The Opus and the Subplot
that comfort us, we love to think things are,
will, get better. The motto, the signal word,
which embodies all the hopes of our culture
is “Progress.” Darwin gave that ball a mighty
kick, and even Christians who hate the mere
sound of the word ‘evolution’ love and swear
by its identical twin, “progress.”
But if you believe, think, or have apperceived
God, Self, the Absolute, or just a primordial
X, as an unchanging, immutable, and eternal It,
does the word evolution applies to the whole?
Does not evolution implies change from
simplicity to complexity? And is moving in the
direction of complexity and multiplicity what we
seek, or is it a return to simplicity and unity? To
think the whole needs evolution is to believe it
was, and is, somehow, imperfect.
Obviously, “Life” seems to evolve, to have a
purpose. The purpose of Life seems to be to
survive, to become ever more conscious, but life
is only a minor theme, a subplot, and not the Opus.
We could as well say life is not evolving, but
degenerating into hellish complexity. Billions
of years ago, when life began at the unicellular
level it was very simple and free from pain and
suffering. Since reproduction was only a
matter of a cell splitting in two, cellular life had
only grow without death. So in that sense,
what we call evolution, could be seen as a
degeneration.
From a Buddhist point of view, life is the trap we
struggle to escape. The end of all rebirth as the
subplot, is the Nirvana we seek. The Opus cannot
evolve, and the subplot is but the dream of a
crazed composer. So Evolution is the delusion of
of seeing change as purpose toward an imagined
better state.
Author: Pete
