As Salaam Alaikum, astute affiliates of Dragonmount! Welcome to another weekly entry of "It Works in Theory," Dragonmount's very own theory blog written by the committee of me, myself, and I. Before we start, I wanted to apologize for the absence of last week's theory blog. I've been as busy as you can imagine with last minute preparations for my impending nuptials, a heightened number of band practices due to a new member joining, and other matters which made it impossible for me to finish in time for my deadline. As much as I wish that the lack of a column last week became a source of anguish and gnashing of teeth for my readers, I'm sure you ended up okay without it. In a weird way, part of me might even be glad there wasn't a column last week; I'm particularly proud of some of the ideas I will be putting forth this week, and I feel the heightened anticipation might actually enhance your enjoyment of today's blog. And now, after rebuilding all that momentum, let's go ahead and pump the brakes and get to this week's disclaimer:

This blog is based on theories that will include facts and material from the latest books in the series, so if you have not read through Towers of Midnight, continue reading at your own risk! Readers of "It Works in Theory" should be advised that their understandings of notions such as time, space, metaphysics, morality, logic, and grammar could be subject to completely different interpretations and definitions from a different relativistic perspective, and that those notions may or may not be stretched, stunted, discombobulated, or otherwise manipulated at any time without advance warning in accordance with the author's whims and desires.

Something occurred to me as I was reading through our forums the other day. For being pretty much the main bad guy in a series, Ishamael has a lot of fans. He appeals not just to fans who delight in how entertaining twisted and maniacal bad guys can be in a series, but to a larger proportion than one might expect in this situation. It's actually not too difficult to see why this may be, however. All one needs to do to consider how Ishamael/Moridin is different from other major antagonists or bad guys is examine the reasoning for why he decided to go to the side of evil, or to the Shadow.

The implication is made throughout the series that Ishamael made his decision not out of selfish impulses or desperation, but instead out of logic and reason. He was known for being a great mind and philosopher during the Age of Legends, and this inquisitive nature led him to question the nature of the world in which he lived. We know that the Wheel of Time describes a model of reality in which a cyclical expression of time is the norm, instead of the linear expression of time that we are used to. This is a direct reference to the source of the name of the series; in Hinduism, the concept of eternal recurrence is expressed with their own Wheel of Time.

The idea of history repeating itself throughout the ages in one giant cosmic joke rankled Ishamael, and soon enough, this annoyance grew to define him until he decided the only course of action that was right was to aid the Dark One so that the Pattern might be destroyed. Of all the Forsaken, he is the only one who carries no delusions as to what will happen should the Dark One win. He doesn't believe that, as one of the Great Lord of the Dark's most loyal servants, he will enjoy some lofty position of leadership in the Dark One's vision of a new world. He knows that, should the Dark One win, all existence will end.

The Gathering Storm

Chapter 15, "A Place To Begin"

 

"Is that what made you turn to his side?" Rand asked. "You were always so full of thoughts, Elan. Your logic destroyed you, didn't it?"

 

"There is no path to victory," Moridin said. "The only path is to follow the Great Lord and rule for a time before all things end."

Interestingly enough, many readers can actually relate to this point of view. For some reason, there exists a general aversion to the notion of eternal recurrence in today's day and age, especially in Western culture. And yet, the Wheel of Time has become one of the most popular fantasy series of its time, and one might say the central theme is the idea of eternal recurrence. The rings the Aes Sedai wear(which you can purchase for yourself and help support this site by visiting Dragonmount's store, depict a snake eating its own tail, which is an allusion to Ouroboros, an ancient symbol for eternal recurrence. There are seven Ages in the Wheel, just as it was theorized by some Kabbalists out of Judaism that there are seven cycles which repeat every few thousand years. Even the Seanchan spear that is displayed in one of the main Wheel of Time symbols might be an allusion to Stephen Hawking's theory of the Arrow of Time. Then, of course, we always have the famous opening paragraph to every book in the series:

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again…

I could go on and on about the parallels in the Wheel of Time to other theological concepts of time and eternity, but Linda over at The Thirteenth Depository has already covered that much further in detail than I could ever hope to do. To see her article on the eschatology of the Wheel of Time, please visit this link.

