I am a big believer of ‘the butterfly effect’ – a butterfly flaps its wings in India and it rains down in Maldives. If you were to lay out all the possible cosmic and earth-born events temporally, linked by cause-effect, it would not be a parody of the linear world view in our substandard minds; rather the Cosmic and Gaian events form a beautiful intricate web, depending on one other due to direct or ancestral causal linkages. And it’s all conditional probabilities – the event happened and the probabilities of occurrence of its colleagues & the successors changed, for they were directly or indirectly dependent on that momentary event whether the butterfly will flap its wings or not. It is like a ripple of probability changes through the web of human endeavor's; a probable change in the course that humanity sails on.

The sheer number of events on this planet in one rotation amount to be incomprehensible; not to include the vast, unending Universe. And if this web of human events were laid out, it would seem as if it were alive; as if it were a thinking brain: Every event like a neuron firing, a calculation among gazillions, that decides the fate of the vast unending darkness and of the cosmic dust grains floating in it, like us.

Now the dogmatic view of the philosophers of cosmos is that time had a beginning*; it began with the birth of this observable universe, the big bang. Now if time began with big bang, then the concepts of cause and effect, action and consequence came after the big bang. This would mean that happening of the big bang, the way it happened was a sure event – i.e., if there were any variables involved, they only had a single set value. Now I would like to reiterate that I am talking just about the big bang, not what happened a point of time later. Because with the big bang, time began. All that was there now had uncountable choices; it was the birth of probability, chaos.

And at this second rung of the web of gazillion rivers; choices were made. Choices that brought an order, an order in the bounds of which chaos will work. And this order also bound the future choices, the future order to be born. And brought more apparent chaos with it to our big bang, endless possibilities for what the next rung will be. Almost as if this was the moment; a starting of the formation of the DNA of a universe, a universe in the future of which a dope smoking cousin of the apes will be trying to pull off a damn near impossible job given the vast constraints put on him –the comprehension of the web that was built by enormous possibilities, with so many rivers taking each step from a gazillion possible and creating more possibilities as they move along time; the intricate web of events! And this passion of his will lead him to make certain choices, choices which may very well define the course on which the rotting ships of humanity will sail.

So even though how miniscule you feel in comparison to the vast darkness out there, in the grand scheme of things your simplest of choices can bring about an apocalypse. I know it is hard to comprehend the gravity of this. And that just means you are sane. For here, there is no good or evil. Good or evil is for humans, it is not for this web. Extinction of humanity will change the course of history of universe for sure, but the universe will go on. It might be a big ripple, sure, but most certainly the universe will go on. It might even do good in the sense that life originates on some other planet which doesn’t implode like humanity and traverses this web to reach the end of it. That would be a happy ending, to know what all this was for. Just not for us.

Maybe this is why it has always been said that it is the choices that make a man. But does one choice define a man? As much at length I have talked about how much a single choice, a single action can be important, it is light years away from being enough to define a man. A man is neither good nor evil; he is the sum collection of all his actions+. Now, taking a slight detour, I never personally liked the idea of the dualism in most people’s biases based on certain traits. In fact, the whole concept of Good or Evil is beyond me. It is all about personal belief and hence, it becomes meaningless to think of the morality standard of a person from the society’s perspective. Society anyway is the most uninformed judge of an individual. But what is the morality of the individual? What are his rules, his beliefs; his traits? How does he measure# himself up, see himself? How does he traverse through that portion of the Universal Web of Events which I would call, the Web of Possibilities?

And before we go further, I think I should discuss an amendment to the conclusive propositions of all I have discussed till now. For that, all of you need to ask yourself a question. It’s more of a scenario really. A 25 year old paedophile rapes three little girls, aged only 5-7 years, and films it . The authorities say that the clips contained some of the most horrifying sexual acts they had ever seen. Again, they were horrifying in part for being done on such little girls. The question is: Would you care why these horrifying crimes were committed? What led to a human baby grow up into such a deviant monster, as you might call him?

