When you are insecure about your writing, it helps to start off with someone else's. Apart from assisting me to slip into the groove, Douglas Adams sets a certain tone: light & frothy, witty and not too pompous. That's my aim too. And when I proofread, I'm immune (at least for his bit) to the temptation of endlessly exchanging one word for another.
In the lead-in to The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you read, or hear narrated in a voice with a BBC accent:
‘And then, one Thursday, nearly 2,000 years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
‘Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a hyperspace by-pass, and so the idea was lost forever.
‘This is not her story.’
You grin wryly at Adams’s last line. Indeed, this book is not ‘her story’.The Hitch-hiker’s Guide goes on in a completely different vein. It is a tale that, once upon a time, I enjoyed immensely, but strangely I’ve forgotten the plot (some might say that I’ve lost it).
Be that as it may, I’ve often returned to the notion of a Rickmansworth meme. That there might be such a thing is a thought that has haunted me. Something that could revolutionize the world—what would its nature be? What might it look like, and would it be worthwhile my looking?
Let’s suppose that there could exist an idea the magnitude of which was such that if it became general knowledge would literally transform the world (for unless we allow that possibility we’d never ‘pass go’). If it turns out that we’re wrong, then no damage is done. We’d only have wasted a little time that, likely as not, we’d have frittered on some trivial pursuit. Therefore, we’ve nothing to lose, and potentially a whole galaxy to (re)gain.
And so I ponder. Would the average person recognize the Rickmansworth meme if he or she unexpectedly stumbled upon it in the dark? Because you see, I suspect that it might be the sort of thing that is difficult to see, even held right up against your nose. Let’s imagine its characteristics so as to maximize our chances.
Whatever it is, it must surely be logical. It must be sound, it must be coherent, and it must make sense—common sense. It must be some sort of Golden Rule gone platinum—something that . . . I don’t know . . . has the effect of making you treat every living creature with the same reverence that you accord yourself. That would go some way towards improving the human condition, wouldn’t you agree?
Additionally, if something were capable of changing the world, then it stands to reason that it can’t be too complicated, because every Joe Bloggs has to be able to understand the basic principle. Humans being but simple creatures, the meme must also be simple—simplistic?—for it to be universally understood and applied.
What would be the use if only an Einstein could wrap his or her brain around it? No, it’s got be the sort of thing that makes everyone clap their hands and exclaim, “Aha, but of course! How obvious! Why didn’t I see it before? It was in the room with me the whole time, but there was something good on TV.”
I’m no Einstein. You’re probably not one either. But then, neither was he! No truly, so much nonsense has been ascribed to the myth. Look, not even Einstein floated around with his head in the clouds for twenty-four hours a day. He didn’t permanently have his brain stuffed full of formulas.
A person may be obsessed by something, but it won’t occupy his or her whole day. Like any dunderhead, Einstein had to feed the cat, mow the lawn and visit the bathroom. I don’t wish to denigrate the man, but in some respects he was not so hot. Rumor has it that some of his personal relationships were a mess.
Also, he couldn’t imagine how his discoveries might apply to everyday life. “It was always incomprehensible to me,” wrote old Albert, “why the theory of relativity, whose conceptions and problems were so far from practical life, found such a lively, even enthusiastic resonance in the broadest strata of the population.”
My point is this: there’s no sense in waiting for an Einstein to come along if there ain’t no such perfect entity. Just study the raw data. A good idea should stand on its own. In an ideal world, all of them would be given equal consideration. It should be irrelevant who holds the talking pillow. A murderer may say something inspirational. Herr Hitler might utter something noble. Even a little girl in a Rickmansworth café may have something earth-shaking to say.
I say, give everyone a chance. Listen—or read—to them all, since we’re all of us monkeys on the same branch of the evolutionary tree. But heed or give more credence to those who speak more closely to your heart. In time, you’ll become more discerning. You’ll get to the point of being able to hear—first-hand, from your own mouth, in your own style—lessons that you already, miraculously, know. As the Chinese proverb goes, listen to what everyone has to tell you, but then decide for yourself.
According to Cato the Elder wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Bruce Lee said that a wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. The flip side of this coin is just as important, however. Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics, as a boy was told by his father never to have any respect whatsoever for authority. “Forget who said it and instead look at what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, ‘Is this reasonable?’”
Disconnect.
Where am I?
I had everything clear in my head just now—wonderful lines that swept and swooped and slid across the page, but they’ve emerged chopped and broken. They clatter upon the page, clunkenly.
This damned conspiracy doesn’t want me to succeed. It resists and hinders me. It swivels my head towards the window and glazes my eyes over. Window-gazing. Windows glazing. I’m turning into a zombie. No, foul spot, no! I need to finish my story during the day before the clock strikes midnight and I turn into a vampire. Forgive me if I sound a little rushed (or stoned) but if you’ve accompanied me this far you’ll understand.