We should take a little bit more time to go further in depth into more of the ramifications and nuances of cyclical time. There is somewhat of a micro/macro element when you break it down; eternal recurrence can take place in different ways. Ages cycling after one another is one way, the rebirth of the soul is another. Like in many cases, it can be easier to understand the big picture by focusing on the smaller example in front of us. Reincarnation doesn't state that you will be reborn as the same exact person you were in your previous life; while certain traits may be shared, overall, both reincarnations are completely distinct individuals. Because of this difference, there is room for personal growth and development, just as there is room for regression and devolution. A pauper who plays his cards right may awake reborn as a pharaoh, but if he forgets the lessons he learned and distances himself from his cosmic goal, then he may be reborn as something even lower than the pauper.

This ebb and flow can take place on a larger scale as well. Even though time and history may repeat themselves, there is a chance for mankind and life in general to advance and progress or to retreat and regress in various cyclings of time. This still might not be quite enough to satisfy some, as it might appear that even with this capacity for progression, there is still a ceiling or limitation to how far things can go before things get reset. In linear views of time, the perception truly is "Infinity, and beyond"; the perception is that anything is possible and that nothing truly stands in the way of progress but the obstacles we set up ourselves. The funny thing is, while most find the model of time set up in the Wheel of Time to be foreign and not comparable to our own reality, they might be surprised how many ways eternal recurrence can be said to happen in our own world.

First of all, apart from the metaphysical aspect and consideration of the soul, the biological process in which molecules pass from organism to organism can be considered recurrence. Our bodies die, decompose, and break down into organic matter which can feed the soil we are buried in, which in turn feeds the grass, which in turn feeds the grazing antelope, all of which contributes to the great circle of life. I know, I know, first I go Pixar, then I pull out the Disney; I must be getting soft, right? Try living with a 4-year-old, and see if their programming preference doesn't rub off on you a bit!

Another great example occurs on the cosmological scale. I'll assume everyone's heard of the Big Bang Theory, even if you don't agree with the concept. Somewhat less well known, however, is the Big Crunch, which occurs once the universe reaches a "critical density level" and gravity begins to pull it back in on itself, reversing the Big Bang. Once it contracts into the singularity, the Big Bang is free to occur again, which is outlined in the Oscillating Universe Theory. Then there are phenomena such as deja vu, which gives us the feeling of having experienced a certain event or occurence before.

Cyclical time also has its place in literature as well, apart from theological texts, of course. I remember watching Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time and being mesmerized by the iconic music playing during the opening scenes. Some time later, I finally decided to look up the song and discovered it to be Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, which was inspired by a work from another famous German. And thus, I was introduced to Friedrich Nietzsche. His work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra in original German pronunciation), is particularly relevant to today's discussion. It features a prophet named Zarathustra who poses philosophical questions and raises arguments against long held notions of morality and ethics. Zarathustra is representative of the Persian prophet Zoroaster, who is credited with founding Zoroastrianism. Incidentally, Zoroastrianism is significant in that it was one of the first religions to predict a cataclysmic confrontation between good and evil in the future; this idea soon spread to other religions like Judaism and indirectly influenced Christianity and Islam.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, eternal recurrence is posed as a kind of existential quandary for which a solution might be sought. Nietzsche describes the idea as abhorrent, and the burden of having to live in such a world as incredibly heavy. His solution to how to live with this burden was amor fati, or love of fate. Basically, it involves a certain resignation to fate; the knowledge that you are doomed to eventually repeat the exact same life robs you of the desire to try and alter your role in life, so the best you can do is try and appreciate the irony. Your life may be considered a cosmic joke, but at the very least the Creator gets to use you to put on his cosmological mummer's farce.

Okay, at this point we've ventured fairly far from the Wheel of Time, so for those of you who haven't zonked out or navigated away from the blog, I'll get to the point. You may or may not have thought about this before, but it's hinted at in the series that the world of the Wheel of Time is actually our own. In fact, Robert Jordan has confirmed this to be true in a few different Q&A sessions:

Second AOL Chat October 1994

 

Q: I was wondering if you could comment on some of the clues that Randland (as we call it) seems to be written as a future earth.

