Permanence and Impermanence
(Content Warning: Suicide)
It recently struck me how all of the natural beauty in the world would have been here even if there was nothing alive to witness it. Every night we’re amazed by the gorgeousness of the swirling oranges, pinks and blues of a sunset… and yet, that would have happened even if nothing could have consciously registered it. It’s almost impossible to think about, akin to how our brains are physically incapable of visualising large numbers: the act of imagining how the cosmos continues independent of those within it. The very act of imagining this- a conscious act- makes it a paradoxical impossibility to accurately imagine.
Had no humans ever existed on Earth, the coastlines we see today would still have formed. The Sahara desert would be an empty soulless graveyard, the forests of Oregon would be green hooded caves sheltering nothing, and the mountains of the French Alps would stand no grander in scale than any other vast natural phenomenon. It’s easy to ponder what other natural (or, to us, unnatural) beauties span other planets; grand monuments to the beauty of the cosmos, never to be beheld by anyone.
This line of thought led me to wonder, too, about what will be left after we’re gone. What of us will be left, permanently encased in the stillness of a dead planet? Earth will be left as nothing more than a museum dedicated to a civilisation that once was, hurtling through the expanse of space and quietly begging for someone new to witness it. No one will have chance to turn off all the lights; it might even look like we’re home.
Like a colossal diorama, a globe-spanning maze of buildings housing no one will stand for millennia: last to go may be the thick-walled stone homes dotted across the countryside, the concrete multi-storey car parks, closer in appearances to brutalist modern art than something that once served a purpose; the Stone Henges and the Great Pyramids, monuments built to showcase the strength of humanity. These latter examples, in particular, are fascinating: these structures represent landmarks in the history of mankind; the strength, planning and effort possible at each stage will forever be preserved in a timeline of one-upmanship that stretches all the way to the tallest skyscrapers today. Ironically, though, these icons of glamour and wealth may be among the first to fall when left to be berated, abused and reclaimed by nature for centuries on end; it may be representative of our consumerist modern world that the sheer height and complexity can’t rival the staying power of dense and rugged structures such as the Great Pyramids. In the past, we built shrines to our deities; today, we build monuments to ourselves in the form of skyscrapers- skyscrapers that will one day crumble like sand castles.
Sand castles are a self-contained dichotomy between the inherent impermanence of sand, and the permanence of buildings they represent. It might be easy to assume that children, whom sand castles are most readily associated with, would find the destruction of their creations upsetting. Everyone remembers the hot flush of intense loss and sorrow something we loved creating was destroyed as children, whether it be a Lego model dropped on the floor or a drawing torn in half by a power-tripping teacher- and yet there’s almost a peace in accepting the impermanence of your sand castles. Perhaps it’s a child-like version of realising how freeing it is to live in the moment; to focus on the joy of creating, rather than worrying about the sadness of losing. Not everything has to be a precursor to something else. It’s a tradition continued by adults alike, with sand art competitions being a relatively popular occurrence in sea-side towns. Complex sculptures, rich in detail and beauty, all created with the knowledge that they’ll be washed away in only a matter of days, living on only in photographs.
An even more extreme extension of this approach to art would be one where there isn’t chance for photographs to be taken at all- not even in the mind. In ‘Before Midnight’ (Linklater, 2014), after walking into a Byzantine era chapel with Celine, Jesse discusses how the paintings make him “think of those Japanese monks, you know, with their deal on impermanence. They like to paint with water on rock on a hot day so by the time they’re done it’s already evaporated.” This tradition has shown itself in a number of forms, both in past and present, particularly among Buddhist disciplines where attachment is thought to be one of the causes of suffering; to accept the impermanence of everything and to let go is to avoid fighting inevitability.
Another extreme of impermanence would be what can be experienced, but does not exist at all. When looking out at a light reflected across water, that is something experienced by you alone, never to be seen by anyone else in quite the same way again. Where the forms of buildings are solid and unchanging (a fun way to explore this is by trying to match your vision exactly to that of a photograph), the rippling tides in combination with the tendrils of illusory light stretching out to you alone make it a truly unique moment in time. It’s moments like these that make you stop and drink in the view; it’ll only happen like this once.
