The Eternal Recurrence of a Spotless Mind

Everyone is always told that you have to love your significant other warts and all. But what if he or she or it could journey to a parallel universe where none of their positive attributes would be marred by human foibles. Both Nietzsche and the mathematician Poincare believed in the notion of Eternal Recurrence which states that over the infinite expanse of time literally everything and all its mutations would appear as a succession of possibilities. It’s another iteration of the idea that if you put a monkey in front of a typewriter, over infinite time it will spew forth Hamlet. The idea of parallel universes presents a science fiction version of this idea in which chinks in time make it possible to travel to other dimensions where we can be melded into more perfected forms of ourselves. What a savings of time and money. If they could be accessed, parallel universes would prove to be a lot more reliable than therapy. Therapy rarely offers a cure. All that’s being offered the patient is an ability to accept and understand dysfunctional and maladaptive parts of the self—with the dreary hope that under optimal conditions serial murderers, for example, might recognize that they are acting out. If only scientists could find a way of identifying wormholes and other means of accessing the multiverse then we would be able to select from a number of possibilities. Let’s say there had been knowledge of parallel universes back in the day of Adam and Eve. Eve might have been able to find another form of herself which didn’t give in to the temptation to take the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. There would have been no fall or original sin and earth would have been paradise.

Pornosophy: Forbidden Fruit

“The Earthly Paradise and the Fall of Adam and Eve" by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens

Why is modesty so dearly preserved in some venues and so categorically denied in others? A recent Times piece about the spa at Baden-Baden (“Naked Came the Strangers,” NYT, 10/10/14) describes how it's absolutely forbidden for anyone to cover themselves at the Friedrichsbad baths. There men and women face not only rejection and dejection, but ejection if they refuse to parade around naked (though one would suspect that erections are probably discouraged). However several days later the Times ran a story about some torrid happenings at another bath (“Prominent Rabbi Arrested on a Charge of Voyeurism,” NYT, 10/14/14). The Times story describes how a respected Orthodox rabbi was arrested on suspicion of "placing a hidden camera in a changing" room of the "ritual bath," or mikvah of his congregation. The issue seems to come down to private parts. Just about everyone has them. And they’re equal opportunity employers to the extent that they're basically the same depending on the sex. Yet since the time of Eve loosing mankind’s innocence, they seem to have taken on great symbolic value. Penises and vaginas are merely flesh surrounded by pubic hair. None of this qualifies as being anything new under the sun. It’s because society has proscribed men and women from viewing each other’s private parts, that such sights have been accorded increased value. It’s supply and demand. Eve’s picking the fruit was like the Volstead Act. Once prohibited, nudity became more desirable for being rare. Obviously the rabbi’s crime had to do with violating an individual’s right to privacy, but in a way he and those who do similar pranks are a little like bootleggers whose pleasures and profits come from the forbidden. Anyone who’s ever been to a nude spa like the one described in the Times knows that the novelty is exhausted faster than you can say Auf Wiedersehen.