Unreality

Leaning upon the touchstone of truth.

A NOTE TO MY READERS: During my recent downtime overcoming a cold I made the mistake of violating my media blackout. I’m here to report that things have not improved. I believe my lapse may have led to this essay veering into an opinion piece. Using rhetoric in this way seems linked directly to thinking for me, unlike writing fiction which isn’t, and though it felt good to exercise that old muscle, and perhaps even vent a bit, I broke with my usual rule and slept on this piece. This morning it still reads true to me, so I’m letting it go out to you.

For those of you preferring my usual fare, you can scroll to the end for a photo of a criminally cute villain added just yesterday to this island wildlife soap opera.

Before getting to the essay, a quick recommendation. If you’re a fan of the late Joan Didion, or perhaps have yet to discover her work, I really enjoyed “Joan Didion’s Magic Trick” by Caitlin Flanagan, published this week in The Atlantic.

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There exists a photograph of a Soviet doctor stranded at an Antarctic research center taken by his fellows while he removes his own appendix. He was 27 at the time. Being confronted with this photo challenged my view of my younger self in an existential way. Not only could I not have operated on anyone at that age, let alone myself, I’m pretty sure I thought “appendix” was plural and would have looked to take two and probably come up with my kidneys instead.

What I experienced seeing Leonid Rogozov’s photo is probably cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance suggests that we are uncomfortable with inconsistencies in our beliefs and behaviors and seek to reduce this stress by various means. In the case of the young doctor’s story, the resolve and courage he displayed conflict with what I believe a 27-year-old, at least a 27-year-old me, could possibly possess.

For an interesting look at cognitive dissonance, you might consider reading Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. But try and find a first edition, not the recent release. Or better yet maybe read the latest version and when you get to the addendum chapter, whether you agree with the authors or not, see if you can spot the cognitive dissonance that these otherwise brilliant thinkers display themselves a decade after having written a book exposing it. Maybe it’s their unintended but most prescient warning: No one is immune, ever.

After confessing in my earlier post “On Writing and Books” that I had skipped some of the more tedious dramas presented in the Complete Harvard Classics, I decided to go back and read them, if for no other reason than to reduce the evidence I’ve gathered over 47 years that I sometimes use to convict myself of being a hypocrite. Reading the English translation of Goethe’s Faust — a reworking of the classic German legend of a man who sells his soul — I was struck by one scene that featured an apparently timeless case of cognitive dissonance that I, along with most of the rest of the western world, still seek to resolve by twisting the truth.

In this scene, Faust is repulsed at the idea of drinking a witch’s brew to regain his youth and asks Mephistopheles if there isn’t an easier way. The devil answers that there is indeed, saying, in summary (I’ll spare you the verse), that without need of gold or magic or physician, Faust could return to working the land, restrain his senses and his will to a narrow field, and cultivate and eat his own nourishing food, thereby keeping his youth for eighty years.

Now, if Goethe knew that that was the recipe for health in 1806, and the German folklorists and even the devil himself long before, we certainly know so today. And yet like Faust most of us can’t stoop to actually doing it. We know we ought, but we cannot. “I know I shouldn’t be eating this or doing that, but it tastes and feels so good.” There’s conflict in that statement. The conflict must be resolved, which gives rise to a witch’s brew of fad diets for some, dubious medical diagnoses for others, and the body positivity movement being hijacked to celebrate obesity for the rest. There is truly nothing new under the sun.

Society is afloat on a rising sea of cognitive dissonance these days. But there’s something else at work, especially in younger folks. I know full well there are young people doing amazing things, hopefully under less duress than our Russian, yet most twenty-somethings I run across are all busy shouting on social media about “reimagining” or “reinventing” or “revolutionizing” everything from our most sacred traditions and institutions to western finance and sometimes reality itself. But wouldn’t they be better off learning to balance a checkbook and change the oil in their car first? There’s some serious grandiosity caught up in the reality-denying flood.

What I’m getting at here is that something has happened to us that is difficult to name but might be collectively summed up as resulting in a denial of reality and a lack of generational humility. The idea that youth today are innately special and can change the world is a well-meaning one, and in some ways maybe even true; but the whole truth is that, other than in the eyes of those who love us and our God, most of us are not very special at all, at least no more so than our fellows, and if we don’t strive to understand and live in the world as it really is, serious consequences follow.

