Chaos
Slaughterhouse 5 introduces beings that can see all moments in time at once, the Tralfamadorians. I've been pondering how exactly this would work, given what the book tells us.
Instead of being time travelers, the Tralfamadorians live their lives in real-time, and are only able to perceive the future and past. Their philosophy revolves around the fact that the future cannot be changed, even though they know about all future events ahead of time.
If you think about it, though, this doesn't really make sense. If I knew I would be hit by an MTD bus on my way to Kenney tomorrow, I would obviously stay on alert the whole way, and likely take another route entirely. However, according to Tralfamadorians, there is nothing I can do about my impending injury. How can this be?
Perhaps their visions of the future, combined with their philosophy of acceptance, are a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. When a Tralfamadorian sees their own death, they immediately accept their fate, and do nothing to avoid it. As such, what they think will happen indeed does happen, perpetuating their beliefs that the future is set in stone.
This, however, doesn't line up with a thing called the "butterfly effect". In short, if the future is predicted, any tiny change in the present will drastically change that future. The name originated in 1972 when Philip Merrilees gave a seminar on the topic, titling it "Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" The idea is that a butterfly's wings will cause tiny changes in the atmosphere that, in the far future, may affect the existence of a tornado thousands of miles away. The following linked video shows a similar phenomenon, with multiple overlayed double-pendulums that have nearly the same starting position, but quickly deviate from each other as time passes. Again, tiny changes are shown to have large effects later in time.
https://youtu.be/pEjZd-AvPco
Back to the Tralfamadorians. Even if their philosophy results in complete acceptance of future misfortunes, their knowledge of the future will inevitably start a butterfly effect that results in a deviation from the future they see.
I think the most likely (and most disappointing) explanation is that all these time shenanigans and Tralfamadorians are Billy's hallucinations. He fought in a war, and it's likely he suffered some mental trauma. Instead of jumping forward in time, he merely remembers jumping forward in time when he was younger, and some sort of illness has altered his memories.
Instead of being time travelers, the Tralfamadorians live their lives in real-time, and are only able to perceive the future and past. Their philosophy revolves around the fact that the future cannot be changed, even though they know about all future events ahead of time.
If you think about it, though, this doesn't really make sense. If I knew I would be hit by an MTD bus on my way to Kenney tomorrow, I would obviously stay on alert the whole way, and likely take another route entirely. However, according to Tralfamadorians, there is nothing I can do about my impending injury. How can this be?
Perhaps their visions of the future, combined with their philosophy of acceptance, are a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. When a Tralfamadorian sees their own death, they immediately accept their fate, and do nothing to avoid it. As such, what they think will happen indeed does happen, perpetuating their beliefs that the future is set in stone.
This, however, doesn't line up with a thing called the "butterfly effect". In short, if the future is predicted, any tiny change in the present will drastically change that future. The name originated in 1972 when Philip Merrilees gave a seminar on the topic, titling it "Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" The idea is that a butterfly's wings will cause tiny changes in the atmosphere that, in the far future, may affect the existence of a tornado thousands of miles away. The following linked video shows a similar phenomenon, with multiple overlayed double-pendulums that have nearly the same starting position, but quickly deviate from each other as time passes. Again, tiny changes are shown to have large effects later in time.
https://youtu.be/pEjZd-AvPco
Back to the Tralfamadorians. Even if their philosophy results in complete acceptance of future misfortunes, their knowledge of the future will inevitably start a butterfly effect that results in a deviation from the future they see.
I think the most likely (and most disappointing) explanation is that all these time shenanigans and Tralfamadorians are Billy's hallucinations. He fought in a war, and it's likely he suffered some mental trauma. Instead of jumping forward in time, he merely remembers jumping forward in time when he was younger, and some sort of illness has altered his memories.
I think the idea of free will is interesting because even though the Tralfamadorians knew what would end up happening to them, they still went on and didn't change their actions. This goes with the idea of free will, where your actions are already set in place, and no matter what, you're going to go through them because that's the predestined part of free will. Also, imagine the burden that would come with being able to look into your past and future. I know the Tralfamadorians mainly focus on the happy/positive moments but I know that if it were me, I'd just spend the majority of my time looking over my shoulder and dreading the time leading up to a bad event.
ReplyDeleteIf you've read any Greek mythology, this idea comes up in several places. A person will go to an oracle to hear their fortune told. When they hear that it's bad news for them, they do everything in their power to stop it, only for their actions to ultimately result in that bad thing happening. I think the reason they don't try is that they can't. No matter what they do, those end up being the steps required to trigger death. Say you did foresee yourself being hit by an MTD bus. It doesn't matter what you do, the events you choose to remedy the situation are the ones to cause the situation.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting idea. It's a bit of a stretch to say every single tragic event on Tralfamador was one of these self-fulfilling prophecies, however. Real life is just too fast-paced and unpredictable. Though to be fair, Slaughterhouse 5 isn't exactly meant to be realistic.
DeleteIt is really interesting how much Tralfamadorians believe in fate. I think that the reason why they accept their fate and their deaths so unquestioningly is for a couple of reasons. First of all, death doesn't mean much to them because of the fluidity of time. Secondly, they don't live in a world where free will is even a concept. If they see themselves in the future getting hit by an MTD bus, they don't even consider the possibility that they can change that. Free will is something that they can't even comprehend.
ReplyDeleteThe "butterfly effect" theory tries to retain some concept of human free will--the actions we take can have an impact on the world, and the point of this analogy is that even the smallest gesture or action can have a chain of unintended consequences (this can be either an inspirational thought or a terrifying one, depending on your perspective). But as you say, Vonnegut isn't really interested in these kinds of questions, and he's deploying time travel as a trope for a totally different effect--the Tralfamadorian view that every moment is "structured" in a certain way (as in a novel that we can read and reread, where events always happen in the same way), which only drives home how we have no free will at all. Billy accepts being "let off the hook" in this way, but most readers find the idea of no free will very unnerving. As the Tralfs point out, "Only on earth is there any concept of free will." They're content leaving us to our little illusions.
ReplyDelete