”The history of the universe is a history of motion,” Khader
began, still looking at the boats nodding together like horses in harness. “The
universe, as we know it, in this one of its many lives, began in an expansion
that was so big, and so fast that we can talk about it, but we cannot in any
truth understand it, or even imagine it. The scientists call this great
expansion the Big Bang, although there was no explosion, in the sense of a bomb,
or something like that. And the first moments after that great expansion, from
the first fractions of attoseconds, the universe was like a rich soup made out
of simple bits of things. Those bits were so simple that they were not even
atoms yet. As the universe expanded and cooled down, these very tiny bits of
things came together to make particles. Then the particles came together to
make the first of the atoms. Then the atoms came together to make molecules.
Then the molecules came together to make the first of the stars. Those first
stars went through their cycles, and exploded in a shower of new atoms. The new
atoms came together to make more stars and planets. All the stuff we are made
of came from those dying stars. We are made out of stars, you and I. Do you
agree with me so far?”
”Sure,” I smiled. “I don't know where you're going yet, but
so far, so good.”
”Precisely!” he laughed. “So far, so good. You can check the
science of what I am saying to you–as a matter of fact, I want you to check
everything that I say, and everything you ever learn from anyone else. But I am
sure that the science is right, within the limit of what we know. I have been
studying these matters with a young physicist for some time now, and my facts
are essentially correct.”
”I'm happy to take your word for it,” I said, and I was
happy, just to have his company and his undivided attention.
”Now, to continue, none of these things, none of these
processes, none of these coming together actions are what one can describe as
random events. The universe has a nature, for and of itself, something like
human nature, if you like, and its nature is to combine, and to build, and to
become more complex. It always does this. If the circumstances are right, bits
of matter will always come together to make more complex arrangements.
And this fact about the way that our universe works, this
moving towards order, and towards combinations of these ordered things, has a
name. In the western science it is called the tendency toward complexity, and
it is the way the universe works.”
Three fishermen dressed in lungis and singlets approached us
shyly. One of them carried two wire baskets containing glasses of water and hot
chai. Another grasped a plate bearing several sweet ladoo. The last man held a
chillum and two golis of charras in his extended palms.
”Will you drink tea, sir?” one of the men asked politely in Hindi.
“Will you smoke with us?”
Khader smiled, and wagged his head. The men came forward
quickly, handing glasses of chai to Khader, Nazeer, and me. They squatted on
the ground in front of us and prepared their chillum. Khader received the
honour of lighting the pipe, and I took the second dumm. The pipe went twice
around the group and was tipped up clean by the last man, who exhaled the word
Kalaass ... Finished ... with his stream of blue smoke.
Khader continued talking to me in English. I was sure that
the men couldn't understand him, but they remained with us, and watched his
face intently.
”To continue this point, the universe, as we know it, and
from everything that we can learn about it, has been getting always more
complex since it began. It does this because that is its nature. The tendency toward
complexity has carried the universe from almost perfect simplicity to the kind
of complexity that we see around us, everywhere we look. The universe is always
doing this. It is always moving from the simple to the complex.”
”I think I know where you're going with this.”
Khader laughed. The fishermen laughed with him.
”The universe,” he continued, “this universe that we know,
began in almost absolute simplicity, and it has been getting more complex for
about fifteen billion years. In another billion years it will be still more
complex than it is now. In five billion, in ten billion–it is always getting
more complex. It is moving toward ... something. It is moving toward some kind
of ultimate complexity. We might not get there. An atom of hydrogen might not get
there, or a leaf, or a man, or a planet might not get there, to that ultimate
complexity. But we are all moving towards it-- everything in the universe is
moving towards it. And that final complexity, that thing we are all moving to,
is what I choose to call God. If you don't like that word, God, call it the
Ultimate Complexity. Whatever you call it, the whole universe is moving toward
it.”
”Isn't the universe a lot more random than that?” I asked, sensing
the drift of his argument, and seeking to head it off. ”What about giant
asteroids and so on? We, I mean our planet, could get smashed to fragments by a
giant asteroid. In fact,there's a statistical probability that major impacts
_will occur. And if our sun is dying–and one day it will–isn't that the opposite
of complexity? How does that fit in with the movement to complexity, if all
this complex planet is smashed to atoms, and our sun dies?”
”A good question,” Khaderbhai replied. A happy smile revealed
the run of his slightly gapped, ivory-cream teeth. He was enjoying himself in
the discussion, and I realised that I'd never seen him quite so animated or
enthused. His hands roved the space between us, illustrating some points and
emphasising others. “Our planet may be smashed, it is true, and one day our
beautiful sun will die. And we are, to the best of our knowledge, the most
developed expression of the complexity in our bit of the universe. It would certainly
be a major loss if we were to be annihilated. It would be a terrible waste of
all that development. But the process would continue. We are, ourselves,
expressions of that process.
