I just came back from a few days at Peter’s and it was lovely to witness his life: with his son and his parents near by, his new dog and his new house. We ate fried clams, walked Rosie, played Uno. No one won but we enjoyed ourselves. When I crossed back into Canada, the border agent seemed doubtful that I hadn’t bought anything. Even with the weak Canadian dollar, tourists shop in the USA by the mere habit of it. I was too busy being present with my dear friend and his family to indulge in consumerism. We didn’t even go to a proper sandy beach and yet, I’ll forever treasure the normalcy of these few days.
When Alan was asleep and Rosie finally calmed herself, it was bluntly apparent that Peter and I are atypical individuals. Amidst the daily acts of living, which Mark aptly reminded us can be either joy or a grind depending on the meaning we assign to the routine maintenance of our lives, we etched out precious minutes to delve into existential questions. The Nature of Love. What is Religion: a cultural system or something more? If more, what differentiates it from ideology? We asked tough questions and evaluated hypotheses. We didn’t solve the equations of the Universe, but we discerned the known from the known-unknown, questioned ourselves as to the unknown-unknown and even accepted a category of unknowables. We acknowledged the magic and unpredictability of our recursive sentience. And yet, we still ate, drank and slept like all those unaware or unwilling to face the complexity of our social world.
We debated: what prevents ‘typical’ individuals from questioning the meaning of their lives — individually or collectively? Peter claimed circumstances: that everyone has the potential to fathom their inherent personal complexity and our emergent collective one, but not everyone has the education or intellectual and emotional resources to do so. I am more defeatist and existentialist at my core: culture indeed might prevent greater social enlightenment, but individuals still choose what becomes the focus of their attention. But in hindsight, I think that we might have been saying the same thing: who is morally responsible for a life spent sleep-walking? The unconscious agent or its repressive culture?
On the spur of the moment, I had decided to drive to Peter’s because I needed to let my ‘existential’ soul loose. I knew that Peter would welcome my inquisitions: that he would listen and welcome my seriousness. This is my one life — my rapidly dwindling finite days on Earth — and there is nothing more serious to me than figuring out what I shall do next. But this attitude is often a ‘mood killer’ and I genuinely respect those who don’t want to anticipate further than their next dinner. Still, I am in the early days of a new path and I know perfectly well that the choices I make now will ripple into the future in unknown and unknowable ways. I needed my friend to tell me that it’s ok to be scared… but that it’s not ok to resist my radical authenticity. Embrace. Breath. Release. Repeat.
We talked about the fascinating ways in which our minds work. This is not an easy topic to approach because we usually assume that another mind functions just the way that our own does. At the onset, it is the best assumption we can make — for we don’t have direct access to another person’s introspective subjectivity. To gain hints at another’s experience of living, we must communicate — build an intersubjective understanding — and even then, our experience of another person’s mind will only be indirect. Our human super-power of empathy merely opens the door to ‘other minds’; yet already, it is intermediated (and transformed) by the need to put lived experiences into words.
Peter expressed his amazement at my dualistic linguistic abilities. I confirmed that my French and English consciousnesses ‘understand’ different things for a text even when ‘literally’ translated. Languages are indeed irreductible to one another — there is always something lost and something else created when we transform meaning across parallel symbolic systems.
I shared that my mind functions less rationally than others seem to think. For the most important decisions in my life, I feel my way forward. With rationality (left side brain), we seem to be able to justify one thing and its opposite. Knowing that rationality can lead me astray, I never give it the final say.
There is a place in my brain that ‘feels’ like a deep well. I can look at its surface and I may see two different things: 1) as a mirror, it reflects what I project. This inner-mirror presents what my rationality has already constructed. Reflecting on this reflection is useful but I must nonetheless be careful — for there is no reason to believe that Rationality is fundamentally ‘True’ simply because the very best it can be is ‘Internally-Coherent’. ’Truth’ comes from somewhere else… From deep within the well.
When I make the conscious effort to see beyond my inner-reflection, beyond what I have already chosen and how I have defined myself, I can see the well for what it is: 2) my unconsciousness. The 90% of my brain that doesn’t use words to express itself. It acts like an oracle to whom I can pose questions, yet one that I must decipher. The well expresses itself in impressions that cannot be justified. To be able to feel them, I must be silent. Therefore, my mind doesn’t live in endless chatter. Thoughts emerge, bubble over. They come fully formed, with the strength of a conviction. Or tentatively, as potential solutions. My psyche is only another sense-organ which processes, as inputs, those impressions emerging from my unconsciousness.
To feel my way forward, I cannot dictate what I expect to find. I must be sensitive to my impressions. I embrace, interpret, hypothesize them and then wait to see how a proposal ‘sits’ within my well. If it re-emerges later on with the same outline, then I know that I’m on the right path. If not, I must ask a better question. It’s definitely an iterative process. I’ve changed circumstances many times in my past because my well told me that ‘I was wrong’. The well is never wrong — only my capacity to read the tea leaves, to listen to its wisdom… Already, giving a verbal explanation of this fundamentally pre-reflective process distorts it slightly. But it also frees me! How joyful is it to be known that intimately!
Peter told me about his fundamentally mathematic mind. As empathetic as I am, I could not relate as fully as I wished. I do not dream in differential equations. The closest I come to thinking through mathematic equations is through complex optimizations. I see curves of future potential, opening and closing according to the choices we make today. I try to anticipate the shape of these curves. My decision-making abilities have slowed to a snail’s pace because I’ve reached the kink in the curve of exponential complexity. I am consciously embarking on a journey that — I hope — will change not only my consciousness but that of Many. Because of the recursive nature of human sentience, I cannot anticipate how my choices will affect other people’s choices. I do not have access to the second degree feedback loop that may or may not ‘kick in’ as I live a more public life. As a contributor to the creation of intersubjective understanding, I can only (and barely) control how to present my contributions. Their effects extend infinitely beyond my reach.
When I resolve to be less shy, it means that I will be more brave. Less paralyzed by my optimizing mind. I vow to proceed with my a-typical path in full awareness that I cannot optimize the consequences of my actions. I’m emerging. I must leap with unjustifiable faith into an unknowable future, one that my words and praxis will stir based on imperfect knowledge. This is scary but the best I can do.