‘Inevitability’ – there’s a nice word. A God-word. Along with
‘implacability’. You see, there’s no point even applying for the
God-job unless you’re going to be implacable. Why? Because
God’s/’he gods/the Universe’s truth is beyond human truth. As
Ursula Le Guin says in her ‘Earthsea Trilogy’: “Dragons don’t tell
‘the truth’ because they don’t actually know what ‘the truth’ looks
like to humans.” Our Truth may not be divine Truth. “God forfend
the deathly good that God’s angels do”
The Greeks had a good take on implacability: ‘It would have
been better if you had never been born’. Thus Dionysus in
Euripedes’s ‘The Bacchae’, repeated three times to Agave,
whom he had manipulated into tearing off her own son’s - the
King’s - head with her bare hands. ‘It would have been better if
you had never been born’; ‘It would have been better if you had
never been born’. No human comfort there, just universal
implacability. “What I tell you 3 times is true”: Lewis Carroll in The
Hunting of the Snark, who, in any case, points out that ‘the Snark
WAS a Boojum, you see.” All our Snarks turn out to be Boojums,
what we gonna do? Inevitability, implacability, inexorability – and
God?
We don’t want ‘God’s truth’, we’re not built to be able to take
‘God’s truth’, we want warm crumpets in front of a crackling fire
and our comforting myths.