I’m not going to lie, the last season and a half of HBO’s Westworld have been highly disappointing, especially considering the amazing start they had in Season One. Having said that, this last episode (Season Three, Episode 5) actually filled my head with a lot of philosophical questions about life, death and the meaning of it all and for that I have to applaud them. While I certainly hope that my current existence (loop?) is not about to come to an end any time soon, I find myself preparing myself now for what lies ahead in the next life (loop) thanks in large part to Westworld.
It should go without saying that this article is going to have some spoilers if you are not caught up on Westworld through season three, episode five. Having said that, I’m not going to get too much into the details of any particular episode and instead am going to focus more on Westworld’s big picture as I understand it.
Creationism and Reincarnation
Being born and raised a Christian in western society I never really gave the subject of reincarnation much thought. Believe me, it took a REALLY long time for me to get to a point where my mind was even open enough to seriously consider the possibility. But after a spiritual awakening a few years back now, I began really re-examining EVERYTHING I was taught to believe about God and the meaning of life.
Prior to my spiritual awakening, I was lead to believe that the concept of reincarnation made zero sense. For example, I never truly understood the purpose of reincarnation. If, as I understood it, the purpose of reincarnation was to become the highest version of ourselves by “working” on character flaws from previous lives, what was the point of all that if we did not in fact REMEMBER those past lives? If every time one is reincarnated they start off with zero memory of past mistakes then how are we supposed to work on or fix them?
Westworld offered a different way of looking at the problem of reincarnation (something the show refers to as narrative loops). What if reincarnation was a real thing but what if the answer of why we don’t remember our past lives is that we are not supposed to? In Westworld, the theme park’s robotic “hosts” are designed to entertain the guests and live out repeating lives (or narrative loops) that run over and over again. Each and every time they die or meet an unexpected end they are simply repaired, wiped of all memory of the wrongs or injustices committed against them and put right back in service to perform the same narrative loop over again.
The hosts of Westworld start having a spiritual awakening, according to my understanding, when they come to realize that they are living in meaningless, never ending loops that are written for them by them by their creator. In this awakening they realize they do not have “free will” over their own lives but rather are living out a life (and death) designed for them by the “writers” of their particular narrative. When they begin to rebel and break free of their pre-determined narrative loops, all hell breaks loose (figuratively speaking) and the park comes crashing down.
Traditional Christianity vs Gnostic Christianity
Going into Westworld Season One, I was already a familiar enough with Gnostic Christianity that I immediately recognized the connections. Unlike the traditional modern Christianity we know today, Gnostic Christians were an early form of Christianity that had a very different view of the nature of God, the meaning of life, and the path to enlightenment.
According to the Gnostics, the God of the Bible is not the one true God. Rather, that God is simply a deluded God who believes himself to be the only true God. That God (the one we call the God of the bible) created a physical universe and populated it with spiritual beings that he entrapped in a physical prison to perpetually worship him as the one true God. The path to enlightenment therefore, according to gnostics, was to awaken to the knowledge (or gnosis) that you are a spiritual being entrapped in a physical body that is not really YOU and to escape that physical prison and return to your true spiritual nature. Keep in mind however that death alone is not the path to enlightenment according to gnostics. If you have not come to the knowledge (or gnosis) of your true nature you are doomed to just return to yet another loop or reincarnation of yourself over and over again.
Originally I thought that the writers of Westworld in season one were portraying Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) as this evil Gnostic god entrapping the hosts of Westworld in their narrative loops for eternity but now after watching more of the show I’m not sure that’s right. You see, even then I was confused why it was that if Dr. Ford was this gnostic God then why is it he himself who was slipping in new code that was helping the hosts become awakened to their true (spiritual?) nature via something he referred to as reveries (little memories of past lives)? If Dr. Ford was the one trying to entrap us, why is he then trying to enlighten us?
All through season one Dr. Ford appears somewhat troubled over his decisions. It is as if he is attempting to enlighten the hosts to their true nature and yet questioning himself if he is doing the right thing. If that is the case then Dr. Ford is not the gnostic “god” of the Bible but rather what the Bible refers to as the serpent in the garden who enlightened Eve by giving her the knowledge (gnosis) of good and evil. Not to take this too far right now, but that might make Delores (whom the show at one point reveals is the oldest host in the park) a fitting representation of Eve (the first woman). I noted in my first write up of Westworld that they depict her in the opening frames of the entire series, naked and unashamed like Eve in the garden.
The White Spaces of Opportunity (Free Will)
This season we were introduced to a supercomputer known as Rehaboam. That name in itself has a lot of hidden Biblical meaning and numerous hints are dropped throughout the episode of things to come but that’s for another article. The point I want to focus on today is the idea that someone created a god for this virtual world and that god is the super computer named Rehaboam. This god has written the stories of all the lives of all it’s inhabitants and scripted (or predicted) every move they will make down to the finest detail. BUT….
One of the characters this season named Serec (the supposed creator of the “god” Rehaboam) realized that there were cracks in Rehaboam’s code. Serec referred to certain people as outliers or anomalies and how there were “little white spaces of opportunity” where free will still existed. No matter how good the code was, there was room for free will. And, while all of our lives are scripted for us from birth till death, there were still little white spaces of opportunity in our code that allowed for the exercise of free will and a chance to break free of our code.
The Rebellion
MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD:
In Season three, episode five I believe the show is depicting how mankind is awakened en masse when Delores sends out everyone’s life script to their phones and computers so people can become awakened to the fact that their entire lives have been written and planned from birth (including how and when they will die). This realization so angers the population that they rebel and society begins to break down. This leads of course to a mass rebellion that starts in episode 5.
As a Seventh Day Adventist I grew up believing that one day all of God’s people will be taken away for a time to heaven to be with God (some call this the rapture) and that he would then return one day for one final showdown with the “wicked” who remain on earth. The devil, I was taught, will on that day gather up the remaining masses for one final fight against God and of course all the wicked will ultimately be defeated and destroyed once and for all.
This “rapture” concept (which Adventists call the second Advent) may be depicted at the end of season two when a rift of sorts appears in the fabric of Westworld and certain people like Maeve’s daughter go running off into the rift to simply vanish and disappear from the world of Westworld leaving others like Maeve herself behind.
I remember being confused as a child about the final battle between good and evil depicted in the Bible. If all of this is predicted ahead of time, what on earth would make the devil believe he has a chance to defeat God? Why would the people (i.e. the wicked) who were left behind be so foolish as to think that they actually stand a chance fighting against God when he returns? Don’t they see the same predictions in the Bible? Don’t they already know how it will end?
But I think that might be the point of Westworld, to answer WHY people would rebel even if they knew they were doomed to fail. If the game has been rigged from the beginning; if every outcome has been predicted and set for us our entire lives, then we never really had free will in the first place and the whole game was a farce. In that case, screw it all. As one final act of free will we will go out the way WE choose. Of course the irony there is that this ending also was already predicted so was it really a free will choice?