I believe in Plato’s forms like I believe in god. Which is to say they are one in the same, except explained maybe a different way. Language isn’t perfect, which is why I think there are so many philosophies, so many religions, all essentially trying to nail down the same thing. Something that can’t be explained in words, something that can’t be embodied by people, something higher and more pure than anything that can exist in reality. I believe in ideals. I believe in working to reach them, although I don’t believe we can ever truly reach them fully. But I believe that lots of us try, and lots of us get really really close. Some closer than others. Many of us misguided. Lots of us striving to those ideals in one aspect of our lives while completely failing in other, unattended parts of our lives.
So why am I waxing philosophical with you today? I finished Doris Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent Into Hell this weekend. And it relates so well to so many of the things I think about and conversations I’ve had recently about the problems with language, both spiritually, as well as applied to the real world; the differences between people’s realities and what makes one more legitimate than another; the problems that arise from systems, in general; as well as the idea of evolution, breaking through a level of consciousness to something higher.
A few years ago, I had a very strange conversation with someone on the phone. He was one of those people who I think about too much for the amount of time that I knew him. Someone who came in and out of my life pretty quickly, but whose words made a huge impact on me, and which ring even more true the more I look back on them. Anyway, he and I had a frenzied conversation late one night, wherein he told me that the revolution was coming. That the Internet generation was full of an energy which far surpassed that of our own, which falls somewhere before the full-blown Internet generation and Generation X. He talked about an explosion of art, music, and creative energy generated by coming of age during a pointless war, in an age where the Internet was radically changing the way people communicate, work, live, create.
Then he said something that I’ve thought about for a long time, and I will never forget. He said, “Generation X silenced their prophets.” Simple, but it’s something that sticks in my head and repeats. Silenced prophets. So many of them are. I think about one of the stories I heard on This American Life about a father whose young daughter asks him about Jesus and why we celebrate Christmas. He explains to her that Jesus came with a message, to love everyone, treat people with kindness, withhold judgment. And for preaching that message, he was killed. Later that year, the same child asks about Martin Luther King, and the father explained to her that he believed, and preached, that all people were created equally. “Like Jesus?” the child asks. “Yes,” says the father. “Did they kill him, too?” she asks. It’s true.
Are we silencing our prophets? When they come with radical messages, messages that make us uncomfortable and force us to examine our actions, snap us out of our daily lives, do we listen? Or do we instead try and make them fit into the system that has already been created? Do we write-off what they say because of other factors—how they dress, how they’re living, what other people think of them?
This is the problem with living in a system, where everyone is expected to, and I would even say needs to, conform to certain ways of living. There are rules here, and I’m not saying they’re not needed or important. They are, indeed, for the safety and well-being and happiness of others. But those rules inevitably shut out those who don’t conform to them, for better or for worse. By virtue of doing what’s best for the majority, we inevitably shaft those who live on the fringe, in whatever way.
One of my roommates’ job is to help those whose reality is so separated from that which we normally call “reality” fit into this world. She is charged with getting to know them well enough to line up the skills they possess with the needs of the society in which they live. She doesn’t talk about her job much, but what I’ve gathered from the few conversations we’ve had about it is that it’s exceedingly difficult. Working with those who do not see reality the way we see it, and working with those who are deeply entrenched in this society, and trying to make the two mesh seems like an impossible task. “It definitely makes me question what’s real and what’s not,” she tells me. And “I’ve realized I need to be very careful about the vocabulary I use to describe this population,” she says. The unemployment rate for those who are labeled as mentally ill is 80 percent. Eighty percent. And for employers, by virtue of what they’re doing, employing someone who is limited in what they can do and may take extra time to train or work with is a loss of profit. It’s hard for a business owner to reconcile that with the advantage of employing someone who needs a job. Not to mention now, when there’s an influx of overly qualified workers hungry for jobs.
Last week I watched Time Bandits for the first time, which is a film by Terry Gilliam, who also did Brazil, which is a Brave New World, 1984-esque film. Time Bandits is less serious, although it has some of the same themes, but it’s mostly about a map that gives you the capability of time traveling. The map was originally created by The Supreme Being but fell into the hands of his minions, who then take the map and use it in order to steal treasure from various kings and other people of power. The Evil Genius, who desperately wants possession of the map, eventually lures the group into his palace by promises of the greatest treasure of all time, despite the warnings and hesitations of the boy who joins the group. He is the only one who wants to use the map for a purpose other than stealing money. He is perfectly content to use the map to learn about the history of the world, meet historical figures, live in different time periods and places. Among the biggest lessons I took away from the film was that money is the problem. And yet we have not been able to craft a society that de-values or de-emphasizes money on a wide-scale successfully. Why is that?
Perhaps it is not money that is the problem, though. Maybe it would be more precise to say greed. Is that something we can ever break away from? Will we ever be able to quell the feeling that we need to hoard our money and possessions? The urge to hold on tightly to those things so that we can ultimately buy our freedom and happiness?
Maybe I’m off topic now, but I just feel that in many ways, our lives are constant struggles between two goals. One is to live the best we can—justly, ethically, morally, working to make the world a better place. And the other is to develop skills to succeed in the society you are born into. Sometimes those two goals are the same, and they often intersect in various ways. But they are not completely in line for many of us. To commit fully to one of those goals is to turn your back on the other. And so the balancing act continues. We do the best we can with what we have, which is the maxim that plays in my head on a daily basis.
Is there a way to synch those two goals up, so that no one has to make that choice? And if someone does come up with a way, will we actually have the foresight to listen? I am not very optimistic.
And although it feels like I’ve written nothing about this book, I feel like this is one of the most accurate portrayals I’ve written of what it was like to read this novel. Long, lofty, full of questions.