Our bodies are the children of all the suns and other stars
that died, before us, making the atoms that _we are made of. And if we were
destroyed, by an asteroid, or by our own hand, well, somewhere else in the
universe, our level of complexity, this level of complejxity, with a
consciousness capable of understanding the process, would be duplicated. I do
not mean people exactly like us. I mean that thinking beings, that are as complex
as we are, would develop, somewhere else in the universe.
We would cease to exist, but the process would go on.
Perhaps this is happening in millions of worlds, even as we speak. In fact, it
is very likely that it is happening, all over the universe, because that is
what the universe does.”
It was my turn to laugh. ”Okay, okay. And you want to
say–let me guess–that everything that helps this along is good, right? And
anything that goes in the other direction–your spin on it is that it's evil,
na?”
Khaderbhai turned his full attention on me, with one eyebrow
raised in amusement or disapproval, or both. It was an expression I'd seen on
Karla's face more than once. He might've thought that my slightly mocking tone
was rude. I didn't mean it to be. It was defensive, in fact, because I couldn't
find a flaw in his logic, and I was profoundly impressed by his argument. Perhaps
he was simply surprised. He told me once, much later, that one of the first things
he liked about me was that I wasn't afraid of him; and my fearlessness often
took him by surprise with its impudence and its folly. Whatever the cause for
his little smile and arched eyebrow, it was some time before he continued.
”In essence, you are right. Anything that enhances,
promotes, or accelerates this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is good,”
he said, pronouncing the words so slowly, and with such considered precision,
that I was sure he'd spoken the phrases many times. “Anything that inhibits,
impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil. The
wonderful thing about this definition of good and evil is that it is both objective
and universally acceptable.”
”Is anything really objective?” I asked, believing myself to
be on surer ground at last.
”When we say that this definition of good and evil is
objective, what we mean is that it is as objective as we can be at this time,
and to the best of our knowledge about the universe. This definition is based
on what we know about how the universe works. It is not based on the revealed
wisdom of any one faith or political movement. It is common to the best
principles of all of them, but it is based on what we know rather than what we believe.
In that sense, it is objective. Of course, what we know about the universe, and
our place in it, is constantly changing as we add more information and gain new
insights. We are never perfectly objective about anything, that is true, but we
can be less objective, or we can be more objective. And when we define good and
evil on the basis of what we know–to the best of our knowledge at the present
time–we are being as objective as possible within the imperfect limits of our
understanding. Do you accept that point?”
”When you say that objective doesn't mean absolutely
objective, then I accept it. But how can the different religions, not to mention
the atheists and agnostics and the just plain confused, like me, ever find any
definition universally acceptable? I don't mean to be insulting, but I think
most believers have got too much of a vested interest in their own
God-and-Heaven franchises, if you know what I mean, to ever agree on anything.”
”It is a fair point, and I am not offended,” Khader mused, glancing
at the silent fishermen sitting at his feet. He exchanged a broad smile with
them and then continued. “When we say that this definition of good and evil is
universally acceptable, what we mean is that any rational and reasonable
person–any rational and reasanable Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or Christian or
Jew or any atheist, for that matter–can accept that this is a reasonable
definition of good and evil, because it is based on what we know about how the
universe works.”
”I think I understand what you're saying,” I offered when he
fell silent. “But I don't really follow you, when it comes to the ... physics,
I guess, of the universe. Why should we accept that as the basis of our
morality?”
”If I can give you an example, Lin, perhaps it will be
clearer. I will use the analogy of the way we measure length, because it is very
relevant to our time. You will agree, I think, that there is a need to define a
common measure of length, yes?”
”You mean, in yards and metrss, and like that?”
”Precisely. If we have no commonly agreed criterion for
measuring length, we will never agree about how much land is yours, and how much
is mine, or how to cut lengths of wood when we build a house. There would be
chaos. We would fight over the land, and the houses would fall down. Throughout
history, we have always tried to agree on a common way to measure length. Are
you with me, once more, on this little journey of the mind?”
”I'm still with you,” I replied, laughing, and wondering
where the mafia don's argument was taking me.
”Well, after the revolution in France, the scientists and government
officials decided to put some sense into the system of measuring and weighing
things. They introduced a decimal system based on a unit of length that they
called the metre, from the Greek word metron, which has the meaning of a
measure.”
”Okay ...”
