Possible Worlds, Orthodoxy, and Creative Endeavors
Introduction
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it’s been driving me so crazy that I finally need to put it into text and throw it out there and see what other folks might have to say. I sent this to someone I trust who asked me the most obvious question, “Why wouldn’t you post it?” Well, if any of this sounds pretentious or douchey, please know I thought so too. And I thought it first. :)
Possible Worlds
If you’re not familiar with the concept of possible worlds, it is a concept in philosophy regarding the logical possibility of a proposition. For instance, “There is no possible world in which there exists a square circle.” I also recently watched The Elegant Universe. This is sort of an armchair guide to physics history and string theory, but one of the things that stood out for me was the Quantum Cafe. The host of the show finds himself in a cafe where probability reigns and nothing is certain. This is meant to illustrate the fact that in quantum mechanics, it is not possible to know for certain where an electron will be. There are only probabilities that it will be in a specific place. Theoretical physics, as a result, also has this concept of multiple universes. In the reality we experience, the probabilities worked out a certain way. In the other possible universes, the electrons landed in a different configuration. I don’t pretend to be an expert on any of this stuff, so if I have any of the high level details wrong, I would love further instruction.
Orthodoxy
I’m Orthodox, and when I was learning about Orthodoxy several years ago, one of the things that impacted me about Orthodox thought is the huge emphasis that is placed on creativity, particularly the special creative place of human beings in creation. In the liturgy, Orthodox believe that we join in a worship that is ongoing in heaven. For a brief time we are transported from this realm to another with all five senses: taste (the Eucharist), touch (handshakes and kisses of peace, kneeling, and other devotional movements), smell (incense), hearing (singing, hearing bells), and speech (saying prayers).
Icons, sacred images of spiritual role models, are believed to be a window to the heavenly realm. These are not, then, just some nice pictures of someone who lived a good life and is gone. These sacred images are windows to the realm where the saints now live.
Lastly, Orthodoxy teaches that human beings have a unique, creative function in creation. In so many ways, it is the role and responsibility of human beings to shape the creation and offer it back to God in thanksgiving. In the Eucharist, this means shaping grain and grapes into the bread and wine. In worship, this means arranging sound to produce beautiful music. In art, this means shaping the material into something profound and beautiful. The iconographer starts with paint, wood, and possibly some gold foil and the result is a window into the heavenly realm.
I have used Orthodox thought as a way of talking about this way of connecting with a world that we do not see every day. To be sure, there are other ways of talking about this. My point is not to talk about Orthodox Christianity but to talk about a worldview that views humanity in a sacred creative role and believes in (and ideally lives as though) there is more to reality than what we experience in our workaday lives.
Creativity
I have often heard fiction writers (particularly very good fiction writers) say things like, “I was surprised that the character turned out to be gay. I didn’t know that going in,” or when they describe the events of the narrative in very factual, real terms. I think that really creative people (I don’t mean that in some mystical way.) interact with the subject matter in a very different way. They don’t talk about characters they are making up. They are describing characters and events that for them, truly exist somewhere, sometime, somehow. In visual arts (not just iconography), I think the great artists are able to provide us with a window into a reality that is somehow different from our own. This doesn’t have to be Dali’s melting clocks or anything like that. Even a still life or seascape can transport us across time and space to experience something that we otherwise would not have been able to experience.
By contrast, I think there are true impossibilities in creativity as there are in philosophy and physics. I think that when we experience something, the Kantian reaction to it is indicative of this. When you or I read a novel or short story that just isn’t very good, I think it is highly probable that the events described are simply not possible. We don’t believe it because it doesn’t exist anywhere, anytime, anyhow. Where a particular creative endeavor falls on this continuum of possibility has a lot to say about the degree to which the possible world being described is indeed possible.
Conclusion
I do believe that human beings are uniquely creative. (Others may disagree with the “uniquely” part that to one degree or another.) I also believe that reality is not simply composed of what we experience around us. And I believe that human beings have a sacred responsibility to live life creatively (in Orthodox terms, Eucharistically), making sense of the world and connecting this plane with the others.
