In short, an explanation of how the universe came to be. A "creation" story, or a theory of our origins. Most religions have a cosmogeny either explicitly or implicitly. In any such cosmogeny are the roots of their outlook on the universe. Often simple stories have far reaching cultural ramifications.
Let's start with the fact that Diamond DOES NOT have a bible or other "sacred" text, much less a literal cosmogeny. Any stories of how the universe came to be are rooted in the type of symbols that the human mind needs to grasps the hows and whys of existence. Our cosmogeny is an allegorical explanation, not holy writ or "proven" history.
Gods and Goddesses are our way of symbolizing the unknowable. I can not say for sure how many "entities", if any, were involved in the making of our universe, or the multiverse, for that matter. So I guess at them, with the facts as I know them, the forces and effects that I see. That's all any mortal can do. Anyone who tells you differently is either a fool or a liar.
More void than void, absolute chaos to the point of uniformity. Randomness ruled. No thought, no cohesion, nothing but pure "noise", not even time itself.
Randomness is, well, random. The thing is, out of truly random events order, thought, and essence may arise (think 2,000,000 monkeys with typewriters). So it was with the universe. A random event sparked the first thought, which in turn generated more, which spun off each other in a paradox cycle that lasted an instant, yet many millenia.
Somewhere in there time and identity sprang into existance - (at least) two identities, to know the difference. These were the parents of our universe, nominally male and female, for mapping on to the human breeding pair matrix. Mommy and Daddy, or, to be formal, the Star Lady and the Star Lord.
And they created. The universe was empty, and expanding. So they made matter, and energy, and defined the interactions between them. They swept the loose chaos up into stars, and planets, and space between. They played with sub-atomic particles, and molecular physics. They spent aeons making, creating, exploring and detroying what each other had made. Creation and destruction, the cycles of time, all of that.
They even spun off parts of themselves, to watch over and experience their creations on a smaller scale. These beings became the gods of individual stars and planets, still part of the whole, but more closely dedicated to their areas.
And they grew bored. They had nothing but things, and then ran out of new things that they wanted to play with. So they chose to make the one thing they hadn't yet: life. Knowing no other form, they sought to make another of themselves. Not another spin-off, but a distinct entity.
But they were the order that came from chaos. What they made was a being of chaos within the order, an agent of change. Now there was a being in the universe that made change for change's sake. After they got used to the idea, and realized what they had done, they were pleased. They called their child Dilemma, for it's existance had seemed a dilemma at first.
The first child was a success. Yet they knew that too many would crowd their creations, become a problem. So the three of them sought to make something new. Something that had a short cycle, that reproduced itself. Something to watch. Life.
But life was not easy. In order to create it, they had to understand how it would fit within the rules that they had already made. So they started small. Single cell organisms, plants, simple things. Many planets they used as test beds, making gaurdians taken from a piece of themselves to watch over their creations. And they played with it for even more aeons.
Yet there was something missing. All there was, was what they had made, following the rules they had laid. It was a clockwork dance. So the Dilemma had an idea, a random spark: give this "life" a part of themselves - the ability to create and destroy, not on a schedule or because of natural law, but because it chose.
The three of them pondered the idea for ages. If made this new type of life too grand, they would just end up with more dilemmas. Yet, if they restricted it too much, it would be just another thing. So they gave it potential, they gave it choice, yet they made it subject to random events. They gave it one thing that they had not given to anything but their Dilemma: the awareness of itself, as a separate being, and of more than themselves. They made it sentient, with the potential for continuance. And then they made it's occurence in living things a semi-random event.
Copyright 1998 - 2002 by Ravan Asteris. Please don't plagiarize - attribute and link if you want to quote!