”And the first way they decided to measure the length of a
metre was to make it one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and
the North Pole. But their calculations were based on the idea that the Earth
was a perfect sphere, and the Earth, as we now know, is not a perfect sphere.
They had to abandon that way of measuring a metre, and they decided, instead,
to call it the distance between two very fine lines on a bar of platinum
iridium alloy.”
”Platinum ...”
”Iridium. Yes. But platinum-iridium alloy bars decay and
shrink, very slowly–even though they are very hard–and the unit of measure was
constantly changing. In more recent times, scientists realised that the
platinum-iridium bar they had been using as a measure would be a very different
size in, say, a thousand years, than it is today.”
”And ... that was a problem?”
“Not for the building of houses and bridges,” Khaderbhai
said, taking my point more seriously than I'd intended it to be.
”But not nearly accurate enough for the scientists,” I
offered, more soberly.
”No. They wanted an unchanging criterion against which to
measure all other things. And after a few other attempts, using different techniques,
the international standard measure for a metre was fixed, only last year, as
the distance that a photon of light travels in a vacuum during, roughly, one
three-hundred-thousandth of a second. Now, of course, this begs the question of
how it came to be that a second is agreed upon as a measure of time. It is an
equally fascinating story–I can tell it to you, if you would like, before we
continue with the point about the metre?”
”I'm ... happy to stay with the metre right now,” I
demurred, laughing again in spite of myself.
”Very well. I think that you can see my point here–we avoid chaos,
in building houses and dividing land and so forth, by having an agreed standard
for the measure of a unit of length. We call it a metre and, after many
attempts, we decide upon a way to establish the length of that basic unit. In
the same way, we can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having
an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality.”
”I'm with you.” ”At the moment, most of our ways of defining
the unit of morality are similar in their intentions, but they differ in their details.
So the priests of one nation bless their soldiers as they march to war, and the
imams of another country bless their soldiers as they march out to meet them.
And everybody who is involved in the killing, says that he has God on his side.
There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and evil.
And until we have one, we will go on justifying our own actions, while
condemning the actions of the others.”
”And you're putting the physics of the universe up as a kind
of platinum-iridium bar?”
”Well, I do think that our definition is closer, in its precision,
to the photon-second measure than it is to the platinum-iridium bar, but the
point is essentially correct. I think that when we look for an objective way to
measure good and evil, a way that all people can accept as reasonable, we can
do no better than to study the way that the universe works, and its nature–the
quality that defines the entire history of it–the fact that it is constantly
moving towards greater complexity. We can do no better than to use the nature
of the universe itself.
And all the holy texts, from all the great religions, tell
us to do this. The Holy Koran, for example, is often telling us, instructing
us, to study the planets and the stars to find truth and meaning.”
”I still have to ask the question, why use this fact about
the tendency toward complexity, and not some other fact? Isn't it still
arbitrary? Isn't it still a matter of choice as to which fact you choose to use
as the basis for your morality? I'm not trying to be obtuse here–I really think
it still seems quite arbitrary.”
”I understand your doubt,” Khader smiled, raising his eyes
to the sea-sky horizon for a moment. “I, too, felt very sceptical when I first
began along this road. But I am now convinced that there is no better way to
think of good and evil, at this time. That is not to say that it will always be
the best definition. With the measure of the metre, as well, there will be
another, slightly better way to measure it, in the future. As a matter of fact,
the current best definition uses the distance travelled by a photon of light in
a vacuum, as if nothing happens in a vacuum. But we know that all sorts of
things are happening in a vacuum. There are many, many reactions taking place
in a vacuum, all of the time. I am sure that in the future an even better way
to measure the metre will be found. But, at the moment, it is the best way that
we have. And with morality, the fact of the tendency toward complexity–that the
whole universe is doing this all the time, and always has–is the best way we
have to be objective about good and evil. We use that fact, rather than any
other, because it is the largest fact about the universe. It is the one fact that
involves the whole universe, throughout the whole of its history. If you can
give me a better way to be objective about good and evil, and to involve all
the people of all the faiths, and all the non-believers, and the whole history
of the 486 whole universe, then I would be very, very happy to hear it.”
”Okay. Okay. So the universe is moving along toward God, or toward
some Ultimate Complexity. Anything that helps it along is good. Anything that
holds it back is evil. That still leaves me with the problem of who judges the
evil. How do we know? How do we tell whether any one thing we do will get us
there or hold us back?”
”A good question,” Khader said, standing and brushing the creases
from his loose, linen trousers and his knee-length, white cotton shirt. “In
fact, it is the right question. And at the right time, I will give you a good
answer.”
