I observed way back here that it was no longer a thing to have a black man portray the U.S. president in film. Such casting might draw a modest bit of attention, but it no longer raises a particularly arched eyebrow. These depictions in cinema were only slightly ahead of the actuality of the first black president. Moreover, we’ve gotten used to female heads of state elsewhere, and we now have in the U.S. a burgeoning field of presidential wannabes from all sorts of diverse backgrounds. Near as I can tell, no one really cares anymore that a candidate is a women, or black, or a black women. (Could be that I’m isolated and/or misreading the issue.)
In Chicago where I live, the recent mayoral election offered a choice among some ten candidates to succeed the current mayor who is not seeking reelection. None of them got the required majority of votes, so a runoff between the top two candidates is about to occur. Both also happen to be black women. Although my exposure to the mainstream media and all the talking heads offering analysis is limited, I’ve yet to hear anyone remark disparagingly that Chicago will soon have its first black female mayor. This is as it should be: the field is open to all comers and no one can (or should) claim advantage or disadvantage based on identitarian politics.
Admittedly, extremists on both ends of the bogus left/right political spectrum still pay quite a lot of attention to identifiers. Academia in particular is currently destroying itself with bizarre claims and demands for equity — a nebulous doctrine that divides rather than unites people. Further, some conservatives can’t yet countenance a black, female, gay, atheist, or <insert other> politician, especially in the big chair. I’m nonetheless pleased to see that irrelevant markers matter less and less to many voters. Perhaps it’s a transition by sheer attrition and will take more time, but the current Zeitgeist outside of academia bodes well.
I caught a good portion of a recent Joe Rogan podcast (sorry, no link or embedded video) with Alex Jones and Eddie Bravo (nearly 5 hours long instead of the usual 2 to 3) where the trio indulged themselves in a purported grand conspiracy to destroy civilization and establish a new post-human one. The more Jones rants speaks (which is quite a lot), the more he sounds like a madman. But he insists he does so to serve the public. He sincerely wants people to know things he’s figured out about an evil cabal of New World Order types. So let me say at least this: “Alex Jones, I hear you.” But I’m unconvinced. Apologies to Alex Jones et al. if I got any details wrong. For instance, it’s not clear to me whether Jones believes this stuff himself or he’s merely reporting what others may believe.
The grand conspiracy is supposedly interdimensional beings operating at a subliminal range below or beyond normal human perception. Perhaps they revealed themselves to a few individuals (to the cognoscenti, ya know, or is that shared revelation how one is inducted into the cognoscenti?). Rogan believes that ecstatic states induced by drugs provide access to revelation, like tuning a radio to the correct (but secret) frequency. Whatever exists in that altered cognitive state appears like a dream and is difficult to understand or remember. The overwhelming impression Rogan reports as lasting is of a distinct nonhuman presence.
Maybe I’m not quite as barking mad as Jones or as credulous as Rogan and Bravo, but I have to point out that humans are interdimensional beings. We move through three dimensions of space and one unidirectional dimension of time. If that doesn’t quite make sense, then I refer readers to Edwin Abbott Abbott’s well-known book Flatland. Abbott describes what it might be like for conscious beings in only two dimensions of space (or one). Similarly, for most of nature outside of vertebrates, it’s understood that consciousness, if it exists at all (e.g., not in plants), is so rudimentary that there is no durable sense of time. Beings exist in an eternal now (could be several seconds long/wide/tall — enough to function) without memory or anticipation. With that in mind, the possibility of multidimensional beings in 5+ dimensions completely imperceptible to us doesn’t bother me in the least. The same is true of the multiverse or many-worlds interpretation. What bothers me is that such beings would bother with us, especially with a conspiracy to crash civilization.
The other possibility at which I roll my eyes is a post-human future: specifically, a future when one’s consciousness escapes its biological boundaries. The common trope is that one’s mind is uploaded to a computer to exist in the ether. Another is that one transcends death somehow with intention and purpose instead of simply ceasing to be (as atheists believe) or some variation of the far more common religious heaven/hell/purgatory myth. This relates as well to the supposition of strong AI about to spark (the Singularity): self-awareness and intelligent thought that can exist on some substrate other than human biology (the nervous system, really, including the brain). Sure, cognition can be simulated for some specific tasks like playing chess or go, and we humans can be fooled easily into believing we are communicating with a thought machine à la the Turing Test. But the rather shocking sophistication, range, utility, and adaptability of even routine human consciousness is so far beyond any current simulation that the usual solution to get engineers from where they are now to real, true, strong AI is always “and then a miracle happened.” The easy, obvious route/accident is typically a power surge (e.g., a lightning strike).
