Prediction & Causation

Who's in charge around here?

Being able to predict the future and being able to influence it are closely linked yet distinct phenomena. I may know when the sun will rise and set, but I do not know of a way to make it happen a moment sooner or later. Likewise, I may be the cause of an infinite cascade of events in every direction, yet be as ignorant as a blind babe about such consequences. Indeed this is the most ordinary thing in the world.

But when prediction and causation are married, we have science and its proof: technology. For what purpose could knowledge be, if not to further enable your primal impulse to live long and prosper, to do what thou wilt? Technology, τέχνη, know-how, these are the crucibles of science, where internally consistent lies are distinguished from truth.

And how we struggle to gain even a modicum of control over our environments! Just learning to use our bodies takes years of constant effort. And how many illusions parade before us, as we first imagine ourselves rulers of our parents, then rulers of other children, now rulers of our lives until the excruciating truth of death is finally thrust upon us. How often do we imagine that we caused someone to treat us badly, that some pain is a punishment from God, or that we deserve some good fortune that has come to us? Is not politics the art of taking credit for anything good that happens and blaming your opponent for anything bad?

Every moment is both the product of an infinite number of causes reaching back into eternity and the cause of an infinite number of future events. And yet if events were not circular, recurring in their own way, we could never name nor know them.

Let us therefore do a public ritual before the sun rises each day and the ignorant shall soon believe us masters of the sun. Let us make placebos for every illness and give it to the profane, so that they shall declare us healers. Let us enter a fight as it wanes, and declare ourselves peacemakers. The tides obey us, as we watch the moon, and the eclipse is our weapon against fools who would doubt us.

Let us cease our endless sacrifices to Azazel, that blind god of scapegoats and blame! And while others are devoured by unknowable causes, let us feast on the sacred body of the One, who is the cause of every effect and the recipient of all gifts.

Sat Chit Amanda