Now, I would like to quote the philosopher here, as he agrees with Theophrastus’s comparative ranking of sins:

“In his comparative ranking of sins, applying philosophy to the common man’s distinctions, Theophrastus says that offences of lust are graver than those of anger: because it is clearly some sort of pain and involuntary spasm which drives the angry man to abandon reason, whereas the lust-led offender has given in to pleasure and seems somehow more abandoned and less manly in his wrong doings. Rightly then, and like a true philosopher, Theophrastus said that grater censure attaches to an offence committed under the influence of pleasure than to one under the influence of pain. And in general, the one is more like an injured party, forced to anger by the pain of provocation: whereas the other is his own source of the impulse to wrong, driven to what he does by lust.”

I used to agree with him on this that offences of lust are graver than the offences of anger, again going with the ‘common man’s distinctions’ of both offences. But what are those distinctions? Is rape always an offence of lust? No, I think not. It may as well be a crime of anger, where the the pain of provocation has led the man to humiliate the provocateur in the most humiliating (for the provocateur) manner possible. But one must also ask themselves what that anger was borne out of? Was his pain borne of being denied the pleasures that his body craves? Was his anger the hunger of the she wolf whose belly was denied fulfilment? This is talk of common man’s distinctions. And I am sure you are much more familiar with them than I am. In my mind, sin, virtue: that is not how the nature knows of us. Nature knows of us as beings who make choices: seafarers in this vast ocean** of causes and choices, rowing the ship inherited of our ancestors, who first set sail not as conscious beings of flesh and bone, but cosmic air and dust breathing fire in the hearts of stars. Our free will seems vast, endless because this ocean is endless. So all these distinctions are meaningless beyond the realm of common man. And yet, by being meaningful to us, these distinctions have been changed the course charted by the ever chaotic universe of ours in these seemingly unending waters.

Coming back to the realm of our reality, this young paedophile; his offence was driven off of a dark lust according to the common man’s distinctions. Hence, he should seem to me somehow ‘more abandoned’ and ‘less manly’ in his wrong doings than say a man who killed a friend because the friend was a party to the adultery committed against him. But he does not. The more I look at him, the more I see a human leading a life shaped by what he was born with and what he was not willing to live without. His offence and then repeating that offence for months was a choice; choices that in those moments shaped the path this universe (with all other actions in those moments), a path on which we know for sure that those three little girls and all related to them will never be the same. For this is done. This has happened. He has darkened the portions of the future oceans where these girls would have grown up without ever knowing the dark horrors of sexual depravity. Again, the acts and memories are dark, horrifying, deprave for us; God or nature doesn’t see them that way. Strip bare the sexual act and it is just an exchange of bodily fluids for euphoria. Certain men dwell on certain kinds of euphoria that are entirely possible to achieve by bearing the consequences of their actions if they can’t go on without tasting them. And our social contract has made the darkest of these much easier to achieve. I mean, imagine the chances of this happening in a lawless world where every kid learns self-defence and hunting staying close to their parents, so that they can grow up to be able to fend for themselves in an untrusting, barbaric and violent world! Sure, the life will be hard but we will not be hearing of sexually repressed adults preying on kids now, won’t we? Hence, the consequences are harder. A society stands against you. But many can skirt around consequences and there is a prevalent unfairness in the world due to the failure of the social contract. And that’s a whole another beast to be contemplated upon.

So, now I pose you the question again: Can you see this paedophile rapist naked, stripped bare of the dark and vile robes which your biased emotions and judgement drape him with, and allow the ancient accord of Mithra to allow yourself to peer in his soul; leading your vision to feel the scars that make him look more beast than a man to you? Or will you just cast him off the land of living like a leper, without ever thinking of actually trying to know what got us here? Because as hard as it may be for us to bear, the history of the universe will remain unchanged, no matter what we do now. Those waters that were darkened by this act have been darkened. Now, I am not saying that they will not grow up to lead normal lives; I hope they do. What I mean is that they will always carry the memory of this, fading with time through their lives. That option of not knowing is just not there any more. This rapist being sent to the electric chair might bring a solace to the hearts affected. And I think that is fair. Condemnation of the act is important. Now I am not against reformation of an individual in a correctional facility after condemnation and I do believe that people should be given a second chance. But I have always felt the idea of letting rapists live as something of unjust; given the huge waters these acts darken of the victim’s life. For she or he will always know the horror.

This reminds me of the story of the “Quaker psychopath” from the movie Seven Psychopaths.

