very words?
Wilson’s head started to ache again. “Don’t do that,” he pleaded. “Don’t refer to that guy as if he were me. This is me, standing here.”
“Have it your own way. That is the man you were. You remember the things that are about to happen to him, don’t you?”
He arrives at a conclusion: “The ego was himself. Self is self, an unproved and unprovable first statement, directly experienced.” Henri Bergson would have appreciated this story.
He thought of a way to state it: Ego is the point of consciousness, the latest term in a continuously expanding series along the line of memory duration….He would have to try to formulate it mathematically before he could trust it. Verbal language had such queer booby traps in it.
He accepts the fact (because he remembers) that his earlier selves had also felt themselves to be the one and only integrated and continuous being, Bob Wilson. But that must be an illusion. In a four-dimensional continuum each event is an absolute individual, with its own spacetime coordinates. “By sheer necessity he was forced to expand the principle of nonidentity—‘Nothing is identical with anything else, not even with itself’—to include the ego. The Bob Wilson of now is not the Bob Wilson he had been ten minutes ago. Each was a discrete section of a four-dimensional process.” All these Bobs—no more one and the same than the slices of bread in a loaf. And yet, they have continuity of memory, “a memory track that ran through all of them.” He recalls something about Descartes. If we know anything about philosophy we know this: cogito ergo sum. We all feel that. It is the defining illusion of Homo sapiens.
As readers, how can we help but understand Bob as a unified self? We have lived with him through all the twists of his timeline. The self is the story he tells.
—
WE REACH (and it won’t be the last time) the problem of free will. This was the second of the philosophical difficulties that Heinlein decided to explore as his narrative proceeded. Or perhaps I should say, found himself exploring, willy-nilly. He had no choice. When you send Bob back in time to meet his earlier self and relive an episode from his newer, wiser point of view, it is inevitable that Bob will ask: Can’t I do it differently this time?
Then we loop again, and now Bob Three, older and wiser still, disagrees with Bob Two about what Bob One ought to do. He presumes that he, or they, have a choice. Will the earlier Bob defer to the superior wisdom of his later self? Hardly. He still needs to give one self a black eye and push the other self through the Time Gate.
The reader sees the whole picture—from above, so to speak—well before Bob does. Bob tries using the Time Gate as a window into spacetime, but the controls are hard to manage. Sometimes he sees, or senses, “flitting shadows which might be human beings.” We know they are his own shadows, flickering on the cave wall. Bobs one and all are striving to fulfill their own destiny. The paradox, if it is a paradox, is that they have to work so hard, even as they gradually realize that their looping travails are foreordained. There is no escape from the track they are on. As Bob hears himself reciting words he has already spoken, he tries feebly to rewrite the script. “You’re a free agent,” he tells himself. “You want to recite a nursery rhyme—go ahead and do it…and break this vicious circle.” Yet just at that moment he can’t think of a nursery rhyme. His lines have been written for him. He can’t get off the treadmill.
“But that’s impossible!” he cries. “You’re telling me that I did something because I was going to do something.”
“Well, didn’t you?” he calmly retorts. “You were there.”
Young Bob still doesn’t like it. “You would have me believe that causation can be completely circular.” And Old Bob, despite all his hard-won knowledge, never stops working to fulfill his destiny. He
Wilson’s head started to ache again. “Don’t do that,” he pleaded. “Don’t refer to that guy as if he were me. This is me, standing here.”
“Have it your own way. That is the man you were. You remember the things that are about to happen to him, don’t you?”
He arrives at a conclusion: “The ego was himself. Self is self, an unproved and unprovable first statement, directly experienced.” Henri Bergson would have appreciated this story.
He thought of a way to state it: Ego is the point of consciousness, the latest term in a continuously expanding series along the line of memory duration….He would have to try to formulate it mathematically before he could trust it. Verbal language had such queer booby traps in it.
He accepts the fact (because he remembers) that his earlier selves had also felt themselves to be the one and only integrated and continuous being, Bob Wilson. But that must be an illusion. In a four-dimensional continuum each event is an absolute individual, with its own spacetime coordinates. “By sheer necessity he was forced to expand the principle of nonidentity—‘Nothing is identical with anything else, not even with itself’—to include the ego. The Bob Wilson of now is not the Bob Wilson he had been ten minutes ago. Each was a discrete section of a four-dimensional process.” All these Bobs—no more one and the same than the slices of bread in a loaf. And yet, they have continuity of memory, “a memory track that ran through all of them.” He recalls something about Descartes. If we know anything about philosophy we know this: cogito ergo sum. We all feel that. It is the defining illusion of Homo sapiens.
As readers, how can we help but understand Bob as a unified self? We have lived with him through all the twists of his timeline. The self is the story he tells.
—
WE REACH (and it won’t be the last time) the problem of free will. This was the second of the philosophical difficulties that Heinlein decided to explore as his narrative proceeded. Or perhaps I should say, found himself exploring, willy-nilly. He had no choice. When you send Bob back in time to meet his earlier self and relive an episode from his newer, wiser point of view, it is inevitable that Bob will ask: Can’t I do it differently this time?
Then we loop again, and now Bob Three, older and wiser still, disagrees with Bob Two about what Bob One ought to do. He presumes that he, or they, have a choice. Will the earlier Bob defer to the superior wisdom of his later self? Hardly. He still needs to give one self a black eye and push the other self through the Time Gate.
The reader sees the whole picture—from above, so to speak—well before Bob does. Bob tries using the Time Gate as a window into spacetime, but the controls are hard to manage. Sometimes he sees, or senses, “flitting shadows which might be human beings.” We know they are his own shadows, flickering on the cave wall. Bobs one and all are striving to fulfill their own destiny. The paradox, if it is a paradox, is that they have to work so hard, even as they gradually realize that their looping travails are foreordained. There is no escape from the track they are on. As Bob hears himself reciting words he has already spoken, he tries feebly to rewrite the script. “You’re a free agent,” he tells himself. “You want to recite a nursery rhyme—go ahead and do it…and break this vicious circle.” Yet just at that moment he can’t think of a nursery rhyme. His lines have been written for him. He can’t get off the treadmill.
“But that’s impossible!” he cries. “You’re telling me that I did something because I was going to do something.”
“Well, didn’t you?” he calmly retorts. “You were there.”
Young Bob still doesn’t like it. “You would have me believe that causation can be completely circular.” And Old Bob, despite all his hard-won knowledge, never stops working to fulfill his destiny. He
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