A Natural Process
We seem to be able to draw a parallel between almost any conscious process and the processes inherent within our natural world.
Evolution, dynamism, ambition— these things are all as evident in particle interactions as they are in our innate psychological characteristics.
And while it’s not very difficult to throw certain principles from psychology and physics textbooks and into a blurry-edged Venn diagram, there are some scintillating overlaps that shouldn’t be disregarded.
More interesting than those, however, seem to be the principles that don’t (but should) have an obvious counter-part, for these typically squeeze the mind more than those that can be comfortably correlated.
Providence is one such principle, prompting the kind of philosophical mind-bender that elicits an intellectual frustration like none other.
“As it happens to every man at least once in his life, I was once raised by Satan to the top of the highest mountain on earth. From there he showed me the whole world and said to me, as he said to Christ, “Son of man, what wouldst thou have in order to worship me?” I thought for a long time, for a terrible ambition had been devouring my heart, then I replied, ‘I have always heard of Providence, yet I have never seen it or anything resembling it, which makes me think it does not exist. I want to be Providence, for the greatest, the most beautiful and the most sublime thing I know of in this world is to reward and punish.’
But Satan bowed his head and sighed. ‘You are mistaken,’ he said, ‘Providence does exist, but it is invisible; you have never seen anything resembling it because it works by secret springs and moves in hidden ways.”
Halfway through the popular novel, the protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo delivers a powerful statement about his character and how the devil had tried to make a deal with him, prompting the Count to ask to become Providence itself, per the excerpt above.
Of interest isn’t necessarily the fact that we’re attracted to such an ambition — to such unequivocal and impalpable power — but the fact that this seems to be the highest echelon of agency that we can assume there to be.
In other words, this semblance of Godliness — determiner of right and wrong — is unsurpassable, something of a pinnacle of conscious existence.
From a subjective standpoint, it’s easy to assume. But to affix a grand sense of objectivity to this enterprise — that’s a different story.
So we should first ask why this seems to be the ultimate position before we can try to equate it to something or some force or some process out of the natural world.
In other words, we should figure out the what before the how because, in doing so, we seem to come across some rather perplexing clues.
Defining and Depersonifying
Providence, definition:
the protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power.
“they found their trust in divine providence to be a source of comfort”
Under a context of quantum physics, the answer is pretty obvious: instinct will prompt us to consider the observer effect (the observer of any particle system) to be the most likely correlation to a God-like form of agency.
It’s the observer effect that actualizes possibility, collapsing other possible wave functions. In doing so, it breathes life into certain possibilities while extinguishing others — it creates and destroys; it is, to a great degree, Providence.
Outside of the subatomic world, however, things fall apart.
So what form of agency in an objective world full of subjective perceptions best assumes this kind of omnipotent role?
There are of course, the deities that we carve out via religion; but what, if any, more palpable forms can be measured (let alone identified) in our natural universe?
Our host star, it can be argued, has this potential to collapse and actualize certain possibilities that float about in its orbit; our earth, likewise, can assume a supreme role upon which we’re entirely dependent. But these systems lack the kind of conscious cognizance (at least, to our quantifiable knowledge) that we attribute to Godheads and divine beings.
And so it may behoove us to look at the potential answer as a process more than an entity; the endless process of determination. Such a process has to be objective, and so to apply our humane conceptions of morality (right/wrong) seems misguided.
Ergo, we should look at de-personifying right and wrong. In so doing, we can look at creation and destruction, maybe expansion or restriction, perhaps enablement and disablement.
In other words, how do we transcribe right and wrong into the realms of, say, thermodynamics or astrobiology?
One way that this can be done, it seems, is through understanding the form and function of energy.
The Golden Currency
Our natural world, regardless of how we define it, relies upon, and has always utilized, one singular, absolute and ultimate currency: energy.
To keep things from getting too effervescent, we can define energy as a quantitative property that’s transferable between systems, recognizable in the performance of (or capacity for) work, taking forms of heat or light; a unit that can be converted in form and is subject to the laws of conservation.
Whether kinetic, thermal, electrical, chemical — energy transcends any creation we can fathom; it’s a universal language, law, and resource.
