Notes from a Slightly Unreliable Universe

I’ve been thinking about prisons lately. Not the sort with wardens and visiting hours, but the more sophisticated variety, where the inmates decorate their cells and argue about whose wallpaper best represents reality.

Philip K. Dick had a name for one of these places: the Black Iron Prison. I suspect most of us have spent some time there, though the management insists we’re free to leave whenever we like. The doors are unlocked, apparently. Nobody can quite remember where they are.

The peculiar thing about these prisons is that we generally build them ourselves. We assemble them from beliefs, memories, disappointments, ambitions, and the occasional piece of advice from someone who meant well. Then we move in, arrange the furniture, hang a few pictures of our former selves on the walls, and call the place me.

Eventually, if we’re fortunate, something happens to disturb the arrangement.

Perhaps we read a book. Perhaps somebody asks an inconvenient question. Perhaps we wake up one morning and discover that the person we thought we were has become a rather unreliable guide to the person we’re becoming.

This is awkward because most of us have invested considerable effort in becoming ourselves. There are entire industries devoted to helping us discover, develop, improve, optimise, and finally become the best possible version of whoever it is we’re supposed to be. We take personality tests, consult our archetypes, excavate our childhoods, and purchase expensive notebooks in which to document the progress.

Nobody seems particularly interested in the possibility that the whole enterprise might be based on a misunderstanding.

I mentioned this to Mudtown Lion, who was attempting to repair a ballpoint pen by staring at it suspiciously.

“Perhaps,” he said, “the problem is that you’ve mistaken the furniture for the house.”

I asked him to elaborate.

He declined, claiming that explanations were how perfectly good metaphors ended up in captivity.

He has a point, although I’m reluctant to tell him so. He’s already insufferable when he thinks he’s right.

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The trouble with reality is that it has an alarming tendency to agree with whatever story we’re currently telling about it.

Not always, of course. Reality can be spectacularly uncooperative when it comes to parking spaces, romantic expectations, and assembling flat-pack furniture. But when it comes to our fundamental assumptions about how the world works, we possess an extraordinary talent for finding supporting evidence.

The universe becomes a hall of mirrors, and every reflection assures us that we’re looking in the right direction. Even the ones that make us look ridiculous can be explained away as poor lighting.

This is partly why I’ve always been attracted to people who make the furniture wobble. Philosophers, mystics, artists, tricksters, unreliable narrators. People who slip a small question mark into an otherwise perfectly respectable account of existence.

But there’s a danger here too. Once you’ve discovered that ordinary reality might be less reliable than advertised, it’s tempting to assume that whatever extraordinary explanation comes along next must be the truth. Having escaped one system of certainties, we immediately go shopping for another, preferably one with better symbolism and a more interesting origin story.

The gods who arrive uninvited aren’t necessarily interested in our psychological wellbeing. And the voice whispering secrets from the unconscious may know considerably less about the universe than its confident delivery suggests.

I have a healthy suspicion of anything that claims to possess the final answer, particularly when that answer requires a subscription, an initiation fee, or the purchase of a ceremonial dagger.

This is not to say the universe isn’t stranger than we imagine. I rather hope it is. I’ve simply become wary of anyone who insists they’ve completed the investigation.

The case remains open.

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I’ve also been wondering whether the desire to escape our personal prisons can become another form of imprisonment.

We spend years trying to liberate ourselves from old identities, inherited expectations, social conventions, and the invisible furniture of everyday life. We celebrate freedom, possibility, reinvention, the open road.

I’m particularly susceptible to the romance of the open road. Give me an unexplored path, an interesting question, and the possibility of getting pleasantly lost, and I’m a happy man. I’ve made something of a personal philosophy out of following whatever catches my curiosity, even when the trail disappears into a thicket of apparently unrelated ideas.

But recently I’ve begun to wonder whether keeping every possibility open can become a rather elaborate way of avoiding the business of actually living.

There’s always another book to read, another perspective to consider, another identity to try on for size. Another possible life waiting patiently in the wings, looking more attractive precisely because we haven’t had to live it yet.

At some point, the existential wardrobe becomes overcrowded.

Perhaps freedom isn’t simply the ability to walk away. Perhaps it’s also the ability to stay, to participate, to make something of the life that’s happening while we’re busy wondering what else might be possible.

I don’t find this especially comfortable. I’ve spent a great deal of my life regarding commitment as something best approached with a clear understanding of the emergency exits. Yet there’s something rather absurd about spending an entire existence preserving the freedom to begin living it.

A fox once made the mistake of leaving the cosmic egg before creation was finished. At least, that’s one telling of the myth. Mudtown Lion and I spent an afternoon arguing about whether the fox was a rebel, an idiot, or the first existentialist.

We never settled the matter.

The fox, meanwhile, remains unavailable for comment.

What interests me is the possibility that escaping something and becoming free aren’t necessarily the same event. You can leave the prison and spend the rest of your life carrying its architecture around in your head. You can exchange one set of obligations for another and call it liberation because the new arrangement comes with incense and a Sanskrit name.

Or you can stop trying to escape yourself long enough to discover that the walls were never quite where you thought they were.

I’m not sure which possibility I prefer. This is probably why I keep several notebooks.

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There’s another complication.

The person telling you all this may not be entirely reliable either.

I’ve accumulated a small population of selves over the years, each with his own interpretation of events. The young adventurer, the soldier, the philosopher, the wandering essayist. The fellow who once knew exactly where he was going and the older fellow who has become increasingly suspicious of destinations.

Sometimes they agree. More often they interrupt one another, usually when somebody is trying to make an important point.

Mudtown Lion insists he’s a separate individual. I remain unconvinced. He says my refusal to acknowledge his independence is a classic example of metaphysical authoritarianism.

I say he’s a character I invented.

He says that’s precisely what I would say.

The situation is complicated by the fact that he’s occasionally better at being me than I am. He has fewer inhibitions, worse manners, and an irritating habit of saying things I’ve been thinking but haven’t quite dared to write down.

Philip K. Dick knew something about this arrangement. In VALIS, he divides himself between the narrator and Horselover Fat, then proceeds to make their relationship increasingly difficult to explain. Sometimes they’re two people. Sometimes they’re one. Sometimes the distinction seems less important than the conversation taking place between them.

These invented personalities sometimes help me notice things I might otherwise have missed. They interfere with the stories I’ve grown comfortable telling about myself.

Perhaps that’s what an imagination is for. Not simply inventing worlds that don’t exist, but loosening our attachment to the one we’ve mistaken for the only possibility.

Of course, there’s a danger of becoming so fascinated with our imagined realities that we forget to participate in the ordinary one.

I’ve occasionally wondered whether the philosopher might be better off putting down his notebook and living for a while.

The trouble is that this, too, seems like an interesting thing to write about. There’s no escaping the philosophical temperament. Even attempts at abandoning philosophy tend to become philosophical projects.

I once tried to stop thinking about myself quite so much.

Naturally, I kept notes.

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Meanwhile, ordinary existence continues its cheerful indifference to metaphysical investigation.

The kettle needs descaling. There are emails requiring answers. Somewhere in the house, a cat is sitting in precisely the wrong place and regarding the inconvenience as a human problem.

Whatever reality turns out to be, it appears perfectly capable of carrying on without my understanding it. The cats certainly don’t seem troubled by the question, although I’ve occasionally suspected that Cosmo knows considerably more than he’s letting on.

Perhaps that’s the great advantage of an unfinished universe. There’s no final interpretation to defend, no definitive self to become, no obligation to arrive at the correct explanation before breakfast.

There is only the ongoing business of being here, noticing things, making mistakes, following strange connections, and occasionally discovering that something we thought we knew has quietly changed its mind.

I’m beginning to suspect that living doesn’t require nearly as much certainty as we’ve been led to believe. Perhaps we don’t need to solve the mystery of existence before we can enjoy participating in it. Perhaps the great cosmic revelation, should one ever arrive, will be greeted with considerably less enthusiasm than its authors anticipated.

Mudtown Lion has finally repaired his pen.

He writes something on a yellow Post-it note and leaves it beside my coffee.

Built myself a new reality this morning.

Still can’t find the teaspoons.

I look up to ask him what he means, but he’s already gone.

Or perhaps I am.

Either way, somebody will have to wash the cups.

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