These are selected and edited short essays, over the years, from the Hornby Island monthly newsletter The First Edition.

Art Matters
Authenticity
Being A Statistic
Better Luck Next Time
Big Dada
Dear Mr. Trump
Does Smoke Get In Your Ayes
Doing Good
Dyslexicon Of Neoillogicisms
Eutopia
Face To Face
Free Will And Determinism
How Do You Know
How Matter Minds
How To Shop For Shoes
Maxwell’s Demon
Melancholia
Mind Over Matter
Money And Monogamy
Monsters Of Nature?
On Guard For Thee
Other People’s Money
Push The Button
Rent
Self-Transcendence
S.O.S. Save Our (Night) Skies
S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
SuperCapitalisticWealthExtractioGnosis
Technocracy
Teleology At Thanksgiving
The (R)Evolution Of Power
The Dirty Word
The F**Kit List
The Gated Intellectual Community
The Meaning Of Meaning
The Parable Of The Ants
The Skeptic’s Guide To The Universe And Beyond
The World In A Box
Thinking The Unthinkable
Toward A Secular Religion
What Are You Anyway?
Why Be Kind?
Why I Am Not An Art Critic
Why The Grass Looks Green(Er)
Yin And Yang
Your Logic Or Your Life

‘Authentic’ comes from a Greek word that means “doing things oneself”: self-directed, self-realizing. Ironically, the word ‘automatic’ has a similar origin (self-thinking, self-moving) but has come to mean the opposite of authentic.

The Swedish film “As It Is in Heaven” is a crash course on authentic religion and relationship. It features a Christ-like figure, who enters the lives of ordinary folk in a small rural town. This is the vulnerable, idealistic, and intense retired conductor, Daniel (as in the lion’s den), whose passion is to “open people’s hearts” through music. Burnt out by his professional life, he returns to the village of his birth, where the bully who plagued his childhood still reigns in terror. Daniel agrees to coach the local church choir, whose stodgy pastor is a Pharisee who cannot break away from his own repression. The conflict is not only between Daniel and these two men, caught in their automatism, but between the blossoming desire of the townsfolk for inner freedom and their own long-established habits.

Daniel is exacting, a perfectionist who knows that nothing can be accomplished without focused intention, and without setting aside social conventions and habits that stand in the way of authenticity. At the same time, his drive has exhausted his health and he searches for a deeper sense of belonging. Under his guidance, the choir gets a taste of emotional freedom and joy. It becomes a virtual therapy group—and the butt of attacks from outsiders who view it with increasing suspicion. He becomes ever closer to a young member of the choir, the local “Mary Magdalen,” whose apparent loose ways express her genuine lovingkindness, in contrast to the stilted sanctimony of her husband, the pastor of the church. The choir, now excommunicated, becomes the genuine church, a celebration of life.

The film contrasts two ways of being and relating, and underlines the choices that make the difference between authenticity and mechanical life. One leads to suffering as well as joy; the other to boredom and safety. Either involves a price. One can do things as others do, and the things we assume are right because “that’s how it’s done.” Or, one can do things oneself, from scratch. They are not mutually exclusive, since we are free to agree with the wisdom of others, when we do in fact realize there is a choice.

We like to think of ourselves as unique individuals, yet we are part of a collective. We acknowledge laws regulating the world, but we also like to think of ourselves inherently free. Man-made laws are collective agreements, while natural laws are fundamentally statistical patterns. We may personally agree with man-made laws, but we consider that our obedience is voluntary. In contrast, it is irrelevant whether we agree with the law of gravitation. Yet even that law is a statistical pattern, to which there could be exceptions in exotic situations.

While a human body might not be exempt from gravitation, it could well be an “outlier” in other patterns, such as disease and mortality rates. If actuarial statistics predict that you will live to a certain age, that is merely an average within a large sample. Even medical prognoses are statistical: any outcome predicted is a probability that draws on data from a crowd of others in similar circumstances. The individuals in that crowd may have varying actual fates, within natural limits, with the majority concentrated in a narrow band. It is merely probable that you will end up as typical. You will die of something, sometime. But it is far more feasible to predict the future of an average than of an individual.

Freedom and individuality are politically charged bywords. The “free” society is one in which government does not unduly interfere in the lives of citizens. Yet individuals in any collective are constrained by its ground rules, spoken or unspoken. In the modern globalist world, one of the constraints for the entire human community is that more than half of the world’s resources belong to a few dozen individuals. Born into this world, statistically speaking your prospects are already pretty limited. You may rise above some of your fellows, but the chance of rising to the ranks of the ultra-rich are about as great as your chance of breaking the law of gravitation.

Equality is another contemporary catchword, by which is meant equality of rights before the law. People are very sensitive these days to unequal treatment because of race, ethnicity, or gender. That’s a legitimate concern, of course, but to what extent does it distract us from the hyper inequality of wealth? It seems we are confused by numbers. We correctly want to protect the rights of minorities. What gets left out of the picture is the abuse of rights by the small minority who hoard the chips. Imagine you ante into a poker game with seven billion other players. In the name of fairness, you want the cards dealt fairly. But a few dozen players seated at this world table each have several million times more chips than the rest. You realize that these are the previous winnings of very experienced players, against whom you hardly stand a chance. How did this come about as the entry point to the game? What does fair play even mean in such a situation and why would you care to play?

Unlike the statistics for mortality, extreme outliers in the world economy lie vastly off the median. They have the means to control the game, which makes a mockery of another popular byword: democracy. It may be highly gratifying to have merely average wealth, but the extremely unequal distribution means that most people in the world are doomed to poverty. With little choice in the matter, they are as bound by statistics as by gravity.