Even in hypothetical alternate realities whereby the laws of physics can be flipped on their heads — energy is the essential binding force of biotic and abiotic life.
And so what process of energy (or of energies) can be most seen to resemble the concept or role of Providence?
To answer that, we may have to look even deeper into the process[es] of energy itself.
Transactions of Energy
Some clues can be chiseled out if we begin to examine the transactional processes behind energy.
Energy’s not created and it’s not destroyed - it’s transferable. So we’re not necessarily talking about a God-like process of creation and destruction.
What we see, rather, is an underlying process of enablement, of creating the potential for transmutability.
And here is where the Eastern conceptualizations of Godliness begin to make sense — of flowing notions like the Tao and the Brahman. This potential for action and dynamism, for evolution and for creation — this may be the very Providence that we’re after.
In the context of psychology and the human dimension, we have the ability to label things right and wrong along emotional-moral spectrums of discernment.
But on a purely physical level, how do we go about ascribing such a process to the natural order of things, to simple happenstance?
We can idealize, if we try, good and bad transactions of energy.
The good transactions enable, create or enact possibility; those that are beautiful or mathematically symmetrical or somehow conducive to a vivid and vibrant form of vitality and life; as opposed to those that either obliterate or repugnantly destroy, or are unappealing because of other ruinous or stagnant qualities.
Providence as a process in nature may then be evident in the ability to discern between the good interactions — the productive or symbiotic energy transfers and the objectively appealing transactions — from the bad interactions, those maybe parasitic or self-defeating.
But again, this ability to discern presupposes some level of subjectivity.
We have to thus ask, in the interest of keeping things objective: what force creates this possibility? What is the underlying force between these transactions? What enables them?
To boil it down to one humble inquiry: what force, if any, can discern and judge all interactions throughout the objective world?
Dark Matters
If it was up to my 20-some year old self to answer this, I’d be all over the idea of dark matter as an easy way out of this increasingly irritating puzzle.
But that would be missing the point entirely, because the force that I seem to be after also allows for dark matter — it enables the interactions between dark and light matter.
The thing I keep coming back to, clued out of Eastern religious dogmas and next to the concepts of flowing energy, is the negative space. The fertile voids between happenstance and between events; the Yang to the Yin; the ethereal womb from which potential grows and actuality emanates.
Things then reduce to a frustrating paradox of opposites; the darkness is just as important to the existence of the light, bad necessitates good, etc.
But it’s too unsatisfying to ground things in some kind of abstract rule of polarity — there has to be something more palpable, even if not necessarily measurable. Something with a voice that can’t be heard.
And this is where, unfortunately, the peak of this venture seems to become insurmountable. At least for the time being.
What I’m after, it seems, is the equivalent of the quantum-based observer effect but on a macro scale.
If it’s us, and our subjective minds pulsating through a less subjective networks of feedback in a chaotic world of random happenstance, it seems a bit lacking in terms of an explanation, for there must be more than pure chance attributable to the vast scale of such dichotomous interactions throughout our natural world, some so magnificently symbiotic that it prompts us to deem life itself a miracle.
And if it is all chance, then there’s something powerful to be said, not only about our ability to discern the good from the bad (the effective from the ineffective, the right from the wrong), but the fact that this dichotomy proves a pervasive fractal throughout all spectrums of our knowable reality.
Ultimately, Providence seems to be as all-encompassing a quality to our world as, say, chance, hierarchy or causality. But eerily enough, it also presents itself as a fertile force of something more.
Maybe we’ll never know because maybe it’s all a moot point from an objective level, one beyond the reach of our sensory investigations.
Instead, where we persistently find ourselves is that, as much as we can see, we are the ones who have the unequivocal ability to judge good and bad, right and wrong, and to effectively create and to destroy in doing so.
Hell, the answer is even self-evident within Monte Cristo — despite asking the devil for Providence and being refused, the entirety of the novel revolves around the protagonist’s crusade of judgement against those who wronged him anyway. He doesn’t need to designate anything or officialize the process with any ordainments.
And so it can be said that we are our own source of Providence with the heavy and usual caveat of: as far as we can tell.
Maybe, too, we’re just over-thinking the whole thing.
