Era of the False Narrative
New year, same timeline
The seals are back.
In the Summer they retreat to their little island home across the way, rarely coming close. One, then three, then six, often a dozen or three dozen even come in the Winter, but never more than that. They are here in the very shallow water just offshore, on a Winter’s high tide, when their usual sleeping spots on their little island are under water. They sleep vertically, just their noses above water, swaying a little with the current—looking, at a distance, like so many bottles bobbing in the water. And so the seals are said to be “bottling”.
Last year I made a resolution to befriend the seals. The Rogers, as I call them, for reasons that not even I know. They just seemed like Rogers one day, and I called them that, and it stuck.
They are interested in me, but not as interested, I think, as I am in them. And not as interested as they are in our dog, Maddie, blond lightning even now at 10 years old, racing across the landscape for the sheer thrill of going fast. When she sniffs about at water’s edge, on this medium bank below which there are bottling seals, the seals wake and watch us, sometimes diving down with an elaborate splash, a splash that is unnecessarily exuberant. Perhaps that is always the way with exuberance: it is an enthusiasm that is not, strictly speaking, required.
I cannot say that I have been successful in my goal to befriend the seals. Not yet. But I can say that I have made their acquaintance. I walk out here on a cool wet morning, the sky barely light at 8 am, and I greet them. Hello Rogers! I do not shout, but I do raise my voice a bit, for I know that I tend to speak quietly, and how are they to hear me otherwise, over the sounds of their own thoughts?
After I greet them this way, more reveal themselves. They have not all been visible before now, but either my greeting or their sentries who had their eyes open, watchful, have informed them of my presence. Now the Rogers attend to me, looking. I speak to them again, a little more quietly. Hello Rogers. How are you on this fine day?
They look at me with their impenetrable black eyes. I repeat. Hello Rogers. How are you on this fine day?
I do not know the answer to that question.
There are so many things that I do not know. Also many things that I do. Sometimes when people acknowledge ignorance of things, or uncertainty, the response that comes back is a non sequitur—oh but you are so wise about these other things! Yes, of course, but that is irrelevant. Knowledge, like most things, is not binary. It is not an either/or: omniscience, or…what would the opposite be? Knowing nothing, I guess, for lack of a single elegant word. Omniscience, or knowing nothing: neither are states of being that any human can be in, not even the newest of humans. Even the tiny baby knows, without knowing that he knows, that his mother is safety and warmth, food and love.
I find myself at a razor’s edge. I want to acknowledge my own ignorance where discovery is possible but not urgent, and allow the ignorance to fade over time. I want to let my observations of a place or a topic inform me slowly, let the interpretations develop, let the understanding come as it comes.
But ignorance can be a luxury, one for which we may not have the time. Too much in modernity is predicated on some people knowing what most do not. And in order to protect their knowledge, whatever that knowledge is and whomever those people are, they erect barriers to discovery. Those barriers may come in the form of classified documents and top secret meetings, but those are the easy barriers to overcome. For just as corruption that is baldly and explicitly corrupt is easier to counteract than that which does its work under a different guise, so too are cryptic barriers to discovery far more difficult to counteract.
We humans love a good story. There are ancient reasons for this, and it seems to be universal. In all cultures, we do not merely entertain, but also inform each other with story. But any universal tendency of humans, including this one, will get gamed. And so we find ourselves in the Era of the False Narrative. Barriers to discovery are ubiquitous now in the form of incomplete, misleading, and wholly fabricated stories.
The barriers that are most difficult to counteract are the stories that have been woven so well that we do not know even know that we are in someone’s story. Even those of us who are wide awake in some arenas are likely to be fast asleep to some set of events elsewhere, events that may turn out to be utterly necessary for us to understand.
Sure, there are other ways to get people to stop seeking discovery, and to stop being curious. They all seem to have story somewhere in them, though.
Drug us with a steady diet of titillating and banal content on those compact drug delivery devices that we carry around with us all the time, in our pockets, in our hands, glazed eyes staring down, beside us as we sleep.
Drug us with substances that are not food, but which play food on tv. Create cravings and convince us that denying ourselves real and honest food is good for our hearts, and that eating the shelf-stable stuff from labs…well, that is, too.
Drug us with actual drugs, both legal and not. Assure us that once the government has given its stamp of approval for this molecule but not that one, then taking this molecule is a sign of virtue, a sure indication that you too will have access to heaven, while taking that one is a sign of a weak and unguarded moral center.
How foolish we are to believe their stories. It has been the stories all along that have been at the center of their power to control us.
About that little island across the way, where the seals sleep when the tide is low enough for them to do so, I had a dream. It’s a low-slung, narrow island on which cormorants and gulls roost and bald eagles fly out to hunt those other birds’ young, and on the far side of it the water is so deep and runs so fast and the conditions can be so chaotic, that I have sometimes seen boats of considerable size unable to make the passage, turning around after straining against the current and going back from whence they came. In my dream, a wide, low grey boat with no markings on it at all, and no portholes, moves silently in to view, stopping in front of the island. A vast door opens in the island, a tambour door sliding up to reveal a gaping portal of rectangular darkness. The unmarked boat glides in, then descends, as if on an elevator, out of view. The door closes on the physically impossible portal, and life looks normal once again.
Those intimations that we get, the glimmers at the edges of consciousness, the “didn’t I see something about that?” and “that’s odd” and “how could that possibly be, given what else I thought was true?”…they are worth paying attention to. What is happening outside of our view? What is known that we are not being told? What are the actual risks that we face, which we have not yet understood? These things are worth attending to, but we cannot live that way all the time, chasing the glimmers and the intimations. We cannot be in such a state of vigilance at every moment of our lives.
And so I make a simple soup. It has turkey stock made from the carcass of this year’s Thanksgiving bird, and a few rinds of parmesan that were frozen for just such a moment, and pork sausage, and onions both red and yellow, and garlic and greens, and chilis and apple cider vinegar so exquisite it is difficult to describe how very good it is.
The kitchen smells of nourishment and deliciousness, and not just Maddie but the cats hover, hoping for a taste. Soon the family will gather and we will have warming soup.
Heavy clouds hang low, moving slowly north, and the Rogers are now absent, gone I know not where. The sun sets long before dinner, for the days are short this time of year, so short, which leaves much time for thinking in the darkness.
Here we are, moving ahead, on the only timeline that we have.
The whole piece is beautiful but I loved the line about substances that are not food, but play food on TV. Just in that one line you evoke images of magazine ads and TV commercials and somehow, pushers in dark alleys and all the most predatory and toxic aspects of Hollywood.
Perhaps the key word is 'Wonder'. Wonder, as in amazement lacking in full comprehension. When you get down to it, that is at the heart of science.
But there are those whose minds can only handle belief. The belief need have no basis, no wonder, no comprehension; it must only offer security. Some people feel uncomfortable not knowing, or only half knowing, and so they make up a belief, and it satisfies them.
A guy told me once that he believed in science. I pointed out that science is not a belief system. It is a doubt system. Question. Contemplate. Wonder. That is science.