I scramble back to our original point of departure.
“This is not her story,” wrote Douglas Adams, alluding to the Rickmansworth girl. I’ve since revealed that her story is mine—and yours too if you want a slice of the action.
But if time and opportunity are so limited, why do I bother with stories at all? Why not tell it to you straight—do an article, write a thesis, or take out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times? Isn’t a narrative just a work of fiction? Why spend all that time, you ask, on something that isn’t even factual? A good read is all a work of fiction can aspire to, surely.
Not so. According to John Michael Greer, stories are extremely powerful. He claims that they’re the tools we use to understand the world. Not only do they contain lessons and morals, but as myths they shape the way that we relate to our environment and to life itself.
So don’t worry. This isn’t a narrative in the conventional sense. By attacking the larger philosophical questions, I’ll break down—seven with a single blow—the straw, stick and brick huts of our cosmology. And then, never fear, I’ll go on reconstruct the wreckage into a giant beanstalk that will win us the golden goose. How’s that for a Grimm day’s work?
From your perspective, I’m not worth knowing. So forget me. After all, I may not even exist. What evidence do you have? We’ve never met. You haven’t seen me in a photo. You’ve only these pages printed with words. For you, it’s far more important to establish your own identity.
In The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Really Are, Alan Watts refers to identity as an ego in a bag of skin. David Crosby (from Crosby, Stills and Nash) calls the body a meat suit. Dave Pollard, a blogger, thinks of himself as “the space through which stuff passes”. Don Juan, in the books by Carlos Castaneda, sees a luminous egg with tendrils. Me, I’ve conjured up the jabberwocky.
I acknowledge input from Lewis Carrol, of course, but more especially Robert Heinlein. In Life Line, his first-ever published story, the dean of science-fiction writers describes a four-dimensional body:
‘You are a space-time event having duration four ways. You are not quite six feet tall, you are about twenty inches wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there stretches behind you more of this space-time event reaching to perhaps nineteen-sixteen, of which we see a cross section here at right angles to the time axis, and as thick as the present. At the far end is a baby, smelling of sour milk and drooling its breakfast on its bib. At the other end lies, perhaps, an old man someplace in the nineteen eighties. Imagine this space-time event . . . as a long pink worm, continuous through the years, one end at his mother’s womb, the other at the grave. It stretches past us here, and the cross-section we see appears to be a single discreet body. But that is illusion. There is physical continuity in this concept to the entire race, for these pink worms branch off from other pink worms. In this fashion the race is like a vine whose branches intertwine and send out shoots. Only by taking a cross section of the vine would we fall into the error of believing that the shootlets were discrete individuals.’
Well, Heinlein’s idea lodged in my mind in much the same way (and location?) as Adam’s Rickmansworth meme. I grant that it’s not exactly glamorous to reduce life to a worm, sausage or tube, and you may feel inclined to turn up your nose. Please don’t.
Because consider just what that model accomplishes. By shaking hands with the jabberwocky we’ve taken time out of the equation and elevated our position to that of Czerner’s photon! For us in the now—in the know—time no longer exists. It “stands still, eternally”. We stand, like Dr Who, outside of time.
The sense of self is relative. It relies on the fact that the external environment is not you. You can't be you unless there is something that you aren’t. There has to be that boundary.
The essence of the Rickmansworth meme is that there is only one being who experiences him-, her-, or itself (us-self) through every form of life. It’s all-inclusive. It includes all of those who are, as well as all of those who were or will be. If there are parallel universes then they are also in the mix.
And so, when the god boys say that it’s okay, it really is. Everything’s just fine and dandy with the universe. Whatever happens to you in life—whether you win the lottery, or whether you become confined to to a wheelchair, it doesn’t matter. Not ultimately.
Oh, it may hurt all right. The tooth may pain as it is pulled—I’m sure I’d fume and fuss along with the best of them. But that doesn’t change the fact that, although each of our stories seem so real, and our programming makes us cry, laugh or scream, it’s all but a technicolor dream.
The whole circus has been set up with just one purpose in mind: to provide everyone with entertainment. That’s why we’ve been compartmentalized. At heart we’re all essentially the same; we’re one. But that won’t do—you can’t put on a great performance with just a bunch of clones (witness synchronized swimming).
Some magic wand has conjured up the illusion that we’re all different and separate. We’re portals opening out into one another. We’re here for each other’s entertainment—hey, it's good to meet you! The circle game is how God passes away the time. That’s the grand conspiracy that we’re an unwitting part of. Think of it as a grand twiddling of thumbs.