As many of you know, one of my hobbies is paragliding. It’s very fun, but also serious. You’re playing with a lot of potential energy up there suspended from a kite by Kevlar strings. I met a novice pilot who had decided he was so “special” that he was going to revolutionize free flight. His ego wouldn’t let him listen when veteran pilots pointed out that he was neglecting basic skills, of course, because to do so would conflict with his vision of himself as an innately gifted disrupter destined to reimagine the sport. He did in fact go on to reimagine paragliding with a new type of landing that I had never witnessed before and hope to never again. I made the call for his final flight from our paragliding site – a ride on an Agusta-Westland AW109E helicopter to Harborview Hospital where they removed a lot more than his appendix. Now he gets to reimagine walking. Gravity, it turns out, doesn’t think you’re special at all. Neither does your peritoneum if your infected appendix ruptures.

Reality is very real. And “real” comes to us through French from Medieval Latin, where it means “belonging to the thing itself.”

I was thinking about our relationship to reality the other day while driving on the freeway. I was almost sideswiped by a young woman responding to a text message, and when I braked to avoid her, she swept across my lane and went briefly off the road and nearly collided with a median barrier. I’m sure whatever was happening on her phone’s screen seemed very real to her; but had the car she was driving been suddenly stopped by reinforced concrete, she would have quickly discovered to which “thing itself” her life actually “belongs.” Fortunately, she reentered traffic visibly shaken but unscathed, a little embarrassed, and hopefully possessing a better grasp of her personal risk relating to the very real laws of physics.

I see symptoms of this same disease creeping into the realm of language and literature, where I work, or at least dabble these days. Yes, language is a living thing and evolves over time. But ultimately language describes reality, and changes, or should change, only as its common usage evolves to reflect our improved understanding of reality. It doesn’t work the other way around. You can’t change reality by changing language any more than you can resolve an infected appendix by naming it stomach gas instead or avoid the violence of an accident by escaping into the metaverse. Language flows from something real. It can be used to express incredible leaps of imagination, but language itself doesn’t need to be reimagined, at least not from on high. Language is truly democratic. It springs from the people using it. It doesn’t come from the top down, and we should never let it.

I was informed by an editor not long ago that I couldn’t use the word masseuse and needed to use massage therapist instead. I asked why and was told that masseuse is offensive. I don’t believe it offends anyone except certain editors. But even if it does, so what? Let them take offence. It’s a very elegant word borrowed again from French that in two simple syllables calls forth an image of a person and tells us what they do professionally and their sex. Female massage therapist soaks up a lot more ink and just doesn’t have the same ring. I kept the word and got a new editor. Here I was able to choose my reality and reject the one the editor was proposing. But that’s not always the case. There is often an objective reality and to discern it we sometimes must rely on our peers.

I watched a wonderful documentary on schizophrenia. I wish I could remember its name. Perhaps one of you will know and can message me and I’ll update this post. One man profiled in the film really stuck with me. He was more fortunate than most in that he had a mild enough case of schizophrenia that he had learned to manage it in many situations. One example he shared was a business meeting where a swarm of killer bees came in through the open conference room window. Now the bees were absolutely real. He could see them, hear them, and feel the breeze created by their wings as they menacingly circled the room. Being aware of his condition, however, he was able to suppress his immediate urge to scream or flee. Instead, he looked at the others sitting around the table to see if any of them were responding to the bees. They weren’t, of course, because in reality the bees weren’t there, and so he chose to ignore the hallucination and carry on with the meeting. 

All of us sometimes think things are when they simply are not, even if we don’t hallucinate. Other times it’s the reverse. There is a very rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), and those who suffer from it cannot feel, at least in the usual sense, any pain. The situations that cause pain still exist, and because of this truth the condition is extremely disabling, as you might imagine, and usually results in premature death. I would assume someone with CIP would benefit from mimicking the responses to the reality experienced by their peers. Sometimes following the herd is the best strategy to find the truth. Sometimes what we see is a mirage, but the herd through its collective instinct knows where the watering hole is.

But what happens if society itself seems to be hallucinating or experiencing cognitive dissonance or even a form of congenital insensitivity to reality? How do we find a touchstone with which to test for truth? I try to reduce things to what I’m certain of, and then work back up from there. I let go of what I think I know and retreat to what I really know, truly and for sure, and then attempt to build upon those facts. If that proves too academic or fails to yield tenable beliefs, I turn to reading, especially older works. If everyone seems crazy now, they surely weren’t always so. Retracing the path tread by earlier thinkers often casts our wrong turns in stark relief. The first edition is sometimes better than the latest. 

