{The TOE Thesis}[18th February 1968]

[Redbook0:13-21] [19680218]{The TOE Thesis}[18th February 1968] [Age 16]

18.2.68 

 [Initialled]

THE TOE THESIS

            I suppose that every person on this earth is responsible for at least one person’s death. Most of us remain ignorant of any such responsibility, but the responsibility is still there. Sometimes many people (who may have no connection with each other) are responsible for one person’s death; sometimes one action by one person is responsible for many people’s deaths. The actions might be good or bad, morally wrong or morally right, thoughtful or thoughtless. The culprit may never hear of the death he has caused, or he may hear of it and not connect it with his own action, or he may connect it with his own action and suffer the full consciousness of his responsibility. For thought the fault is not with the instigator of the train of events, it is his fault that the train of events began. I shall describe one typical, topical train of events.

            “Molly, dear, drop down to Ashby’s and get me 100 Kents.” So Molly goes out, and on the road she is narrowly missed by a lorry driver who, while still shaken by the near miss, takes a kerb too close and causes a pedestrian to step backwards out of his way and knock over an old woman who breaks her leg and is taken to hospital by an ambulance which rings its bells and flashes its light. “Look at the ambulance, dear”, says a small boy’s nurse to her charge; he turns round, slips on the wet grass, and gets his coat covered in mud, and when his mother sees it she is so angry that she has a heart attack and dies. Therefore Molly’s husband has instigated a train of events which has culminated in the death of the small boy’s mother.

            There are four obvious follow-ups to this.
(1) Did the train of events really finish there? It may well have gone on for ever. Someone may have crashed on the way to the funeral which caused someone else to ... and so on.
(2) Did the train of events really start with Molly’s husband wanting cigarettes? Why did he want cigarettes? Who introduced him to smoking?
(3) How many other trains of events led up to the mother’s death? Was she subject to heart attacks for any reason? Was she angry anyway? Was she frustrated?
(4) How many trains of events were started by the mother’s death? Did the small boy receive a shock which influenced him in later life?

            Where did it all start?

            Where will it all end?

            Life is composed of many, many trains of events, all leading in the same general direction (that is, the same direction in Time; they probably all follow the same direction in Time as we do). They cross and recross continually, uniting, dividing, but very rarely, if ever, stopping altogether. The may lapse unnoticed for many years, even centuries; a fossil may lie in rock for centuries, but its discovery may cause the rise to fame of a previously unknown archaeologist. Some trains of events have already been plotted, in the shape of family trees; these provide but a sketchy account of the T.O.E.s they describe. Why was so-and-so conceived at that particular moment? (Socially, I mean, not biologically!) Some fascinating speculations may be raised by this. Did William the Conqueror have anything to do with the nasty taste of the fish I had for lunch yesterday? If I don’t go to school periods today, will I live to be 94?

            Another question raised is: Can anyone start a T.O.E.? This is a difficult problem. They must have started somewhere – unless the Universe is either infinite or circular (in terms of time, that is). If it is infinite, which no human can reasonably imagine – it is something quite beyond our powers of comprehension, surrounded as we are by finite things, though that does not make it any less probable – if it is infinite, I say, the T.O.E.s are stretching on from ever for ever. Q.E.D. If it is circular, which is possible, then the T.O.E.s join up with themselves and also form circles (much interconnected circles at that). This also is difficult to imagine, though nonetheless possible. The most easily understood solution is that of the straight line with a definite end or ends – by which I mean the theory that Existence began somewhere and may or may not end somewhere. This poses the interesting problem of what was there before existence? – but I digress. A Christian dogmatist would believe that all the T.O.E.s lead from God – who created all things – and some may believe that, in the end, God will gather up the strings into his own hands again at the Last Judgement. (What happens after that we don’t know). Personally, I believe in an infinite universe – sometimes. I think it is definitely infinite in the “future”, though it might possibly have been started in the past. But, again, I digress.

            The question was: can anyone start a T.O.E.? I think not. It may depend on individual character, but what is character? A character is formed either by environment or by genetics. Environment is easily shown as part of the T.O.E. line; genetics can be seen as the influence of environments on ancestors. I have heard of genetic throwbacks and so on, but I don’t think even they are by chance; there must be a cause somewhere. There is no such thing as random movement in Nature, although it may seem to be random to us mere mortals who, despite our wonderful science, etc., get a very one-sided view of things. An individual may reawaken a T.O.E. which has been dormant for some time – but another T.O.E. will have caused him to do it. This doesn’t mean that there is no free choice; when we “weigh up the pros and cons”, we are choosing of our own free will in the light of the influences on us which are caused by the TOEs. Therefore each choice forms part of a TOE; but it is still a choice. If the final outcome of the choice had been different, a whole new TOE would have been created. But surely, you may say, if all choices are affected by these TOEs – are indeed, made by these TOEs – surely man has no free will at all? Of course he has free will. I know that when I choose a certain course of action, the choice really does rest with me; it is I who take into account the environmental factors which have been made by the TOEs. My final choice will depend on my own character and mind; that mind has been formed by environmental TOEs, as I have shown above, but it is still MY mind and therefore MY choice. Therefore, I think that although no man can start a TOE, he may be able to influence its course – either fatally or otherwise. Then, you may argue, surely it is not Molly’s husband’s fault that the boy’s mother died? If the boy had not turned round, he would not have slipped over. You’ve missed the point. The boy need not have turned round, but he did; the other TOEs which had combined to build up his character, and still more TOEs which made him have nothing better to do than turn round then, made it pretty likely that he would turn round when his nurse told him to. But if the TOE which caused the ambulance to be passing had turned out differently, and had not caused the ambulance to be passing at that moment, the boy would not have turned round. So we see that there are some TOEs which are more important than others.

            But surely, you may say again, it wasn’t Molly’s husband’s fault – he didn’t start the TOE. No, but he influenced it; if he hadn’t wanted cigarettes, the TOE would have led to something else, possibly something even worse. Lots of other people also influenced the TOE, of course; but that doesn’t take away any of Molly’s husband’s responsibility.