We Live in a Multiverse
The Multiverse isn’t infinitely out there in space. It’s infinitely right here on Earth.
I feel a sense of ownership over the Multiverse. I know I’m far from the first person to create art about it. Naturally, the reason I became obsessed with the Multiverse was thanks to all the brilliant films and stories that came before. But I feel possessive about the Multiverse because when I started using it as a metaphor in my work, back in 2016, most people would respond with a Huh?
While prepping my short film Multiverse Dating for Beginners I put together an info packet for the actors so they could better understand. I explained, as best I could muster, the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I didn’t full understand it myself but I conceptualized it as best I could.
This is where we need to remember that physics is theoretical.
Everything is theoretical.
Knowledge is ultimately meaningless.
We can’t know anything to be true.
As I researched, shot, edited, and begun to tour the film, I developed my own Multiverse Theory. The film is about my dating life and I made it because I struggled to understand the men-I-dated’s points of view. They seemed to be living in different worlds. So I wrote my way into understanding. I removed myself from my beliefs and my feelings and I stood in their shoes. I witnessed from the other side.
My Multiverse Theory is pretty straightforward: each human is a Universe and reality is a Multiverse.
I continued to search the field of physics for proof of my theory but only came up empty-handed and frustrated. I explained my thoughts to anyone who would listen but as I tried to write about it, I could never seem to finish.
Fast-forward to the September issue of Scientific American: Truth, Lies & Uncertainty Searching for Reality in Unreal Times. There it was, the science I’d been waiting for. I’d known for some time that neuroscience proved that we actively construct our reality — that the world we see is created in our minds — but I never fathomed I’d see my theory laid out so clearly.
The reality we experience — the way things seem — is not a direct reflection of what is actually out there. It is a clever construction by the brain, for the brain. And if my brain is different from your brain, my reality may be different from yours, too.
Anil K. Seth, The Neuroscience of Reality
There it was. My theory. My Multiverse Theory is pretty straightforward: each human is a Universe and reality is a Multiverse. Reality — that which the dictionary defines as “the state of things as they are” — is not, in fact, fixed or set or true. Reality is different for every individual. Reality is a vacillating, boundary-less, melding construction of unique minds.
I call it “my” Multiverse Theory because it appeared, developed, and flourished in my mind but that doesn’t mean it belongs to me or that others aren’t thinking the exact same thing. Because knowledge doesn’t belong to anyone. We experience this illusion that our consciousness is ours and unique and separate, and while it is ours and unique and separate on this plane, in these bodies, ultimately it is part of a whole. Reality is a Multiverse populated by infinite human consciousnesses, but underneath all that, we’re just an infinite swarm of particles flickering in and out at the speed of light.
We trap knowledge in our minds and call it truth but there is no truth. How could there be truth in a Multiverse?
There is so much more I could say but no matter how much I write, it will never be enough. The complexity of the Multiverse is infinite. So I will leave you with this: the time has come to question everything we believe to be true.
The time has come to question everything we believe to be true.