None of this works, of course, without an actual desire to find truth, or at least a desire to live free from conflict with objective reality. The gut check is still the trump card here. I know when I’m wrong even when I think I’m right.

Alongside this rise in our denial of reality there seems to be a trendy belief that because something has been done before it’s not worth doing now. Everything must be new and revolutionary. Everything old must die. Why bother learning to capture light and shadow by copying the masters and painting baskets of fruit when you can piss on a canvas and call it art and yourself a genius to boot. But then oops! Here comes reality. The fad passes, the gallery closes, and you still can’t paint.

Reality always wins out in the end. Appendixes still burst, so someone had better be able to remove them. In fact, scientists heading off to Antarctic research facilities today are often required to have their healthy appendixes prophylactically removed. I’m sure anyone heading off to colonize Mars will need to do the same. The new it turns out can only stand if it is built upon the old, the old being built upon reality. In life, in art, and in language.

Does this mean we should be constrained to antiquated views? Of course not. Just as acknowledging the existence of the musical scale does not restrict us to playing only old tunes. It simply means that there can be no Lilith Fair and all it stands for if there is not a Lilith first. Reality is not a Moloch that requires us to sacrifice our ideals. It is simply a precondition for realizing them.

One of the ways we rectify cognitive dissonance is by simply avoiding information that contradicts our false beliefs. This is of course unproductive to an individual, and polarizing to society, as we’re seeing. Often turning to others and giving fair weight to their experience and perceptions, much like our hallucinating man with the bees, can be helpful in overcoming false beliefs. You may feel like your depression will never pass, or cannot possibly be treated, but before you do something rash it would be wise to consult others who have felt the same and come through it.

Additionally, some people assume or cling to beliefs because they are fashionable or offer some social benefit. I can’t help but think that the trend of updating our social media profile pictures in support of the “current thing” is an example of this. The rapidity with which we coalesce around a new cause cannot be the result of measured and disciplined research and thought. It’s just not possible. I’ve caught myself leaping to trendy conclusions and then rationalizing why my recently adopted belief appears to conflict with new evidence or even prior positions that I once firmly believed.

Sometimes something as simple as a picture sends us down a path we didn’t expect. I almost wrote off my revulsion this morning to the image of that self-appendectomy as arising from the black and white depiction of blood and the blank stare of the suffering surgeon. Instead, I read his story, and then thought about it. The truth I eventually arrived at was that I was directionless and immature at 27 and knew I could have been otherwise, and that’s uncomfortable to admit. But it’s reality. I don’t take it to mean I’m unworthy, but rather flawed, human, and improving.

I also could have resolved my discomfort by claiming that young people today are worse than I was. But that wouldn’t be true either. A great many of them are much, much better. Still, better though they may be, on balance they’re not going to reinvent or reimagine or revolutionize anything. And someone should tell them that. For their and everyone’s sake.

A young friend still finding his way asked me recently for advice. I told him what I now wish I could go back and tell my 27-year-old self, assuming a visit from a time-traveling doppelgänger would be enough to make him listen. And that was simply this:

Use the advantage you’ve been given by those who came before you, learning from them what they often had to learn the hard way themselves, and then build upon the foundation that none of us can claim to have laid. Add your stone, that’s it. Do your bit. Improve upon, don’t reinvent. Create rather than destroy. You’re special, but you’re also not special. At least no more so than anyone else, be they young or old or long since dead.

History will mark some few among us out for notice, no doubt, as by its limited nature it must, but not because they sought it in life. Seek truth instead. Let Mephistopheles consume his own deadly brew. Eat the donut, sure, but then go for a walk. Don’t lie to yourself. Acknowledge reality, nurture a little humility, and live your best life.

It’s a fine thing, I say, to fly a little higher than your predecessors if you can; but not so high that you lose sight of them when it’s time to be shown the way safely down.

And finally, one last piece of unsolicited advice to the young: If you value your life, or the lives of others, even a little, put down your damn phones and look at the road.

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As a small reward for reading (or scrolling) to the end of my rant, here’s a photo of a hours-old fawn stashed by its mother at the forest edge of our yard. It will grow to become the destroyer of entire garden worlds, but isn’t it oh so cute?

An audio recording of this essay can be found here:

Audio: Unreality