The characters in medieval morality plays were personifications of life’s intangibles, such as Perseverance, Knowledge, and Beauty. In the play Everyman, the main character encounters Death, Good Deeds, and Strength. Characters in other such allegorical dramas include the Seven Deadly Sins, such as Pride and Avarice, and sundry human frailties.
Are you in the midst of the greatest allegorical tale? Are you engaged in writing your life story as an allegory? I don’t mean a limited allegory like Animal Farm that takes on politics, and I don’t mean one like Everyman that takes on morality. I’m referring to the battle for the symbolism of Everything, an intellectual war that seeks to establish the dominance once and for all of either a secular, causal world or a world of free will. In the allegory you call My Life, what are the symbols? Who are the characters in your play? Is Love one? Justice? Logic?
One representative dramatist on the secular side is the late Stephen Hawking who believed that theology was unnecessary, implying that we live in a natural world derived from “quantum fluctuations.” Regarding the origin of the universe, Hawking framed the world in a manner different from a medieval morality play dramatist. I discovered this quotation from his play of Ideas: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” I can imagine the characters in Hawking’s allegorical play. There’s a character named Physical Law whose offspring are the Fundamental Forces, one of which creates the Cosmos. The drama’s conflict? Well, Gravity is the weakest of the Forces, but, according to the playwright Hawking, it becomes the Creator. Surely, envy would arise among the other three other and stronger Forces (Electromagnetism, the Weak Force, and the Strong Force—the first two combining to vie for dominance as the Electroweak Force). The drama plays out over a period of about 14 billion years on a stage that keeps changing, and surprising characters, the Virtual Particles, keep popping into and out of the scenes, somehow derived from the stage itself. Hawking’s material world, regardless of the scientific certainty to which it lends itself, doesn’t need the character called God. His main character, Stephen Hawking himself, says, “God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship.” Secular allegory, through and through, right?
What about the characters Love, Joy, and Beauty found in those medieval allegories? Would they play roles in Hawking’s allegory? He says, “Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.” Stephen would probably put a neuroscientist in his allegory of Everything to cover the intangibles. Find the correct neural circuits, and you will find joy. All those years of lovers stumbling in their attempts to say “I love you” will, in Stephen’s play, be a simple matter of explaining a process. I can read the lines of that special moment: “Dear, when I see you, my caudate nucleus and ventral tegmental area both flush with dopamine. And, dare I say it? My amygdala, my hippocampus, and even my prefrontal cortex become embarrassingly sensitive. I don’t know what it is about you, maybe the symmetry of your face or the pheromones. Whatever the cause, I want to be with you as long as the neurotransmitters freely flow. And I’m not even mentioning the abundance of hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin that your touch releases in me.” Although I’m simplifying Hawking, I do think he suggests that intangibles are tangible.
And that brings me to your “morality play,” your allegorical drama. If the world isn’t derived from mere physical laws because it includes that which isn’t physical, then what underlies those intangibles that frame your life? Do you see, for example, the need to put the character Evil in your play? What about Good? Is Compassion the foil to Cruelty or vice versa in your play? Here’s a good way to write your allegory: Try listing the characters to whom you might assign roles. The list alone will define the kind of allegory you will write—or are writing as you live.
Are you in the midst of the greatest allegorical tale? Are you engaged in writing your life story as an allegory? I don’t mean a limited allegory like Animal Farm that takes on politics, and I don’t mean one like Everyman that takes on morality. I’m referring to the battle for the symbolism of Everything, an intellectual war that seeks to establish the dominance once and for all of either a secular, causal world or a world of free will. In the allegory you call My Life, what are the symbols? Who are the characters in your play? Is Love one? Justice? Logic?
One representative dramatist on the secular side is the late Stephen Hawking who believed that theology was unnecessary, implying that we live in a natural world derived from “quantum fluctuations.” Regarding the origin of the universe, Hawking framed the world in a manner different from a medieval morality play dramatist. I discovered this quotation from his play of Ideas: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” I can imagine the characters in Hawking’s allegorical play. There’s a character named Physical Law whose offspring are the Fundamental Forces, one of which creates the Cosmos. The drama’s conflict? Well, Gravity is the weakest of the Forces, but, according to the playwright Hawking, it becomes the Creator. Surely, envy would arise among the other three other and stronger Forces (Electromagnetism, the Weak Force, and the Strong Force—the first two combining to vie for dominance as the Electroweak Force). The drama plays out over a period of about 14 billion years on a stage that keeps changing, and surprising characters, the Virtual Particles, keep popping into and out of the scenes, somehow derived from the stage itself. Hawking’s material world, regardless of the scientific certainty to which it lends itself, doesn’t need the character called God. His main character, Stephen Hawking himself, says, “God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship.” Secular allegory, through and through, right?
What about the characters Love, Joy, and Beauty found in those medieval allegories? Would they play roles in Hawking’s allegory? He says, “Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.” Stephen would probably put a neuroscientist in his allegory of Everything to cover the intangibles. Find the correct neural circuits, and you will find joy. All those years of lovers stumbling in their attempts to say “I love you” will, in Stephen’s play, be a simple matter of explaining a process. I can read the lines of that special moment: “Dear, when I see you, my caudate nucleus and ventral tegmental area both flush with dopamine. And, dare I say it? My amygdala, my hippocampus, and even my prefrontal cortex become embarrassingly sensitive. I don’t know what it is about you, maybe the symmetry of your face or the pheromones. Whatever the cause, I want to be with you as long as the neurotransmitters freely flow. And I’m not even mentioning the abundance of hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin that your touch releases in me.” Although I’m simplifying Hawking, I do think he suggests that intangibles are tangible.
And that brings me to your “morality play,” your allegorical drama. If the world isn’t derived from mere physical laws because it includes that which isn’t physical, then what underlies those intangibles that frame your life? Do you see, for example, the need to put the character Evil in your play? What about Good? Is Compassion the foil to Cruelty or vice versa in your play? Here’s a good way to write your allegory: Try listing the characters to whom you might assign roles. The list alone will define the kind of allegory you will write—or are writing as you live.
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