Monday, May 31, 2010

Repetition vs. variety...

Recently, I became obsessed with the suggestion that there might be infinite numbers of exact replicas of this universe. I took it to heart and could barely function until my meds kicked back in. The problem I had was the idea that no matter what I did, thought, or felt, it didn't matter because someone else...in fact an infinite number of other people were doing the same thing in the same universe, an infinite number of times. Made me feel worthless, irrelevant, trapped, threatened all day long.
But when I regained my composure, I saw something that made me happy.
I saw that, unless the infinite multi-verse was an exactly repeating pattern of universes, realties, etc. ( which suggest an "order" in the universe that only a "creator" could have caused) that there could be no exact replicas of anything in the universe/multi-verse. Why?
Picture, if you can, (and you can't) infinite space and dimensions with infinite worlds. Take a snapshot. Let's just say, for the sake of this discussion that when you look, through some ridiculous coincidence, you see an infinite number of exact replicas of Earth's with the same history of all life and development and, what's more, an infinite number of you looking at the same snapshot.
So at that moment, they all appear to be replicas. However, because the universe (unless God made it and decided to make infinite exact replicas) is not uniform, all the worlds that appear identical are, in fact, all varying times and distances away from each other and all the other universes and worlds around them. Because of that, in the very next snapshot, all of them will have different forces, influences, ideas, etc. pop into each world because of their relationships to the infinite universe around them.
Like Earth #1 has our set of constellations in the sky while Earth #9878798798787323801b is missing a star in Orion's belt. Well, the entire history of that Earth is different than ours because the mythology surrounding that constellation is different...butterfly effect...blah, blah, blah.
But, say those two Earth's have all the same constellations...even the same universe around them...they are all pulled upon by the varying distances, times, and relationships to the other, non-uniformly dispersed universes, worlds etc. around the infinite multi-verse. And, provided they were even the same to begin with, from that moment on, they're all different from each other.
That's not even factoring in all their infinitely different paths to get to that snapshot you took.
Infinitely different histories and futures and relationships to reality around them makes all the, apparently "identical", universes not identical at all.
I just high-fived my replica self symbolically and said goodbye to him at the same time as we may never meet again.

1 comment:

Churchill said...

I know I wrote..."through some ridiculous coincidence, you see an infinite number of exact replicas of Earth's with the same history of all life and development and, what's more, an infinite number of you looking at the same snapshot."...and then I went right into talking about different pasts. I'm assuming that the history of life on Earth is only a blip and the past before that, in this example, would be different.
Now I shrug.