God's Own Reality Tunnel

Why on earth would you ever want to be happy, let alone joyful?

Asked no one, ever.

This is because, or so it seems, happiness is the thing -- or better, a name for the thing -- we all seek. It is our telos, that to which we are ordered.

So, while no one asks, "Why do you want to be happy," we've all wondered why you think that, of all things, will make you happy. Because that not only won't make you happy, it will make you unhappy. Fine. Do it your way.

Says God, to everyone, ever.

Now, if you believe God exists, then he is the ultimate reality to which we are ordered. Or, if you understand that man is ordered to a transcendent and nonlocal archetype, you can be certain that this is because God exists. In the end, if God doesn't exist, then there's no plausible explanation for why we should be ordered to him; or, more concretely, for the existence of saints and sages -- the perfection, from our side, of sanctity and wisdom, respectively. Man can only get to ten because God goes up to eleven.

In a previous post we alluded to the ego <---> reality tunnel dialectic. Clearly there are degrees of reality, such that people can be more or less "in touch" with it. We call a person "psychotic" because he has lost touch with reality, or crossed a divide in which the world is more delusion or hallucination than reality; it is more the projection of his own subjectivity into the world than the reception of the objective world into his psyche.

Speaking of which, this subject is handled brilliantly in Joker. (Spoiler alert? I'm not sure.) You may have to view it twice to realize it's difficult to say exactly which parts of the movie happened vs. which parts are pure hallucination -- and everything in between. The film doesn't offer any clear guidance. It doesn't announce This Never Actually Happened This Way in the Real World. But this mirrors the sad reality of the psychotic person, who is psychotic precisely because he can't distinguish between world and hallucination, or truth and delusion.

Compare it to what happens in dreams. Dreaming has a kind of psychotic structure, in that we are plunged into a world where things routinely happen that couldn't possibly happen in real life, and yet, we don't realize it. Last night, for example... nah, never mind. Other people's dreams are only of interest to the person who dreamt them. Suffice it to say that the dream is a reality tunnel that we inhabit even while not realizing that we -- somehow -- are the creators of that very world.

So, just like real life, since -- at least in a free society such as ours -- people are freed to live in their own reality tunnels, instead of being permitted only to inhabit one determined by the state -- as in the North Korea, or Iran, or elite college campuses. Being woke means: do not dare disturb me from my nightmare, or else! No gratitude whatsoever.

Another crossroads, with six possible directions... Let me briefly finish up with Joker, which I think is brilliant. Nor do I know or care what the director's "intent" might have been. In my reality tunnel it gets an A, in particular, Joaquin Phoenix's performance. But many critics disagree. Different reality tunnels. I saw some of them on Rotten Tomatoes, and could scarcely believe what I was reading. I realize that in these psychotic times, nothing should surprise us, but still... Examples:

Joker doesn't understand its representation of violence because it doesn't know what to do with its politics, opting instead for a confused aestheticization of anarchy, all incendiary chants and masked malcontents thronging the streets.

Joker is a visual feast about mental illness, the crumbling of an unstable economic system, and toxic masculinity that thinks it has something groundbreaking to add to the comic book universe, but merely adds an obtuse reflection.

It's unclear if the movie thinks that the Joker doesn't know that his statement is political, or the film itself doesn't understand it's own political nature...

Like "The Dark Knight", this film demonizes the mentally ill. It also distorts NY realities in the early 80s.

Suffice it to say that I didn't see any statements about politics, economics, toxic masculinity, demonization of mental illness, or the conditions of New York four decades ago.

Reality tunnels. Yesterday I read -- or started to read -- a piece that is so detached from reality that I suppose I reacted to it in the way the above critics reacted to Joker. I'm speaking of an essay by Frank Rich called What Will Happen to The Trump Toadies? Being a Trump Toady myself, I am naturally curious to find out what's going to happen to me.

Here are some examples of the graffiti on the walls of Rich's reality tunnel; in fact, note the rich irony of accusing the president and his supporters of being out of touch:

The definition of “facts” has been so thoroughly vandalized that Americans can no longer agree on what one is, and our president has barreled through so many crimes and misdemeanors with so few consequences that it’s impossible to gainsay his claim that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Donald Trump proves daily that there is no longer any penalty for doing wrong as long as you deny everything, never say you’re sorry, and have co-conspirators stashed in powerful places to put the fix in.

What crimes? What misdemeanors? He doesn't say.

John Kennedy, the Louisiana senator who parrots Vladimir Putin’s talking points in his supine defense of Trump, acts as if there will never be a reckoning. While he has no relation to the president whose name he incongruously bears, his every craven statement bespeaks a confidence that history will count him among the knights of the buffet table in the gilded Mar-a-Lago renovation of Camelot.

Now, that is some bad writing, but the Russia hoax? If you ever believed this hoax, it was because you wanted to believe it. If you still believe it at this point, it must be serving a vital function -- a projected container for one's own unmanageable psychic distress.

"For all the damage inflicted since Inauguration Day 2017" -- wait -- what damage? Again, he doesn't say. Apparently, in his reality tunnel the damage is so self-evident that everyone sees it.

"Rather than being the end of American history as we know it," -- wait -- what? The end of history as we know it? I'm not exaggerating when I say this is psychotic. Not that Rich is psychotic per se, but that this kind of catastrophic thinking emanates from a psychotic dimension of the mind, or from what are called unmetabolized beta elements.

Very soon, white supporters of the president will be Judged by our fellow Citizens of Color, and it won't be pleasant:

That judgment will be rendered by an ever-more demographically diverse America unlikely to be magnanimous toward cynical politicians who prioritized pandering to Trump’s dwindling all-white base over the common good.

I don't know. Might they be too busy working and improving their lives, thanks to President Trump?

"All cults come to an end, often abruptly, and Trump’s Republican Party is nothing if not a cult." Wait -- what?

I've reached my limit. Let someone else do the fisking.

As to the title of this post, just as there is a dialectic between ego and world, there is one between the soul and God, or between (¶) and O. You might call the latter the attempt to build an "ultimate reality tunnel."

But clearly, anything (¶) can construct is not going to be ultimate. Still, it can get pretty far, much farther than can the horizontal ego. This is the realm of natural theology, but so long as it's from our side, it's still going to be a manmade reality tunnel.

The only way to exit a manmade tunnel is if God provides the tunnel. We have to wrap this up, but in my opinion and experience, God has done this. He has given us a reality tunnel back to him. It is the most valuable gift we could possibly imagine, being that it is the way, the truth, and the life, and what could be better than that?