The Gateway

One of the logical consequences of the laws of thermodynamics is one most people find dark.
The fact the universe must select. It does.
And it must be in itself a conscious whole.

There really is only one conscious entity, and we and everything else are part of it.

And once you accept that, you realise that there is only a certain validity to the concepts of just how varied alternate universes could be.

For example, it's often claimed that the fine tuning of the fundamental constants in relation to eachother, proves design. Were the ratio between them different, the universe wouldn't work the way it does. Star formation couldn't happen, life couldn't develop.

On the other hand, there is of course the possibility that the values themselves aren't important. That the point is, any universe will automatically determine what those constants are on the basis of the quantity initially present in its formation. That the ratio is always a fixed constant related to the primal quantity, and only the scale of the values is alterable in any universe.

In other words, all universes run the way this one does, because its the quickest way to heat death.
The universe less efficient- or more efficient- than this one at bringing itself to a conclusion, conflicts with the laws of thermodynamics, the only laws we know of that aren't just universal but MUST be multiversal.

What this means, is that often we can't see the wood for the trees. Sometimes, it is possible to imagine different routes. But tendencies must often stay the same.

It is often said that if you ran the history of life on earth again from scratch, it could all have happened differently.

Except the evidence suggests not. The eye has evolved 41 times, but in only eight designs. Because there ARE only eight ways to make an eye. And evolution found them all, some of them more than once.
And it always finds two to be the best number.

You see, the whole point about free will versus pre-determination ignores the point about likely choices. At an atomic level, everything is uncertainty. We cannot predict at all the behaviour of sub atomic particles. We can predict a lot more about a nematode worm, at least in terms of how he digests his food. Where he crawls to next, is less certain. But the higher up we go, the more and more we find that everything assumes a deterministic picture, till the universe that looked so random at a sub atomic level is now sen to be a vast reaction heading towards a definite point, which it will reach with total punctuality. The point it winds itself down to nothing.

Where does human history stand here?
In a curious position.

Because yes, so much could have panned out differently. It could have been the forgotten Chimu, not the remembered Inca who ruled the Andes when the Spaniards came. Perhaps Charles I might have got to the House of Commons BEFORE the birds had flown. The names of Kings, the names of Kingdoms even, these depend on which tribe got where when. Details, details that could all have been subtly different.

But these things are the tapestry, not the loom around which they are woven. I cannot imagine a world in which the classical economy of slavery and plunder was not replaced by the feudal system, then the mercantile system, then the Capitalist system and next, the system that will come. I see these things as being as inevitable as first tetrapods crawling out of the sea. The only thing that could have been different, was just how these transitions took place, and the empires and nations whose rise and fall facilitated them.

Some things COULDN'T NOT have happened.

And I think some thoughts could never NOT have happened. I think so many great thinkers were people who's thoughts HAD to happen. Just they were the ones who it happened to. The time had produced a climate in which someone of a little bit of intelligence and a little bit of lateral thinking as BOUND to suddenly have a eureka moment and see what they did. It just happened to be them. And so all the other would have beens missed out, because it didn't happen to them first.

But I believe, had Jesus died of cholera as a child, someone else, maybe ten years after he was ACTUALLY nailed to the cross, would have been. For saying exactly the same as he did.
The universe was calling someone to come and do what he did. And he stepped up to the mark. But had he not, someone would have. The universe was crying out for it, it was inevitable, it was something that was being cried out for.

Put simply, in physical terms, someone being Jesus was the path of least resistance.

Because its about where the whole position of human knowledge is. Likewise, you can postulate a world where Charles Darwin didn't come up with the theory of Evolution, where Karl Marx never worked out the fundamental laws of economic development most people STILL try and deny. But I refuse to believe that someone else wouldn't have come up with those theories not long afterwards if they hadn't (In fact, in Darwin's case someone else did AFTER he came up with the theory, but before he published it. Alfred Wallace. Which kind of proves my point).

Likewise, much as it makes interesting speculation and good fiction to imagine a world in which the Nazis won World War II, I don't see it as ever having been possible. I think there are factors which could have affected how the long the war lasted, it could have been longer, could have been shorter. But the fact is, the Nazis were wrong. Wrong in their whole worldview, which meant that in a life and death struggle, they could only ever lose. Because if you're too stupid to accept a scientific discovery made by a Jew, you're going to lose a war in which the greatest scientific advances happen to come from Jewish minds. The Nazis were just too wrong to win.

Because life really is like that. It's always survival of the fittest. And that means more than just the fittest to win. It means fittest to keep up the exponential growth in the expounding of energy that is the most basic feature of the universe.

Ultimately, survival of the fittest means what- and who- survives are those best geared to ensuring that.

And I do think this applies to individual lives. I think sometimes, there are some things in our lives which are MEANT to happen. Meant to happen, for any number of reasons. But by that I mean, the universe forces them to happen for its own reasons.



In other words, it may be the case that these events are events that CAN'T NOT happen in your life.
I was reflecting last night in the pub that one of the major flaws about the whole free-will/unlimited possibilities idea was summed up by the full pint sitting on the bar. I'd just paid two sixty for it, so to conceive of possible universes where I decide NOT to drink the pint, is a little stupid. Having paid for it, it now becomes a little futile to imagine any possible universe where my location for at least the succeeding fifteen minutes ISN'T stood right at that bar flirting with the barmaid.
Much as it is technically true that I have a huge amount of options, in practise what I actually do having bought that pint, is amazingly predictable. The universe where I decide not to drink it, is theoretically possible, but it is a stupid theory.

