Life-lies

Life-lie: saving lie. “That’s right, I said the life-lie. Because the life-lie is the vitalizing principle, you see” (275)

“What the devil does it mean, to be demonic? That was just some nonsense I thought up to let him go on living. If I hadn’t, the poor, harmless swine would have broken down in self-contempt and despair many years ago” (275). To be convinced of demonic nature as treatment…the doctor is in practice of telling people lies to fix them, to keep them content in living their life-lie. Is it better to live a life of truth? Or a less painful life of delusion? Only emotion we’re allowed to feel is fun….When confronted with the choice between a life of truth or illusion (or lies) I chose truth. I realize intellectually the futility of my overly simplistic conception of “truth”. I realize that this is an inaccessible concept based on my own illusions of what constitutes reality and experience. It is based in illusion, and so baseless. Non-existent, I’m afraid. Perhaps I can intellectually wonder if I have built my reality on lies, a non-existent foundation less substantial than air. But of course I don’t really believe what I’m typing here. I still believe in truth. I still believe that I can (mostly) trust my perceptions of the world, and can recognize and correct my viewpoint when life brings attention to an illusion I believed to be truth. I accept this because my sanity (or what I believe to be some semblance of sanity) requires it in order for me to exist functionally in reality (or what I judge to be functionally or perceive to be reality…but I’ll stop this. This cyclical state of constant doubt is exhausting to maintain).

This reminds me of conversations I’ve had with my friend Erin (the one adventuring with Shanely the rock in Ireland). I wonder if the only perception of ourselves is discovered through feedback with our environment—that we cannot truly perceive ourselves because we can never observe as an outsider. We are always already within. We rely on our environment to give feedback we can perceive as truth, but similar to the “forgotten” conversation we’ve had in class (you know everything already, you’ve just forgotten it) the outside stimuli is the “nudger” to access what was already within and knowable. The nudge is not truth. Your interpretation of the stimuli is the truth (to your perception). So when a friend has to sit you down and have a “tough talk”, you squirm and feel uncomfortable because a lot of the time the perceptions closest to the “truth” are the ones you knew, but had to be reminded that you knew, often to correct whatever path based in illusion you’ve been intent on blindly pursuing to reach a dream or unreachable ideal.

There’s a quote that states that the best books are the ones that tell you what you already know, but never knew you knew. Perhaps it was stated more eloquently than that. Books and teachers …maybe the ones most important to us are the ones that hit closest to that internal blueprint that we all carry, the one that maps our dreams, fantasies and myths—the archetypes we discuss in class that Ibsen seems to be so fond of exploring. Are the archetypes truth in essence? Or are they an escape from truth/reality? How is the escape fulfilling to us? More so than actual reality? Reminds me of Sarah and Bizz’s blogs…

I agree with Sarah and Bizz—it is impossible to peel truth from lies. The two are too interwoven. Bizz’s idea about dreams functioning as lies in (dreams as the ideal) is really intriguing. She writes that perhaps reality only becomes real after we challenge and recreate it into fiction (lies). Is this process the sole form of ownership we maintain over “reality”? To order what is naturalistic for the purpose of mirroring that internal blueprint of our human instinct, the ingrained dreams we all share?

Once again, I’m reminded of our class discussion of the Master Builder. As the tower constructed of wooden blocks and Legos  got higher and higher and the material lessened, the tower became less substantial. In order to build the highest tower, there had to be increasing gaps in the corporeal material of which it was constructed and more air towards the top. But this was acceptable because of the firm foundation. And well...shoot. I'm not sure where I was going with this.