The Heaviest Weight
Heinrich Heine speculated that there would one day be a person born with a personality and thought processes identical to his own. Schopenhauer claimed that anyone who unconditionally affirmed life would do so even if that life were subject to eternal repetition. In 1882, Nietzsche famously formulated these thoughts into a sphinxlike challenge,
Nietzsche believed it required a sincere amor fati, or love of fate, to wish for the eternal repetition of one's life. He did not reveal how he himself would answer his demon but he did tellingly refer to his dream as das schwerste Gewicht: the Heaviest Weight. I believe, however, that there is one heavier still. In his essay on Nietzsche’s doctrine, Jorge Luis Borges wrote that,
Six years before this essay was published, Einstein had investigated a cosmological model that would facilitate Borges’ atomic permutations. Known as the oscillatory universe theory, it imagines a universe that continuously expands and contracts like a breathing bladder, each oscillation starting with a big bang and closing with a big crunch. I do not know if Borges was aware of Einstein’s model, but it is clear he wants to suggest Nietzsche’s parable of the eternal return is not beyond the bounds of possibility, and his formulation, in keeping with Nietzsche, therefore focuses on the repetitions in the cycle. Of much greater concern to me is what is implied but ignored in his formulation: The incalculable number of intermediary states through which the universe will pass before the first repetition occurs; a number that contains every possible arrangement of all the atoms in the universe.
To grasp the terrifying implications of this kaleidoscope universe, it is first necessary to conceive of the variety and multiplicity of possible worlds. Our universe is one permutation. In another, you are Christ; in another, Judas. In most you do not exist but in at least one only you exist and your body the only matter in the universe. You will stand in every possible relation to everyone you now know and to the multitudes you do not yet know. You will be leper, lord, whore and saint. You will be a minotaur, a sentient grandfather clock, a scorpion with a human face as well as those incarnations so absurd they cannot be conceived of in this world. You will be at the centre of horrors so vast the universe must be reconfigured to accommodate them. Every boredom and every ecstasy, every dream and nightmare, will be yours as a personal truth. In short, you will be and do everything that one may be and do, and then, when the possibilities have been exhausted, the cycle of innumerable worlds will repeat itself. § For a few days after these ideas began to preoccupy me, I flattered myself into thinking that I had a sufficient love of fate to wish for the eternal return of every possible life. Then I had the following dream (which, like every dream in our theory, is an exact prediction of future events) and my courage began to wither on the vine. I am walking along a cobblestone street lined with trees. It is night and there are two moons in the sky. The smaller moon has an ugly, evil face like a voodoo idol, grotesque, grinning, gargoyle-like—but what is still more terrifying is that the larger moon is falling, falling slowly and smoothly, like a soap bubble floating to the ground. In a hopeless attempt to flee from the impending disaster, I run into a field, trip, fall onto my stomach, and there, the atoms of my body are run through every possible permutation. I became a fish, leopard, monkey, peacock, sextant, bear, pile of salt, woman, centipede, ingot of lead—one thing after another in rapid succession. The moon falls into the ocean creating a wall of water 100 kilometres high. I am still twitching, jerking and flickering through the incarnations when the wall of water crashes down upon me. I know that I am going to die and I am relieved. My horror and agony are insupportable. The burden of being everyone and everything is heavier than the weight of the ocean that is destroying me. |