By extension of this, there’s a certain sadness when you are the one irreversibly changing a form. When you come across a field draped with a fresh, untouched sheet of snow, or an inviting bed of sand smoothed over by the breeze. It almost feels as though you’re desecrating a work of art- tarnishing natural beauty for those unfortunate enough to come after you. The only solace comes from knowing that these sculptures will eventually be lost regardless. Why worry about changing the formations of the sand when it’s inevitable that it’ll change anyway? Embrace the impermanence: appreciate it for what it was, and allow time to continue the cycle. It’ll never be in quite the same form again, but the next one will be just as good. It’s a sculpture in a gallery, algorithmically shifting to form a new piece of art every second. It may look similar- it may look better some days and worse on others- but visit often and you’ll always have something new to appreciate.
We’re constantly bombarded by the ‘new’. In the distant past, the only entertainment people had was the stories told to them by those around them- the same stories they’d hear all their lives, and the same stories they’d pass down to the next generation. These stories, stories that could have been some of the greatest ever told, have been completely lost in time, buried with the tongues of those who could tell them. In the near past, few could read or write: these were the ones with the privilege of encasing their thoughts in ink, to forever live on in the minds of whoever came across them. With so few new books being written, each one had its own significance- it was a numbered addition to the library of humanity, a library that’s kept a large portion of its contents until this very day despite certain shelves crumbling (or burning). Compare this to the modern day: with the widespread ability to read and write in tandem with the widespread access to worldwide publishing as a result of the advent of social media, there’s been an unprecedented shift towards both the permanence and impermanence of published literature. Impermanence in the sense that published word is now throwaway- every tweet, instagram post or medium article is but another writing in the Great Database. Many share their every thought to the world in the form of tweets. I share my every thought in the form of this writing. It’s significance spread thin, and information democratised. Permanence comes in the sense that everything is now being logged and stored, forever- not in great libraries, but in cold, humming metal hallways. These hallways are filled with complex- albeit scattered- portraits of almost every person living, whether they choose to participate or not. There’s an old internet culture sentiment that one Christine Chandler is the most documented person in history- the reality is that any one of us could easily rival this title. While the majority of our published content- tweets, articles, photos- is seen once and never again, lost behind the shelves of the great metal corridors, all it takes is someone with enough drive to seek that documentation out.
Perhaps with this shift towards the permanence, we can finally live on forever. Eternal life is a dream that humanity seems to have been chasing since the beginning: stories of Heaven, the Philosopher’s Stone and the Fountain of Youth have entranced us for millennia- however, it’s a dream that I don’t personally understand. The idea of any form of eternal consciousness- a permanence of living- is one of the most petrifying concepts I can think of. How can one fill eternity? Many people are waiting to die by the time they reach 90, never mind 90 million. During one experience with psychedelics, I came to the realisation that I have no way of knowing I can die. I could be the subject of my own timeline, doomed to see it through to the end: to grow older and older until I realise that something is wrong, that I should have passed by now; to watch those I love die around me as I reach my 100s; to witness great shifts and advances in civilisation as I devolve into a decrepit pile of skin and bones; to perhaps even witness the end of civilisation, leaving me alone in the wasteland of a world I once knew; to continue living through the death of the planet itself, whether it be engulfed by the sun or destroyed in a cataclysmic impact, throwing me out into the vast expanse of space; a pile of dust tied together only by what’s left of my soul, with an infinite emptiness to experience and an infinite future to experience it in. The mere thought of filled me with a sense of existential dread unparalleled by anything before or since- the impossibility of our brains being able to comprehend the concept of infinity only makes it all the more terrifying: I would have to live that incomprehensible time, with nothing but my own thoughts along with me on the journey. What vast expanses of knowledge, deep, dark pits of human despair and endless alleyways of madness would my mind explore in that time? The soft, comforting blanket of death- permanent rest from the curse of consciousness- seems preferable. I recently learned that this is a real theory known as ‘Quantum Immortality’, proposed as a solution to the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. If the many-worlds interpretation (or the ‘multiverse theory’) is true, then there is a world in which the experiment is repeated over and over again and the subject never dies. The possibility here is that only one can continue living throughout the chances of death, and that one is you. The chances of this being the case are low, of course- but they’re not zero. The only way to know for sure would be to pull the trigger, by which time it would be too late to turn back. There are some rabbit-holes too dark to explore.
