The big picture

This is my version of the world myth. I don't think I believe it's literally true, but that may only be because I doubt that the real truth of these matters (whatever it is) is at all the kind of thing that can be perceived by the human mind in literal terms. Nevertheless, I try to live my life in accordance with it.

Long ago, there was a superior intelligence who was also an inferior god, but only knew the first of those two things about himself. Let's call him Yaldabaoth.

Yaldabaoth set a Grand Experiment in motion. The experiment was called Earth, and it was essentially a run of a great genetic algorithm. Life arose, and explored many different forms, advancing, withdrawing, retracing its path, serpent-like. He wanted to see what would happen: which forms would be successful, would be fittest, would survive, would outcompete the others through their cleverness, adaptability and brutality.

The complexity and mathematical beauty of this process was dazzling. In fact, it dazzled Yaldabaoth so thoroughly that he could see nothing else except the Experiment and his own reflected cleverness. In particular, he failed to see another agency at work in the interstices of his creation, poking here, adjusting there, injecting beauty, majesty, love, selflessness, the reflection of a glory from beyond. This agency was, in fact, his own mother. Let's call her Sophia.

Eventually, after billions of years, a creature arose which was a strange hybrid of the selfish instincts finely tuned by the forces of Yaldabaoth's Experiment, and the qualities that Sophia had introduced to the mix. When Yaldabaoth noticed these latter, he was furious. He couldn't understand how they had got there (at least, he chose not to), but he was very, very cross, nevertheless.

And he shouted into the darkness beyond his dazzlement to whichever power was ultimately responsible for contaminating his project. He vowed that, whatever this contamination was, it would not prevail against the sheer instinctual inertia that was his own proudest achievement. "Give these creatures enough power", he yelled, "and they will destroy themselves and their entire world. These things you call 'grace', 'altruism' and 'love' shall prove inadequate to save them."

The darkness answered only with silence, but Yaldabaoth sensed his challenge had been heard.

Then, when the time had fully come, a Presence appeared before Yaldabaoth and his cohorts, right in the control room of their Experiment. This Presence looked to them like a blinding light, painful to their eyes, far outshining their bedazzlement at their own cleverness. Yet it was yielding and vulnerable at the same time. It even had hands, which it held out to them.

"Come home", it said. "I love you".

Yaldabaoth panicked. If this uninvited influence were to spread into his Experiment, the whole thing would be ruined. He instructed his cohorts to deal with it in any way they could.

Which they did, without any difficulty. They were strong, and the Presence was weak, or at least so it appeared to them. They strung it up, and the light died.

But shortly afterwards, it reappeared, even brighter, even more blinding. And this time, they were unable to prevent the light being noticed, often repeatedly and consistently, by some of the creatures in the Experiment. Those creatures made their own myths, about dying and rising Saviour Gods, about light overcoming darkness, about love casting out fear. Try as he might (and he really did), Yaldabaoth could not stamp this influence out.

But Yaldabaoth still remembered his original challenge. He gave the creatures power, or nudged them into finding it for themselves: to increase in numbers, in prosperity, in the burden they placed on the Earth. He gave them the power to destroy themselves, each other and their world. At the same time, he did his best to hide from them the truth about who they were, and to befuddle and distract them with false satisfactions: power, money, sex, success, television, drugs, travel, all driven by an exquisitely-evolved engine of fear and greed. He stopped the light breaking through whenever he could; and when it did shine out despite his best efforts, he did his best to make sure they were so fascinated by the games he had given them that they did not notice (or were able to pretend they did not). Or, failing all else, when they did notice, he persuaded them that it was nothing to do with them, or not really a problem, or just to frightening to think about. Anything to avert a steady gaze.

Eventually, the time came when there were so many of these creatures, living in such a distracted, chaotic and heavy-handed way, that the Earth teetered on the brink of collapse: of mass extinctions, of desertification, of diebacks, of a sudden switch of the planetary climate into a state unlivable for most species including their own. They could see this was the case; that they needed to change, for their own survival.

"There", screamed Yaldabaoth into the darkness. "Despite your meddling, despite sending your Blinding Terrorist into my experiment, despite all you have done, they will still destroy themselves. They know what they are doing, but their instincts are too strong for them to stop themselves. I have won! My experiment has worked! Your idiotic, uninvited Love and Self-Giving have not been enough!".

Down on the surface of the planet, the creatures were dimly aware of these goings on. But by and large, they chose not to notice. They were just too busy, making too much noise: having fun, or living a nightmare, or both at the same time.

And the Universe held its breath, waiting to see what would happen.