But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. ~ 2 Corinthians 4:7
Oxygen molecules and bioelectric charges and millimeters of skin. It’s the only thing keeping you going. So many little ways for it to fail. Just a moment, or a breath, or a mistake. Life is frail and tenuous, a thread on fire holding immense weight. Certainty is impossible, reserves and replacements aren’t happening either. The mental image of unconquerable strength is a myth youths mouth one to another to push back the dark. Look anywhere and you’ll see it. It’s all just whistling amid the stones and bones well past midnight. Layer upon layer of gilt façade in front of an empty building meant to convey a sense of impressive Something in place of actually containing the reality it claims. Look in so many places and try to find the There that isn’t there. Nothing is promised because nothing can be. Trust and don’t verify. If you peek behind the curtain, you might find out something unsettling. Better to say honestly that it all looked legitimate and normal and functional, until someone else finally takes a look. This is all that so much of our “real world” truly contains. Promises unchallenged, options unexercised. One test away from disaster.
What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. ~ Ecclesiastes 1:15
For most people, the appearance of the thing is enough. In fact, for many it is the entire operative point. When the voices of the Real World mock emergent technology for being “vaporware,” the things that the point to as exemplars are no more sturdy than the things they decry. In fact, in most cases incumbent technologies rot from the inside out, leaving the shell of appearance stubbornly in place until the last desperate moment. When cryptocurrency is derided as not “real, like a bank” the comparison doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. After all, one can simply search “fractional reserve banking” and discover the gory details, unless you prefer to leave that illusion untested in your mind. But calling banks “real” is a reference to something metaphysical, intentionally invoking the concept of a bank in the mind of the listener. Never mind that the towering Greek-ish columns and glass-baubled iron lamps don’t really mean anything other than expense and grandeur, nor that your particular banking establishment may not possess one of these edifices. The key is that the spell-binding word evokes this image in your mind. And that is enough.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. ~ Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon
We’re just so afraid of metaphysics that we avoid them until the last extremity, apparently. Anything rather than admit that so much of what we call “real” is unreal, so much of what seems strong is weak. Our trust in symbols and appearances scorches when brought to reality’s flame. But don’t get caught up in the pessimist’s trap. They think they have the courage to see the whole world as a sham, when really they lack the courage to see the reality just over the horizon from our shabby wreck. They can’t let themselves hope, and so they smash all and sit in the rubble with their useless bravery. What if you took a real risk? Sure, you could try and margin call the universe. But what if you let go, swam for the horizon, hoped for one point of salvific light. After all, just because everything human-made comes to a crash in the end, doesn’t mean we’ve exhausted all our options.
Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
We’re just going to have to get comfortable with not knowing. It turns out that we haven’t moved past all those outmoded notions we thought we could safely discard. We all have faith. Some of us just choose to place it in the Fed, or something. But not all faith is blind. Navigating metaphysical deep space places existential demands on everything you trust. You’re going to find out what is real. You’re going to discover just how weak we all are. Once you see it, you can’t ever go back. So I guess what I meant was, we are going to have to get comfortable with the idea that our knowledge might be limited. Flawed. Incomplete and partial. Seems pretty reasonable to me, given the fact that every day reveals a new moment of glaring daylight to dispel the darkness. It gets weirder from here. Don’t be surprised. Now exiting the brief blip of unreality, the bubble when we all agreed to repeat impossibilities to one another in hopes that nobody would speak the honest words to make them untrue. Where we’re going, faith isn’t going to be a lifestyle choice or a philosophical condiment. It will be a requirement of survival, table stakes in the dangerous game. Choose what you believe in however you will, but you might want to start learning the evidentiary laws and knowledge maps of the new place where you’re forced to voyage. When all of the earthly certainties start to look a little murky, you’re getting close to the Heavenlies. I hope you brought a good book.
Barbossa: You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner...you're in one! ~ Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl