Nonsense

Anybody who travels a lot knows the disorienting feeling of occasionally waking up in a bed and, for a few moments, not knowing where they are. Lately, waking reality is starting to feel like that.

Reality has started to feel increasingly unreal. Across every aspect of human endeavors, one need not look very far to encounter the bizarre. Over the last few years, the simple facts of day-to-day life have upended so much of what I thought likely, or even possible. I’ll start with the one that still gives me deep ontological shock: Donald fucking Trump became president of the United States. Not only that, despite facing 70+ criminal indictments, he is doing so again with the backing of a significant portion of the American population. Then there’s the evolving UFO story, a global pandemic, the existential climate crisis, the re-emergence of fascism as a potent political force, the emergence of artificial intelligence. Even that phrase, “artificial intelligence,” is a mind-bender.

Some reality-shifting news emerging just from the past couple weeks: the possible discovery of a room temperature super conductor (which now seems to not to be the discovery of a room temperature super conductor), a possible cancer pill that eats tumors, and yesterday’s announcement that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has replicated their incredible fusion result from last December, which could pave the way for abundant clean energy. Plus, Pee Wee Herman died, which shouldn’t be possible.

Again and again, things are happening which I believed would never happen. Which leads me to conclude that either my imagination is severely limited or the world really is coming unbound.

I suspect it’s the latter.

Has it always felt this way to be human? Did citizens of the Roman Empire feel like every few weeks brought some fresh shock to the system? Did rice farmers in the Qing Dynasty wake up every morning with the modern dread of wondering what new fuckery ocurred overnight? (There should be a word for that feeling.) Did Mayans turn to each other on the daily and go, “Can you believe this shit?” Have cultures across the millennia always been this shook? I doubt it.

I asked Canva to come up with an AI image of “the emotion of disorientation” and this is what it gave me. Perfect.

I’m obviously no historian, but my layman’s understanding of human history is that, for most of it, our lives played out in fairly predictable patterns from generation to generation. And, I suppose, it’s still mostly like that on an individual level. After all, most of us still don’t move very far from where we’re born. Most of us still live out our lives in the same socioeconomic class as our parents. We struggle in familiar ways and experience familiar triumphs and tragedies. We live, we breed, we die. So why does it all feel so unsettling?

One difference must be that we all have so much access to information that, although we still live our lives in ways that can plotted on actuarial tables, the mad swirl of our collective humanity is now, for the first time, apparent and, as such, we are only now aware of our own chaos. As a species, we’re some messy bitches.

But it’s not just appearances. Things really are changing. New technologies really are upending economies. The planet really is warming. Political systems in long-established democracies really are faltering. Culture – in the sense of a set of customs and beliefs common to a group of people – really is morphing in almost real time. The things that we held to be true yesterday can no longer be relied upon to be true tomorrow. Why do you think a certain segment of the population is so upset about transgenderism? It’s not because they actually care how people live their lives – it’s because if biological sex and gender are no longer fundamental, then what is? How can boys be girls, for God’s sake!?! And yet they can. It breaks their brains. Inevitably, something is going to break your brain, too. Honestly, if your brain hasn’t cracked by now, I wonder if you’re even paying attention. Consider the fact that we don’t even know what 95% of the universe is made out of. I mean, that’s kind of upsetting.

Our Gods used to keep us safe. Or, if an earthquake leveled our village, we at least knew Who to blame. That kind of simplicity holds some appeal. No more. God may not be dead but he certainly isn’t showing his face around the neighborhood anymore. Frankly, I don’t blame him. The problem is, we don’t have any good replacements for God. Whatever explanations science serves us are undercut by the next morning. Now they’re saying the universe itself may be twice as old as we thought. And that thing about the Big Bang? Now the James Webb Space Telescope is saying, “Hold on a sec.” Also, there might be infinite universes. Whatevs.

The joke about living in “the simulation” increasingly feels like not a joke. How else to explain the madness of the observable? How else to explain the fact that so little about our lives feels within our understanding, let alone our control? Are we all just Sims walking through our programming while some 13-year-old psycho in the far future screws with us for shits and giggles? Is God a bored a 13-year-old? Why not? It feels as likely as any other explanation.

One of the cool things about being human is the ability to wonder. As far we know, we’re the only species with this capability. Dogs may be curious, but they don’t speculate. Elephants can paint, but they don’t interpret their works. Only we humans (and, apparently, some homo species that came before us) spend any time asking “why.” It’s the most elemental human question and also the one that causes us so much anguish. As a species we’ve spent our entire history trying to figure shit out and it seems like the more progress we make, the less we understand. No wonder we’re also the only species that hates itself.

The first time I woke up in a hotel room not knowing where I was, I panicked. The feeling only lasts a few seconds but I distinctly remember that sense of floundering, almost like psychic drowning. As it happened more often, though, I started to grow accustomed to the sensation. Now, I kind of enjoy it. That sense of “where am I?” can feel sort of delicious because, at least for a couple moments, all possibilities are on the table. Sure, I might be in a La Quinta in Columbus, Ohio. But I almost might be in the lost city of Atlantis! Certainty is comforting but limiting. Uncertainty is scary but liberating. None of it makes sense but maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe the nonsensical is part of the experience of being alive. Maybe it’s even the best part.