The daughter of a Quaker went missing. And when she was discovered the slit in her throat turned out to be the least of the damage done to her. Her killer, whose name shall not be noted, could not bear the guilt and the horror, he said, and a year to the day of her death, he walked into a police station and gave himself up. And though he asked for execution, the judge gave him life, and the killer was sent off to Sing Sing to serve out his sentence. Seventeen long years went by. The killer found religion. And was sincere about it. He had changed. And if he had ever been a psychopath, he was not one any more. This story isn’t about him. Many more years went by and the authorities finally realized that it wasn’t a scam, that he truly meant it. That he had truly repented. And they decided to set him free. And he found himself a place to stay and he determined to live a simple, joyous life in the years now left to him. A simple, joyous life was not what was left to him. (The Quaker and his wife followed him everywhere, to remind him of the ones he wronged.) This went on for 11 fucking years, till finally the killer went mad. And one winter night, while recalling a Catholic tract he’d read, which stated that the only people guaranteed a place in Hell were not murderers, were not rapists, but were those who had died by their own hand. The killer accepted such an idea as beautiful, for he knew that at least in Hell the Quaker would not be there. So he cut his own throat open, and the last thing that the killer ever saw was the old man take out a cut-throat razor of his own, put it to his throat, and slice.

I am too small to condemn or judge another man’s actions; great or horrifying, either they may be. The most I can do is see him as a dumb human like me, trying to make some sense of it all along as he goes on with what was born with. I think I have said this twice - “what he was born with”. I think it is a fine place to explain what all this phrase encapsulates - Nature and Nurture both. You can keep debating about which affects the most, but the fact of the day is that you are born with it. Both. Nature and Nurture. A father raped his 10 month old daughter and she died of the injuries. Even if you were to run away, what you get at that immature age on the street or in the foster care systems is mostly not something you would choose. You don’t get to choose what you are born with. It is already written by the waters that our universe has braved.

Cato the Elder says that if you are ruled by mind, you are a king; if by body, a slave. I think not all of us are born kings; most are born slaves. I believe that a newborn has a good chance of becoming either, but he or she just might have much higher stakes set against becoming one. Then there are “slave-kings”, but that would be saying what Sun Tzu said,

“There are two wolves who are always fighting. One is darkness and despair; the other is light and hope. The question is: which wolf wins?

.....the one you feed.”

Of course you are expected to be conscious of who you are feeding when you can grasp the concept of morality.

Concluding this discussion, I will make the amendment to my original question of “How does a human traverse through that portion of the Universal Web of Events which I would call, the Web of Possibilities?” to say that what defines a human, in my opinion is how he or she traverses the web of possibilities given the waters that the universe was already sailing on when he or she came aboard. And I will return to my original question which put forth all these myriad of thoughts in my head: Can one choice define a human? If the universe cannot see a man being defined by just one choice or one trait%, then who am I to disagree? I think the answer is no. I don’t think it holds true even for the worst of humanity, again in line with the common man’s distinctions. Neither do I think I can justify or condemn a human’s actions. All I can do is look at him or her. Human as he or she is. A flawed image of the perfection I want Human to be.

PS: This is brought out beautifully in the movie “Stuart- A life backwards”. Stay tuned if you want to listen to me blabber about an autobiography of a homeless man! Check it out on Disney+ Hotstar.

* - Or if time was there, it was meaningless to us or we are just not certain.

+ - I consider thinking to be an action, hence having thoughts is an action and hence, intentions also make up the man. And also, since thoughts are influenced by external events, in a manner this also encapsulates the effect of his surroundings on him.

# - Measure not from the societal point of view, but your own point of view. (Not saying that they cannot be interlinked thoroughly. They can even be the same. What would that tell you about the person?) We as humans always have wanted to see ourselves better. Maybe that is an evolutionary thing but we always have a view of the future where our primordial sins and passions are quenched - a more fulfilled man.

** - Ocean of possibilities is generalising the idea of web of possibilities where each possibility has a fuzzy boundary instead of a defined one. How to understand this? Crudely put, every choice that was made, like the choice that there will be motion in the macroscopic universe and it would work according to defined laws constrained the region of possibilities for the universe after the big bang. it is like you move a certain way in the ocean and some portions of the future ocean become unavailable to us. With each choice, the waters are constrained on which the universe charts the path forward.

% - For a single trait might define majority of your choices, but certainly not all of them. Iceman, a psychopathic killer who killed around 100-200 people, lived and maintained a perfect married life on the side.