The end of the world...

Yesterday, reflecting on relationships, I wrote that: "...shared reality is a perceived commonality of inner states, for example: feelings, beliefs and concerns. What this means is that two people are drawn to be friends or lovers because they see and share the same truth.  Eventually, this shared reality becomes a single lens through which the partners make sense of the world and so minds meet and merge. "

It occurred to me that the same comment might be made about nation states. Sharing reality helps citizens understand how the world works and can provide a moral basis on which they can live together in relative harmony.  However, in order to live in relative harmony we need trustworthy sources of information and moral guidance. These hallowed information sources include the church, the media, governments, and individual commentators. It seems to me that all sources of information are now suspect. This means that people can no longer trust what they are told. Unable to make sense of their world, society falters and a sense of insecurity follows. On top of this, the internet bombards us with conflicting advice on diets, religion and politics - not to mention fake news - so that people develop anxiety and are confused about their purpose and direction. 

In the quest to restore peace of mind, people scramble for alternative sources of certainty. Typically this means narrowing their circle of confidants to family and friends or to their ethnic group and/or religion. The fraying of their shared reality portends a fragmentation of society, an unbridgeable polarization in which distrust reigns, outsiders are demonized and collective action to address problems comes to a standstill.

How did we get here?

Perhaps, blame can be partly laid at the door of post-modernist authors who stressed that human knowledge is ultimately subjective and relative rather than absolute. Post-modern thought introduced a sense of irreverence and freedom into culture and society by stressing alternative ways of knowing. In the post-modern world the "truth" is but a guiding ideal for scientific inquiry that can never be realized or proven for certain. Consequently, societies are faced with skepticism and relativity; that is, unconstrained belief systems in which nearly anything can be sustained.  

In such a world, there is a widespread loss of the common ground and shared reality that societies need in order to flourish, and our self-destruction as communities and as nations may follow. 

Personally, and as an optimist, I believe we will find a way out of the situation we now find ourselves in.  

So why I am writing about this? Because we authors will always be interested in the decline of civilisation and many of us are only too ready to write about it.  Authors will invariably respond to universal preoccupations with, for example:  climate change, growing financial and political instability and a sense that civilization is lurching towards a cliff edge. Novels can act like guiding lights. Here are some real crackers that deal with doom or impending doom. 

Cormac McCarthy: The Road - in which we find our world on the brink of disaster.

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale - in which democratic society finds itself facing forms of oppression it is powerless to deal with.  

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed - income inequality, a government run by the rich for the rich, a dysfunctional health-care system, widespread protest crushed by brute force...  

Peter Heller: The Dog Stars - in which a few survivors hang on after a plague wipes out the majority of the population...

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Carole]

To be honest Robert, I don't usually read your posts here because they require me to engage with your thoughts - and indeed the world on a much deeper level than I normally do. I used to think in this way but have become lazy in recent years, especially since lockdown began in the UK. This realisation makes me ashamed and I don't know why I chose to read this but what you have to say strikes a chord with me. I am not sure that Bryony and I quite see the world through a single lens (yet) but we seldom disagree.

I certainly think you are correct when you say 'all (hallowed) sources of information are now suspect', though why it has taken quite so many years of lies and misinformation for many of us to realise this, I really don't know! Those of us who are from minority groups have been so busy fighting our particular corner that we have always known that injustice exists and I think many others would agree that it has also made us perhaps more aware of (and sympathetic towards) other minority battles.

Perhaps strangely, the Covid 19 virus has made us not only more aware of the the lies and deceit of the media and governments, but brought us closer to not only our friends, families and neighbours but to people in need of help. The sense of community engendered by clapping for the NHS outside our homes on thursdays was so much more than just that act of thankfulness as we met people we have never met before - everyone was smiley and waved to each other as they clapped, car drivers tooted and waved as they drove past. The closeness too of speaking with our families on Zoom every week. It has taken a virus to open our eyes - but already things are changing to a 'new normal' of arguments about wearing masks (or not) and the selfishness of those who clog our beaches with litter or those who refuse to socially distance - but all this is caused by fear, panic and mistrust of the government as we enter a second wave of the virus.

Thank you for making me think on a deeper level for once. I tend to read books that are fairly easy and require few brain cells but maybe now I will read one of those you have mentioned!

[Christopher Anthony GODDARD]

Hallo Robert & Carole... Somehow, Robert's/your writing has moved into a different plane recently... and this piece is to my mind the best & most provocative so far... I have the feeling that all this could be leading to a great novel as yet unwritten.

[Robert Goddard]

Well - thank for your comments chaps and chapettes! Yes, we writers need to have our ego stroked from time to time. Yes, a new novel is on the card and this idea if floating through my head.

Out of the blue, an old man receives an invitation to attend the funeral, in a foreign country, of a distinguished colleague, friend and rival of many years previously. As soon as the old man had read the letter, he sat back in his chair and daydreamed.....

[Robert Goddard]

Chris - I don't think the writing has moved into a different plane, but I change style according to the subject. This one is written with a slightly academic tone.