Consensus Reality

I wake up every day around five in the morning, start the coffee, and find a reason to do this all over again.

Every Day Is Exactly The Same by Nine Inch Nails could be my theme song. That's not a good thing. But I too have left little notes where only those who I intend will find them. Doesn't mean they will. They'd have to go looking and I'm not sure they should. But if they do, it's all there, a work of fiction, sure, but one that tells the truth.

I did what I did because I had to. I had to do what I did because I made poor choices early on. I look at my own kids and fervently hope that they will make better decisions, and, of course, I tell 'em all the time.

When I was a teen, my pop used to look at me in the wake of some fallout from some or another shenanigan and shake his head. "It's like looking in a mirror," he'd say, and again, I find that the first of my two major philosophical questions arises:

When mirror regards mirror, which is the reflection?

Like a Zen koan it does not have a definite answer, but is meant to lead the querent on to think about what they are seeing in the mirror, and what illusions they create when facing another who is, after all, only holding up a mirror of their own.

Society is a labyrinth of such mirrors, is it not? Some illusions are more appealing than others, and it depends on what one is looking for, doesn't it?

Beauty is in the experience of the knower.

We live in a consensus reality, but we can't come to a consensus. This is good, so far as I can tell, because I've noticed that when people, especially in large groups, do come to a consensus, this inevitably begets atrocity.

Brutal empires, inquisitions, holocausts, genocides, great wars to end all wars that never end the war, these things all occur as a result of collective participation, and would be impossible without it. Folks focus on the spree shooter, or the serial killer, and ask: what's wrong with society?

But we are much less apt to focus on our complicity in the greater horrors of the world. We tell ourselves it's a result of bad actors, not of ideology. But the ideology is what makes it possible for the bad actors to galvanize the unwitting masses to participate, under whatever pretense.

Cruelty, abomination, and brutality are always done under the cover of some ideological ideal.

The Unabomber gets out a few mailbombs and a manifesto, but the career politcian isn't far into their tenure before they've signed the death warrants of thousands just by signing one or another bill into law.

Luigi Mangione shoots one guy, but the one guy he shot consigned thousands to death just by delaying treatment for profit.

There are no heroes here, just tragedies beget by tragedies, so please don't accuse me of encouraging violence. These are observations.

I could go on and on, but I'm sure you, dear reader, can work out many more examples on your own, and you'll find, if you're completely honest with yourself, that no ideology, religious or secular, is exempt from this inevitability: that someone, at some point, has used it as a pretense for violence.

What the Hell does this have to do with me getting up at five every morning and renewing my vow to confront the humdrum for the sake of doing what little I can for my own?

Well, it seems I am hardwired to think about these things, and they won't go away, and I don't want them to, even if I don't enjoy it. Because it's important.

I ain't no hero either, just a man struggling through his day-to-day. I can write compelling prose and eloquent poetry, but it doesn't save my hands from the dirt compounded by the toil and the toil compounded by the dirt.

Nevertheless, I can't help but wonder: if we all did think about it, would we be more apt to come to a better consensus? If it wasn't just left to a small few to wrangle with the difficult task of philosophical inquiry, would the world be a better place, as Plato surmises in his Republic?

I doubt it. Were his conjecture about a philosopher-king to become reality, it is just as likely to go the way of that old fable about the Emperor's New Clothes.

Marcus Aurelius furnishes an excellent example. His understanding of philosophy did not spare others the threat of Empire. The aphorism that we should do as the Romans do when in Rome seems like quite a grift when Rome claims every territory it sets foot in as its own.

The names change but everyday is still exactly the same. I get up and go to work because I must, not because I want to, yet I find myself plied on all sides by those who wish me to keep dreaming, though I should rather prefer to wake up from the nightmare.

Conspicuous.

Having said all that, the world is nevertheless beautiful, and so are you, dear reader. I remain a conscientious objector to the culture war, but I refuse to begrudge the individual soul the right to choose in the matter, for the right to choose my own path is all I ask in return, and I strongly suspect that to defy consensus in such wise is the highest hope we have to finally live in a world where harmony reigns supreme.