 

Robert Jordan: Time is a wheel. If you look in one direction, you are looking at the past. If you just turn around and look in the other direction, you are looking at the future. The books are set in our future and in our past, depending on which way you look.

AOL Chat #1 - 27 June 1996

 

Scotty1489: Is our earth a future or past turn of the Wheel?

 

RJ: Both. The characters in the books are the source of many of our myths and legends and we are the source of many of theirs. You can look two ways along a wheel.

So, Jordan is proposing that the cyclical model which is used for the Wheel of Time is actually the same model in which we exist in reality. Epic fantasy series have an interesting place in theories about eternal recurrence in our world. There are many people who believe that mankind has already risen and fallen, that our technology has shot upwards just to fall back again. I can hear you scoffing from here, but it might not be as crazy as you think. One of the pieces of evidence is the Great Sphinx, the ambiguous statue located right by the Great Pyramids of Giza, and how the head just doesn't fit the body or how the body appears to be much older than the Pyramids themselves.

The pyramids themselves are a miraculous feat in engineering that to this day perplexes modern engineers, as it doesn't seem they should have had the technology back then to construct them as mathematically precise as they did, and as quickly. For that matter, there are several ancient enigmas, such as Stonehenge and others. Embedded in this theory is Atlantis (which would have been destroyed before civilization is believed to have started) and even the Great Flood in the Bible (for more info on that, visit this link). Proponents of this theory even speculate that stories like The Lord of the Rings might not be based completely on fiction but might have some roots in one of the past cycles.

Some of the belief systems that postulate eternal recurrence also postulate that reality is actually an illusion, and that only by departing from this illusion can we achieve "freedom" from the cycle. In Buddhism, this requires meditation and the tuning out of worldly trappings and concerns. In the Wheel of Time, however, people in general do not seek to "escape" from the Wheel. In fact, when they swear, they swear by "hope of salvation and rebirth," which means they want to keep being reborn. The exception to this involves the people of Tremalking, the Amayar, who believe that as the Last Battle approaches, the "Time of Illusion" comes to an end. They actually anticipate this event because they look at the illusion of the reality of rebirth as being a harsh and undesirable fate.

The Path of Daggers

Chapter 2, "To Keep The Bargain"

 

The Amayar ignored the world beyond their scattered islands, for the Water Way taught that this world was only illusion, a mirrored reflection of belief.

So, would it really be that bad to live in a world in which history repeats itself? Are we so much better off, assuming our reality is based on a linear expression of time? It's true, we as a species have progressed to an amazing level, but at what cost? In spite of all our advancements, starvation is still a serious threat for many. We are altogether too efficient at killing one another with our advanced weaponry. The planet's health is failing, and all of our scrambling to help protect it may still not end up being enough. As a species, our reach has always extended our grasp. Perhaps that's one of the inherent problems with linear time, or at least our role in it. We recklessly plow ahead in the name of progress even when it isn't prudent to do so.

Let's assume for argument's sake that the world Jordan created is also our world. How do we cope with the trauma that is cyclical time?! Do we assume the nihilistic view, and not strive to change anything because there is nothing to change and no point in resisting? Should we seek to escape the repetition by trying to empower those who would destroy the system? Should we listen to Nietzsche, and try to adopt amor fati?

I have a different alternative. Maybe there are some downsides to the cyclical model, but life itself seems to be underrated by many. Perhaps we can't see the purpose in wiping the slate clean every so often, and it's easy for us to paint the world of the Wheel of Time as being a cosmic farce doomed to repeat itself for eternity, or until the Dark One wins. That doesn't change the fact that the Pattern's existence makes it possible for everything else to exist. All the creatures, all the foliage, all the good guys, all the bad guys, all the relationships and connections people are able to make, all of the details which many pass over but some appreciate and admire like the fine little pieces of art they are, all of life itself. No, I don't think one needs to have love of fate, but rather love of life. We don't need any other purpose but living life just for the opportunity, for life itself. Amor vita.