SERMON on The Multiverse August 6, 2023
by Karen N. Bell Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church
Today we live with exploding knowledge about space, the nature of the atom, degradation of the planet, and ever-expanding human misery in many countries as a result of climate change and population growth. No wonder then that many of us turn to stories about ways to solve such problems or escape them! I for one enjoy reading science fiction for just this reason. The time I have spent earlier in my life living outside the U.S., immersed in other cultures, languages and political realities, has also given me an alternative perspective to view our own situation in this country.
Some science fiction novels, movies and TV series feature alternate universes or worlds. How many of you have heard of the TV series Man in the High Castle? It involves two different universes, one in which Hitler won World War II and Germany and Japan came to dominate North America. The main characters in the America that lost the war realize that there is a connection between these worlds, and manage to observe their identical counterparts living much happier lives in the alternate world, one in which Germany not conquered the U.S.
I had the opportunity to experience an alternate reality many years ago, fresh out of college. I got married in 1970, and my husband Peter, 8 years older, had the job of representing the Ford Foundation in Chile and Argentina. We arrived in Santiago just before the newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende, was inaugurated. The story of the Allende government efforts to govern with a broad leftist coalition is well known, as is the military junta that took over in 1973 with support from the CIA. The society that took shape immediately after the coup, however, resembles the one in Man in the High Castle, where universities and government agencies were all taken over by right-wing supporters of the coup, and vocal dissidents were imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes killed if they were not lucky enough to find refuge in Europe. Peter and I only stayed for 9 months after this coup, but he and his colleagues were able to help hundreds of Chilean intellectuals emigrate and get job offers abroad. The atmosphere of fear and confusion that took hold in Chile then is well portrayed in a 1982 Costa-Gavras movie called Missing starring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek. It is about an American idealist who is killed by the Chilean military shortly after the coup.
Living and studying in Chile for almost 4 years, combined with earlier travels to Latin America as a teenager, enabled me to learn Portuguese and Spanish and live in different cultures. But immersive as these experiences were, I always had a way out, back to the U.S., and connections to resources not available to the friends and classmates I met there. I always had the feeling that U.S. citizenship was certainly a privilege, but that American exceptionalism was not a notion my experiences had born out. For example, Chile’s health system gave everyone access to care as a matter of right, and all citizens were required to vote or face a modest fine. This resulted in election turnouts of 95% or more!
When I agreed to give the sermon for today’s service, I decided to explore a topic that I thought was only of interest to science fiction writers, fans, and theoretical physicists. But the more that I explored and considered it, the more I realized that the notion of people going to an alternate world (or coming from one) is not really new. For example, in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna offers a glimpse of multiple cosmic creations and annihilations to his disciple Arjuna; saying that different universes are located in different parts of the cosmic body of Krishna.
The multiverse is a term that scientists use to describe the idea that beyond the observable universe, other universes may exist as well. Multiverses are predicted by several scientific theories that describe different possible scenarios—from regions of space in different planes than our universe, to separate bubble universes that are constantly springing into existence.
Such parallel universes have been featured in science fiction for many years, but in the past decade or so scientists have considered the possibility seriously of many universes, in theories emanating from theoretical physics. This also raises the possibility of multiple Gods as Edgar Allan Poe astutely observed in his poem.
The movie Everything Everywhere All At Once received at least 2 academy awards this year, including best actress and best picture. The central concept involves a woman who is having trouble dealing with her business taxes and the IRS. This leads to a crazy adventure in multiple alternate worlds, or universes. The movie’s ending is set in a multiverse, which is vast with various worlds that are all based on every human decision ever made. For every choice, a new universe is created, branching off into its own thing. The universes that branch out are predicated by an individual’s decision and how it affects their life’s journey.
This raises an intriguing question: do we each have a role in creating our own reality, or one particular version of the multiverse? Could there be other versions of ourselves living in parallel universes arising from fateful decisions? Or universes in which we never existed because of choices our parents made about whom to marry?
Some writers choose the vehicle of science fiction to describe solutions to problems that plague us now and explain how they can be solved with technology or new political movements. The novel Ministry of the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which we read in our UU book group, describes a world in the near future in which climate change has already caused many deaths from heat waves. The solutions he presents are political, technological and financial, and some involve desperate measures undertaken clandestinely to remove people who are viewed as key obstacles to desired change.
I understand the allure of wanting to escape to another universe.
Reading the New York Times almost every day makes me aware of the immensity of problems affecting our society and causing suffering of millions of people elsewhere in the world. It also makes me feel powerless to make a difference unless it involves local activism or making small donations to national and international nonprofit organizations. Worry about climate disasters or armed conflict has spurred some people to become survivalists, think about escape, or search for solutions. Increasing numbers of refugees are a testimony to the increasing number and severity of crises in other parts of the world.
Increasingly, people all over the world are voting with their feet to seek life in a “different universe.” We are witnessing the phenomenon of Red states and Blue states in which culture, beliefs, and personal freedoms are diverging more and more. Some families choose to move to a different state rather than risk exposing vulnerable children to restrictions on what they can learn and what medical treatment they are permitted to receive. As many as 20 states have banned or restricted transition-related care for transgender minors earlier this year, leaving families grappling with difficult questions, such whether to move to a different state. By the same token, people who insist on the right to carry a weapon at all times might feel that the “universe” of Massachusetts is threatening their freedoms, and thus make plans to move. Some people leave the state because they think taxes are too high.
Another interesting and troubling example of this trend is medical training for ob-gyns. The regulations enacted by states that have severely restricted access to abortion also prohibit certain kinds of surgical training for medical residents in this field. Recent articles in the Washington Post and Wired documented a more than 10 percent drop in the number of applicants for residencies in these red states in 2023 from the previous year. And in an unrelated national survey, 77 percent of 494 third- and fourth-year medical students said that abortion restrictions would affect where they applied to residency, while 58 percent said they were unlikely to apply to states with a ban. Restrictions on abortion might also prevent physicians from being licensed if they do not receive training in the procedure. Residents of red states could be facing a future where obstetric and gynecological care is less and less available.
For people who can afford to do so, travel to other countries takes them away to another reality for short periods. As a child I moved with my family every couple of years for the first 10 years of my life, moves connected to my father’s career as a physician and researcher. This in effect plunged me into different “worlds” and made our family of five very self-sufficient. Reading many books each week became a refuge for me, and I discovered science fiction as a teenager. When our family took a trip to Brazil as passengers on a freighter and spent 6 months living in Salvador, we all experienced a new world in person! This experience became a touchstone for me in realizing that I could learn a new language, make new friends, and understand cultural practices that seemed foreign.
Since then, as an adult, through my work and that of my late husband Peter, I have had the opportunity of traveling to many different countries and cultures. These experiences have enriched my life and made me aware of the positive as well as negative influences of the United States all over the world. But Gloucester is now the place where I have lived the longest. I have enjoyed becoming part of this community in a way that I never experienced while working and raising children. In some ways living here has taken away my desire to travel to other “worlds” or spend the winters in another state. Instead, I am trying to figure out how to use my time and talents to make Gloucester and Cape Ann the best place it can be. I am beginning to realize that Cape Ann might become that “alternate universe” for people living in other parts of the country who are seeking an escape.
There is no way for us to ever test theories of the multiverse, according to some scientists. We currently have no evidence that multiverses exist, and everything we can see suggests there is just one universe — our own! With this sobering, and to some, happy, thought, maybe we should direct more of our energies toward fixing the problems of this world before escape becomes a necessity!
