The conundrum the cosmologist could not
Seem to grasp was that even absolute
Perfection, whether of God or wavefunction,
Could change, could attain more than one
Kind of absolute perfection. The reasoning
That something perfect was constrained
To be beyond time and therefore changeless
Was baseless. Time was not the whole
Of change: it was a category of change,
Periodic, cyclical, slow, that life, including,
Eventually, humans and human cultures,
Seized on as useful for winning more living,
For coordination, for competition. Cultures
Made time a technology, many technologies,
But those technologies were neither
Nonexistent nor eternal, nor externally actual
Except as used by the human technologists.
Time in math and physics was time as math.
If it dropped out of an equation, however
Mysterious and esoteric it was, very well,
It dropped out then. The cosmos went on
Changing. This was mysterious to the mystic
Cosmologist, furrowing his brow at his math.
The ancient philosophers must have been
Correct, he muttered. Time did not exist;
It was an illusion of confused humans cut
Off from goodness or God or perfection,
Humans therefore suffering. You had to
Hand it to a species so gifted at taking credit
And assigning blame for everything, first,
As an evolved survival strategy, a social skill,
But ultimately extending it to the most basic
Nonhuman features of their human, humble,
Circumscribed experiences, even if it meant
Reasoning their way to blaming themselves.
That must be the key, thought the cosmologist,
If someone were to observe timeless but
Entangled halves of a cosmos, observation
Alone would ensure people were being born
And dying. Eureka. The universe becomes
Alive! Alright, maybe, said one external god
To the cosmologist, if you want it that way.
But forgive me if I keep changing outside
Of your microcosmos where you pretend
To be measuring your dream of a timeless
Essence of me. My little friend, you are
The ground state in which you embed
Your dreams of a universal consciousness
That is forever and calm, to which you can,
By choosing to do something, say meditating
Silently for days at a time, hah, as it were,
For instance, return. You are the suffering
And the joy, but you cannot change things
To keep things from changing. You cannot
Create the unchanging, however complex
Your math, however intense your dreams.
The cosmologist feared losing motivation.
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