Dual Deeds and Free Agents

Photo by Nava Crispe 2012

When we hear and speak of that which is an “awe inspiring act” as in Psalms 65:5 (“awe inspiring in [His] acts toward the sons of Adam,” we have to consider issues of heteroglossia. Heteroglossia (literally different tongue/language)–as it is conceived by Mikhail Bakhtin–refers to the manifold types of speech that coexist in a text. Reflecting on the many voices embedded in this expression, we can draw out its tangled semantic  influences.

If ‘awe’ is understood as short for ‘awful,’ then we are dealing with a pronouncement of severe judgement. The ‘awe inspiring act’ is directed towards the offspring of Adam in that they are all sentenced to death as a result of his eating from the Tree of Knowledge. The act would be an act of retribution. In general, we dread punishments so when one is metered out it is received with shock and awe. As much as we expected it (given the prior warning) when it actually comes about we are still surprised and never quite prepared. ‘I never thought He would go through with it.’ But these are no idle threats. For every action there is a reaction–this is causality 101.

In the original Hebrew, the word al [על] which we have translated as ‘towards’ (but can also mean ‘on’ or ‘upon’ or ‘above’ i.e. coming from ‘on high’) can also reflectively fold back on the word for action–alilah [עלילה]–which comes from the same two letter sub-root. In fact, the difference between the two words is the last three letters of alilah, the yud, lamed, and hei [ילה], which add up to 45, the equivalent of the word ‘Adam’ [אדם]. Thus alilah itself encodes a structure that is directed toward mankind from a transcendent source. The awesome act is the act that comes upon me from something above and beyond me. As such, it is difficult to discern its source. Given the contextual set up that we mentioned in the previous article whereby we are instructed to “Go and see the works of God” which we took as a directive to reposition ourselves in order to catch sight of the true nature of nature–to expose the natural world order for what it really is: namely a Theo-drama–we can now reinterpret, according to this reading, the harshness of nature as a direct result of our shortcomings.

Death (and by extension entropy–the abstract equivalent of death) was not originally part of the picture. It was only a dormant possibility like an app in the library of programs that we might or might not choose to download and use. Life is full of options. But it does not mean that we have to exercise all of them. In Midrash Tanchuma Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karchah traces the origin of death/entropy back to day one of Creation. When the Torah records in Genesis 1:2 that “the darkness was on the face of the deep,” according to Rabbi Yehoshua, this is actually referring to the angel of death. Nonetheless, this feature of Creation was only a potential reality. He maintains that it was not until Adam violated the directive of eating from the Tree of Knowledge on day six that death/entropy became actualized.

God creates the pure possibility for things in creation without necessitating that these particular possibilities be switched on. They can remain unexercised options for all eternity. Subsequently, our role has been to select which features of Creation we will boot up and work with. While this option may seem to have been a bad choice through and through, Chassidic teachings suggest that there may be a hitherto unnoticed upside in that death and entropy are major drivers of the arrow of time which moves us from past to future. In effect, the arrow of time which defines our historical unfolding, required this ‘misstep’ to kick start it. Thus, for the Chassidic masters it exemplifies the concept of a ‘descent for the sake of an ascent.’

The partnership then is one of a potential-actual pairing: God gives the option and we choose (freely) whether or not to take it. Some commentators pick up on this thread and add that the word alilah [עלילה] with al as its sub root can also mean eila [עילה] ‘cause’ or ‘reason’ as well as ol [עול] a ‘yoke’ or ‘burden of responsibility.’ God may be the potential cause or the cause of the cause, and therefore bear some measure of responsibility for setting us up. At the same time, we have to come to terms with our having been and continuing to be the actual cause that realized/realizes this (negative) potential. Thus, our responsibility is even greater.

The Redak in his book on Hebrew roots–Sefer Ha’Shorashim (p.527)–adds still more layers and voices. Alilah, for him, is an essential act. The essentialism of the act implies that it could not have been otherwise. The relationship between eating from the Tree and death/entropy is not accidental. While they may appear to have no conceptual or causal kinship (especially in the natural order of things), in fact they are deeply related.

Eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil affected the mixing of good and evil. Prior to eating, there was a clear separation of the two and we could distinguish one from the other. The confusion that occurs when they get mixed up is itself the very definition of entropy. We go from a greater degree of order to a greater degree of disorder. When this occurs in consciousness (it is after all the Tree of Knowledge) then we are talking about information entropy. The loss of information integrity (the mixing of good and evil) itself explains all of the aging, disease and death within a biological system such as the body. Thus, the relation between cause and effect is non-trivial. One automatically produces the other. Introducing information entropy into ourselves and our reality (eating) naturally produces death as its logical conclusion.

We also get the sense from the Redak that the greatness or awesomeness of this form of action relates to the big picture. It is the act that changes the course of history or more specifically generates the possibility of history–i.e. that there is a story which takes time to happen and time to tell, but which has a moral to it and unfolds interactively as we both have it happen to us but also make it happen in the plainest sense of the expression: ‘we’ve made history.’ More precisely, it is about the interplay between a multiplicity of small pictures (some of which have been tagged with my name) and the one over-arching big picture. My being as an individual tugs on Being as a whole. Mankind and God are looped in together. My action conjures a meta-action. Each historic act reshapes all of history.

Uplifting the mundane action of a worldly creature to the meta level can be etymologically supported by another slice of meaning that cuts through the word alilah: in that the word alil [עליל] means ‘reality’ (in the sense of actualization or realization). So if one says ‘I just had an awful or awesome realization’ (depending on your spin), one is picking up on the connection of action to consequence that joins Divine and human agency through the medium of natural processes and historical events.

Our analysis continues in Part Five where another voice shines forth in praise of entropy.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-history-of-histories-part-5/

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-history-of-histories-part-3/

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