Perspective

The Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse Five see all of the past and future at once. Instead of living in the moment, they see every event that will happen ahead of time, and as a result don't care about the future. This makes sense; if you think about it, reality is just a bunch of events that lead to other events. Even our thoughts, feelings, and decisions are determined by past events. So why shouldn't humans think the same way as these nihilistic Tralfamadorians?

The underlying difference between humans and Tralfamadorians is how they perceive time. Tralfamadorians are able to view their own decisions--and the consequences of those decisions--before making those decisions in the first place. As such, they don't ever truly make decisions; everything has already been decided for them by fate. Humans, however, are unable to see these decisions ahead of time. This is a bit of a blessing in disguise; our inability to predict the future means our decisions actually matter.

This is why Tralfamadorian nihilism simply doesn't work with humans. Imagine if everyone suddenly stopped caring about the future, saying that "fate" decided everything, and that no one had any free will. The WHO would stop working against the Coronavirus. Climate change activists would stop caring. We would skip every single Webassign.

Quite a scary thought.

Comments

  1. KatieMarch 14, 2020 at 3:06 PM

    While Billy wants to spread this Tralfamadorian idea to everyone, I don't think it would work out for everyone to believe in it. Like you said, people would stop caring about people and events and decision making. Because Earthlings don't have the ability of the Trafamadorians to see in the fourth dimension, it would be harmful for all Earthlings to believe, so I don't see it as the good news that Billy sees it as.

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  2. Emi L.March 20, 2020 at 6:58 PM

    So we've seen the future and know that we never do any webassigns from this point on, therefore we can't do them? I honestly don't know how tralfamadorian time works. I was confused and it seemed like there were some non sequiturs in the book, like one scene billy doesn't have control over what he's doing and the next scene he does. Humans are designed to live in the moment. We have feelings and emotions and chemical reactions in our body to whatever's happening, and it's life. Billy didn't seem to have those. His perspective of time seemed to rob him of his humanity.

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  3. Nicholas PMarch 21, 2020 at 5:24 PM

    I think that one implication of Tralfamador is that human decisions also don't matter, even though we can't see that. We make decisions based on our assumption that they matter and that we have a choice, but according to Tralfamador our decisions were guaranteed. Humans still fall into the Tralfamdorian view of reality, we just can't tell that were in it, so we think that we have free will and can change the future.

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  4. Sophia SchmitzMarch 22, 2020 at 3:07 PM

    Since Tralfamadors already know what did and will happen they do not care about "life" in the same way that humans do. I think this makes sense for them because they can travel to any moment in time and "relive" that moment. However, humans can not so I do not think it is fair to expect humans to have the same outlook on life as Tralfamadors do.

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  5. Lucas WoodMarch 23, 2020 at 3:30 PM

    This is why I do not enjoy or wish to think about the Tramalfadorian perspective. I find it profoundly sad and uncomfortable. What makes life interesting is uncertainty, and tramalfadorian time removes any uncertainty from life. It would be hard to enjoy or care about such an existence. If anything this book made me appreciate the way I perceive time.

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  6. SimonMarch 24, 2020 at 3:50 PM

    I think this is a really good description of the idea of Tralfamadorianism. It’s really interesting to think of how everything we do is influenced by our pasts, and so then it’s not really clear as to whether we really have free will, as we were always going to pick a certain option based on our past experiences. Even if we actively try to work against what we would otherwise be doing, we would still be doing what we always were going to do because we would be the type of person who would try to go against fate. So technically, one could see the future if one knew everything about everyone. They would be able to pretty accurately predict what was going to happen or see the future. Pretty trippy.

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