The orderly progression of chaos

December 12, 2003 at 5:37 pm (Uncategorized)

Was just in the shower when I began thinking about magic, probability and improbability. It started out simply enough, musing on an idea I’ve had before about a magical typewriter that would allow anyone who used it to write the absolute best story or novel or what have you by adjusting their probabilities so that they made all the perfect word and sentence choices. Think of it as a Monkey-Shakespeare-1000E Superselectric. Anyway, I got to thinking about how such a machine would function…how does it adjust probability? Is probability something that can just be tinkered with endlessly, or is there a limited amount of it to adjust and if you raise some probabilities in one place do you lower them in another? I began speculating on probability as a kind of energy, falling back on morphic field theory for the shape of it. Inspired also by old comic books (particularly the X-Men and Avengers character the Scarlet Witch) I considered that it might make sense that probability flows from the Implicate Order into the Explicate Universe based on exactly how strongly connected various idealized concepts and forces are in their Implicate forms. In an incredibly simplified way of looking at it, the fact that coins usually come up either heads or tails is a result of their shape, of the gravity and airflow around them, the surfaces they come in contact with, how they are tossed…and all of these things are in some way associated with the coin in its original, pre-introjection form in the Implicate Order, that non-space non-time where all things are one. All the variables exist there, and are associated with each other. So if you could affect how the Implicate introjects into the Explicate, you could control how things unfold, since time and space only exist here and not there. (Since we know that events in the Explicate are thought to feed back into the Implicate, creating new associations, this could be possible.) In essence, you could control probability by changing the parameters inside the Implicate before introjection manifests them. The more improbable a result you wanted (for instance, if someone who is barely literate wants to write an epic novel of sweep and power) the more feedback back into the Implicate you would need…in effect, the more change you want, the more power it costs.

So it might be said that magic could be the ability to learn exactly how the Implicate-Explicate introjection process works, and how best to alter it through tailored effects rather than trying to overpower it through brute force. Instead of just trying to create the most improbable effect in one go, a series of smaller improbabilities are created that chain their way to the result you want. You just happen to meet the daughter of a famous author. She just happens to take you home for Christmas. Her mother just happens to think she sees potential in your work and decides to help you develop it, and she just happens to show it to her agent, who agrees with her. Together, they just happen to help you shape your work, get it sold, and bang you’re on the NYT best seller list.

Thinking about this, I then began to consider the normal state of Implicate-Explicate introjection as a sheet of malleable plastic. Ordinarily, the associations flow from the Implicate Order in their randomly organized form. In essence, things happen as they are accustomed to happen, to use the morphic ‘habitual’ theory. Everything that exists around us, the entire universe as it can be perceived, exists by means of the Implicate Order introjecting, or unfolding, into the Explicate Universe, moving from timeless spacelessness into constantly expanding space and time. By this process, the universe ‘learns’ how it will come into being by coming into being, moment by moment, and developing the associations between concepts that feed back, or introject back if you will, into the Implicate Order from the Explicate Universe. The cosmos becomes what the cosmos learns to become. The universe seeks a general state of random action based on chaotic forces in conflict with each other, with turbulence underneath the dynamic systems falling out into what we perceive as ‘life’. Now, what happens when you began tinkering with the introjection, creating improbabilities that force a specific order upon a desired outcome? In effect, by tinkering with probability, you prevent randomization from happening. The more improbable an event you create, the less probability can be counted on at all, since the general randomization that allows us to say ‘this is probable’ and ‘that is improbable’ is now gone. The improbable is not only happening, it is imposed, and as a result becomes not only probably but in fact the only possible outcome. There is no random chance in this case. Now, imagining the probability field of the universe as a malleable plastic sheet, the improbable occurance is like grasping hold of the sheet and pulling on it, deforming it and creating tension along the rest of its surface. As a result, to compensate for the entire lack of probability in the imposed order of the desired event, all around the aspiring ‘magus’ we must see as a consequence a counterbalancing chaotic surge as randomization is distributed throughout the sheet by this tension.

I then imagined the end of the imposition of order. What happens when the mage has what he wanted? He lets go of the sheet. If it has not been pulled on too hard for too long, it snaps back to its original shape, causing a brief ripple effect as the ‘elasticity’ of probability causes chaos to redistribute itself. In effect, the Implicate Order’s normal flow of introjection is restored and the usual chain of associations…physics…is restored. There may be some unusual peaks and valleys for a brief while as reality reasserts itself. However, if the mage has pulled for long enough or hard enough, she may well distort the sheet, creating places where the Implicate does not, cannot properly introject itself into reality as is normal. Its associations are altered permanently in that region, perhaps a moving region around the mage, or perhaps a specific locale where a great act of will took place. Hermeticism would probably view this as a case of a specific magician having taken on so much identitfication with specific entities or effects that they can no longer disassociate themselves…much as the Comte de Saint Germain later appeared following his death in places such as Mount Shasta, having become an archetype of his own. Similarly, places like the fabled (and admittedly mostly overblown) Bermuda Triangle could be seen as regions of bent introjection, where reality’s usual dynamic flow has been permanently distorted and nothing works right…or, rather, the right way of things seems wrong to those of us habituated to a different one.

There is, of course, another possibility. If your aspiring mage pulls too hard and too long on the plastic sheet, well…if the sheet is simply too durable for the mage to deform it (due to an insufficient strength or lack of proper leverage) then she will lose that grip and at best fall on her ass, at worse go flying and perhaps even injure the hand that pulled too hard. However, if there is present sufficient force and a specific place to apply it, a hole could be torn in the process of introjection itself, separating the flow of reality from Implicate to Explicate from the guidelines of association within the Implicate provides. In essence, anything would be possible since there would be no probability at all to guide introjection. The path from Adam Kadmon to Assiyah, for those of a Qabbalistic frame of mind, would have been widened and the greater world would be pouring through the hole into the lesser one, distorting the relationship between the light of revelation and the vessels. This could result in any number of effects. If tied to a location, you could have the classic haunted house/poltergeist effect, as the subconscious expectations of everyone inside were manifested by the out of control unfolding of reality with no predetermined order. If tied to a person…well, imagine if anything you could conceive of was happening around you, perhaps even everything you even errantly conceived of. Either life would spiral into a pure chaotic mess, or you’d be forced to develop a titanic self-discipline to compensate, constantly willing the world around you to work the way it does for most people. That’s not even to mention the possibility of the tear getting larger, unless someone went and sealed it up. And how does one seal up a hole in the probable? I suppose you could well wish it closed, if you could get your wish to be heard over all the others.

It even occurs to me that this might be how apotheosis works. You start out with a man or a woman who consciously or unconsciously seeks to impose their will on the world around them, working to constantly create the improbable. Perhaps he or she becomes a hero in the classical greek sense, one who routines does the improbable…rubbing the sheet a little thinner with each legendary feat, as the sheer weight of improbability of killing the Nemean Lion, cleaning the Augean stables, capturing Cerberus becomes just too much and eventually a hole opens up around said legendary figure, and he or she becomes a god.

The cosmos becomes what the cosmos teaches itself to become, and we are parts of that learning process. In this conception, it is possible for us to teach the universe to change, perhaps permanently, perhaps not for the better.

Then I ran out of hot water and had to get dressed. So yeah, anyway, I’m going to go back to playing Hordes of the Underdark now. I’m going to see if I can get through Shadows of Undrentide and into HoTU using a single-classed fighter, and see what he looks like at 32nd level. Speaking of improbable people, I suppose. I have an idea for a companion piece to the book if I ever manage to get it written, which deals with the idea of self-made apotheosis…maybe this is part of the puzzle.