Why bother with mere humans is a good question if one is post-human or an interdimensional being. It could well be that existence in such a realm would make watching human interactions either impenetrable (news flash, they are already) or akin to watching through a dim screen. That familiar trope is the lost soul imprisoned in the spirit world, a parallel dimension that permits viewing from one side only but prohibits contact except perhaps through psychic mediums (if you believe in such folks — Rogan for one doesn’t).
The one idea worth repeating from the podcast is the warning not to discount all conspiracy theories out of hand as bunk. At least a few have been demonstrated to be true. Whether any of the sites behind that link are to be believed I leave you readers to judge.
Addendum: Although a couple comments came in, no one puzzled over the primary piece I had to add, namely, that we humans are interdimentional beings. The YouTube video below depicts a portion of the math/science behind my statement, showing how at least two topographical surfaces behave paradoxically when limited to 2 or 3 dimensions but theoretically cohere in 4+ dimensions imperceptible to us.
Everyone is familiar with the convention in entertainment media where characters speak without the use of recognizable language. (Not related really to the convention of talking animals.) The first instance I can recall (someone correct me if earlier examples are to be found) is the happy-go-lucky bird Woodstock from the old Peanuts cartoons (do kids still recognize that cast of characters?), whose dialog was shown graphically as a series of vertical lines:
When the cartoon made its way onto TV for holiday specials, its creator Charles Schultz used the same convention to depict adults, never shown onscreen but with dialogue voiced by a Harmon-muted trombone. Roughly a decade later, two characters from the Star Wars franchise “spoke” in languages only other Star Wars characters could understand, namely, Chebacca (Chewie) and R2D2. More recently, the character Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy (known to me only through the Marvel movie franchise, not through comic books) speaks only one line of dialogue, “I am Groot,” which is understood as full speech by others Guardians characters. When behemoths larger than a school bus (King Kong, Godzilla, Jurassic dinosaurs, Cloverfield, Kaiju, etc.) appear, the characters are typically denied the power of speech beyond the equivalent of a lion’s roar. (True villains talk little or not at all as they go about their machinations — no monologuing! unless it’s a James Bond film. An exception notable for its failure to charm audiences is Ultron, who wouldn’t STFU. You can decide for yourself which is the worse kind of villainy.)
This convention works well enough for storytelling and has the advantage of allowing the reader/viewer to project onto otherwise blank speech. However, when imported into the real world, especially in politics, the convention founders. There is no Babelfish universal translator inserted in the ear to transform nonsense into coherence. The obvious example of babblespeech is 45, whose speech when off the teleprompter is a series of rambling non sequiturs, free associations, slogans, and sales pitches. Transcripts of anyone’s extemporaneous speech reveal lots of restarts and blind alleys; we all interrupt ourselves to redirect. However, word salad that substitutes for meaningful content in 45’s case is tragicomic: alternately entirely frustrating or comically entertaining depending on one’s objective. Satirical news shows fall into the second category.
45 is certainly not the first. Sarah Palin in her time as a media darling (driver of ratings and butt of jokes — sound familiar?) had a knack for crazy speech combinations that were utter horseshit yet oddly effective for some credulous voters. She was even a hero to some (nearly a heartbeat away from being the very first PILF). We’ve also now been treated to a series of public interrogations where a candidate for a cabinet post or an accused criminal offers testimony before a congressional panel. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos famously evaded simple yes/no questions during her confirmation hearing, and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh similarly refused to provide direct answers to direct questions. Unexpectedly, sacrificial lamb Michael Cohen does give direct answers to many questions, but his interlocutors then don’t quite know how to respond considering their experience and expectation that no one answers appropriately.
What all this demonstrates is that there is often a wide gulf between what is said and what is heard. In the absence of what might be understood as effective communication (honest, truthful, and forthright), audiences and voters fill in the blanks. Ironically, we also can’t handle hear too much truth when confronted by its awfulness. None of this is a problem in storytelling, but when found in politic narratives, it’s emblematic of how dysfunctional our communications have become, and with them, the clear thought and principled activity of governance.
The Spiral Staircase 