The point is, if the universe is intelligent, as I believe it is, then it can still use our own free will to direct us to inevitable choices. It can force our choices to it's own ends. So we actually use our own free will to do what the universe wants us to.
Since we are making our free choices within a framework over which we as individuals have far less control than we imagine, it may well be that there are certain points where no matter what route e took, ALL of them would still have led to that event. Much the same as with the universal constants. You can say 'If I hadn't done that, that wouldn't have happened. Except it might. It just might have been that it happened because of something else.

Let me put it another way. Remember those game books you had as a kid? I had loads.

If you decide to charge the dragon with your sword of justice GO TO 7.
If you run the side passage GO TO 32.
If you call upon the armies of Glorfindel GO TO 45.

If you played the books long enough, you soon found there were certain points all routes led to. The points where you moved to the next level.

You'd get to 57 and the passage would read 'You enter a large vaulted chamber. A vast gateway is in front of you....'

Over the last few months, I have felt sure I have been approaching such a point. Felt that everything was narrowing, that everything that had happened had happened for a reason. I just had to stay in the game. But I believe it to be true. I believe that there is so much in my life COULD have been different, but I still believe that certain things would always have happened, no matter what the route I took. I couldn't not have gone to gaol, because I couldn't not have developed a coke problem, because I couldn't not have been made a wreck by the abortion that I could never have prevented in a relationship that I ended up in as the path of least resistance in the first place. Bang. I cannot see any conceivable path from the minute I first sat down at that desk and Claire blushed as she caught my eye, other than the path that led to me going through the Gates of Hell.

I was meant to go there, that I believe.

I believe that for its own reasons, the universe set up a series of life events, which meant that all choices led there, for me. Look at the sequence. You can say that maybe one of those things could have been different, but I still think that then something else would have tweaked it, so the ultimate outcome- my incarceration- still happened.

It was one of those points. Where you move up a level. In the game that is your life.

I have felt this for a long time. Everything happens for a reason. And I believe this so firmly, because of the strange logic with which everything fits.

Because I believe right now, I'm approaching such a point. A point where everything else is driving too, all those paths that could have gone any other way, but all ultimately leading to where I am now in my own life. I really believe that every single choice in my life I WAS LIKELY to make (as opposed to could theoretically make, we're back to the NOT drinking the pint idea here), all those roads would have led to where I am now.

I was saying to a blogger this afternoon, it's quite funny really, right now I'm in the curious position, that I really feel totally unbound. I really could just get up and go anywhere. I really am looking now, in a sense, at a totally blank canvass. It's just how I feel in relation to my life. I feel like so much of the past is lieing there, bagged up, ready to be thrown away. And I feel open to so many things I once wouldn't have been. I'm at a place in my life where I feel ready to just cut away what needs cutting away and move on, though to what I really don't know.

And the key is her. Haydee. Somehow, she is the gateway to the next level. But I don't know how or why.
What I do know is this. She was MEANT to happen.

Because it was only the most bizarre set of circumstances caused her to happen. So bizarre I can only believe that the universe set them, like it sets fundamental constants.
Because she only happened, because of an ordeal.

A woman who as it turned out, has been the worst ordeal I ever lived through. But I'd live through it again, if I had my time again. Because though she was the worst ordeal I've ever experienced, if it wasn't for her I'd never have opened my heart to Haydee the way I have.

It took seeing the horrors of the obsessive love of a warped person to truly understand the joys of unconditional devotion to an angel in human flesh.

Because I truly believe I was MEANT to stumble across that woman. That I was meant to be the target of her obsession. Was meant to be almost driven to a nervous breakdown by her. The obsessive woman in question said to me once, when I was trying to get rid of her, but long before Haydee was a feature of my life, that didn't I believe we were MEANT to have found eachother, that we were MEANT to be together? Cosmic was the word she used. At the time I advanced the theory that I believed that it was indeed meant to be that we had come across eachother, that indeed it seemed clear there was some significance in it, but it was a means not an end in the grand scheme of things and that really, she should let it be, stop being in love with me because ultimately her love for me was destructive. She had fallen in love with me for a reason, but that wasn't so we could be together. It served some other purpose.

Now I think I was right on that. But not in the way I thought. Because the point is- I think- I was only meant to come across her so she could obsess about me and wreak such havoc in my life. The havoc she caused, that was the ultimate aim of the universe. Because it was that havoc that perhaps put me in the ONLY place it really was possible for me to fall in love with Haydee.

I allowed myself to fall for her. That's the point. I didn't stop myself.

So I cannot help but believe that the universe had a very profound reason for wanting me to love her. Me falling in love with anyone, is normally, by the very logic of things, impossible. I would normally take expert maneouvures to stifle such sentiments before they developed. Keep the person at a distance. Keep them away. I allowed Haydee near to me, knowing I was falling for her. And kept her near all the time I was falling, I was even conscious of the point where I thought 'If you don't remove her from your life now, you'll fall in love with her'.
And I kept her in, knowing I had fallen for her.



I believe I endured prison, because the universe MEANT me to go through that. It meant that experience to harden me, to define me, to open my eyes, to make me see. I believe that. And if I had my time again, yes, I'd go through it again. You cant buy experience like that.

And I believe I love Haydee, because the universe MEANS me to. It means her to be the defining love of my life. It means her personality to be etched onto my soul, to be the face I carry with me in my heart. The universe means me to be capable of feeling that that I feel for her, it means me to feel it, to endure it, it means her to be the icon that I bow down in front of, a living Mary, a living Freya, my own personal goddess.

Why? I don't know. As I say to her, it's something that is meant to be, though for what reason I cannot fathom. Not yet. Except I believe it to be important. Somehow, it's a facet of my existence the universe has decided must be so.

It is a gateway to something, though I don't know what. She was meant to happen, because she is a gateway that leads somewhere. That I believe.

And I feel like I'm about to go through that gateway.