Martin Amis’ Time's Arrow has given me an existential crisis. In the book, a conscious being experiences the life of a man with time running backwards. The crisis begins with morality. One who experiences actions in reverse time sees sins as deeds, and deeds as sins. For example, thinking of murder; the murderer is perceived as saving the dead person by reversing the action. Likewise, a benevolent act such as giving money is perceived as taking it. The beneficiary begins in a happy state, yet after the money is given, they may appear to be in distress. Essentially, all charity is stripped by the act of giving. It is perceived as theft, not a donation.
You may think that time can never run backwards, but that is not true. Eventually, everything in the universe will get sucked into a black hole (probably not a single one, but collectively at the centers of supermassive galaxies). In a black hole, space-time is thought to reverse; therefore, time runs backwards to anything that falls inside it. Everything you're experiencing right now, like the act of reading this, will happen in reverse time once all the matter in our bodies goes through a black hole.
Considering this, one gets the sense that our actions have no meaning. If we are terrible people in this life, we re-live it as a great person in a reversed one. If we are charitable saints in this life, we will be seen as horrible terrorists in the next one. The balance appears to be beautiful on the surface, because all our devious actions can be undone. But for those of us who are good, the choices we make are entirely distorted by the perception of our opposite intent. Knowing that, who's to say that reverse entropy didn't happen before this universe; that reverse-time was actually the first law of the universe, and that all the choices we are making are simply derivatives of the choices made in reverse-time? Our universe is a destructive one. Entropy means that time is always decaying things. A reversed universe is a creative one; time would always be building things in that one. It's a universe of progress, so if our terminology is consistent, then that has to be seen as the original universe, for destruction always follows creation. Out of chaos the universe was built, not out of order.
The only philosophical consolation I can gather from this is that since everything in the universe beyond is reversed, perhaps thoughts are too, and so must morality by principle. Bad actions may be seen as good there. If progress is seen as destruction, then a deed may appropriately be seen as a sin.
No comments:
Post a Comment