The world religions are unanimously pessimistic about human life on earth. Christianity and Islam promise a continued existence after death, either as a reward or a punishment for conduct in this one. The present life is merely a proving ground for your real destiny, to sort the elite from the riffraff into separate post-life gated communities. The future life compensates for the deficiencies of this one and also serves as an imaginary backup, perhaps, given the precariousness and long-term implausibility of human projects.

Hinduism and Buddhism promise rebirth in a new incarnation—another chance, to do better—which serves less vindictively than in the Semitic religions as a reward or punishment. But their ultimate promise, if more democratic, is final release from physical or any other existence. The implicit common denominator of all is that conscious life in the body is a vale of trials and suffering from which one should be glad to be released. Is that not an assessment that pain outweighs pleasure overall in the human story? It says something about the human experience, hard for us to grasp in our privileged time and place.

In some ways science serves as the new secular religion of our materialist culture. Scientific theory is historically the heir of theology (they derive from the same root word). It provides us with a new creation story and with technology as a new means to manipulate nature, superseding prayer, ritual, and magic. Additionally, it implies that our short life in nature, in the physical body, is the only reality, releasing us from the promise or the threat of ongoing existence. It passes no moral judgment on the quality or meaning of this life, simply recognizing (as people have intuitively for centuries) that pain and pleasure are built into biology to the extent that sensation is. Science does not discuss life after death (and has only recently begun to discuss consciousness); but the implication is that when the brain dies, so does the consciousness of the person, after which there is no more experience, either good or bad. This is closer to the Eastern release from the cycle of existence than to theistic notions of resurrection. Fortunately, you don’t even have to earn it by climbing up a moral ladder of improving incarnations. All you have to do is reach the end of your life.

I’m sorry to hear that you think Canada has nothing to offer you. Nothing the U.S. needs, like lumber or cars or oil or minerals or food? Molson, Labatt’s? Maple syrup? Not even Canadian Bacon? Could you use some nice clean water and cheap electricity, perhaps, during the coming years of fires, floods, tornados, blackouts, and fracking?

How about lebensraum? We’ve got lots. If you don’t need anything from Canada, I’m curious why you would want it as the 51^st state? The current fifty seem barely able to hold together as it is. Your country can hardly any longer be called the United States. But there’s nothing as uniting as a good war, even a merely economic one! Provided it isn’t a civil war, of course.

Here’s a counter-proposal: the USA could become the 11^th province of Canada. Our provinces manage to co-exist in a civilized manner. Our parliamentary system is superior to your dysfunctional two-party system. It has centuries of proven success around the world. Our founding fathers and mothers had the good sense to leave yours to their grandiose follies back in ’76. They knew then that the colonist’s revolutionary spirit was just a ploy to evade taxes. That the insistence on keeping slaves was a formula for future disaster. That “all men are created equal” was merely the starting signal for a race to become the most unequal country on earth.

Wouldn’t you prefer our flag, which says it all? The symbolism of the maple leaf evokes a sense of connection to nature and seasons. The Canadian flag won’t change if America becomes the 11^th province. We don’t add stars to our flag as notches toward some manifest destiny. We don’t wave it frantically or post it on every house porch to prove our patriotism. Instead, you’ll be invited to assimilate peacefully and gratefully into our genteel way of life, without even having to cross a border. Our multiculturalism works, while your melting pot has become a seething cauldron. Our health care system is easy to use and nearly free, while yours is mind-bogglingly complex and impossibly expensive. We’d be happy to take you under our wing, to show you how it can be done. You don’t even have to fret about those Trudeaus anymore. What do you say?

It’s clear that you envy our nominal monarchy, since you fancy yourself a king. But we know that you are an upstart, who lacks the instinct of noblesse oblige. We see that MAGA means Make All Give Attention to Trump. Did you know that, before WW2, American school children recited the pledge of allegiance with the Nazi salute? Why not renew that ritual? After all, it’s good exercise to stretch high the arm; and the heart is the wrong destination for heavy hands. Ranks of your loyal minions could hail you with In Trump We Trust! While Canadians would just laugh at your histrionics, we could humour you as a figurehead, with typical Canadian politeness, as long as you don’t do any real mischief. After all, we are used to the monarchy as entertainment.

Oh, but it’s unfair that we spend our tax money on social programs instead of bombs? You’re tired of protecting us with your military might while we get a free ride? Isn’t it actually the other way around? Canada has long been your northern shield against the Red Menace, your buffer to keep the world safe for capitalism, your DEW line against the commie hordes. Haven’t you noticed that China and Russia are now world leaders of capitalism? If you don’t want to protect us from them, perhaps we could ally with them to protect us from you. If you don’t want to join us, then stick with your tariffs! We need to be more self-sufficient and less consumption-oriented anyway.

There seems plenty to worry about these days. And yet perhaps it has always been so. The difference is that now we seem to know more and more about which we can do less and less. That is a recipe for despair and complaint. In casual conversations, the topic frequently veers toward a strange attractor of negativity, drifting “naturally” toward a horizon of worrisome new threats.

What is the problem, anyway? Why are we so drawn hypnotically toward the negative? Perhaps it’s our animal heritage, where threats to the herd were of urgent common interest. Alarm calls alerted all to immanent predators or other lurking dangers. Otherwise, we were busy munching away with no need or time to comment on the tasty fruit or leaves, the splendid day. No news was good news, and goodness is not news when things are working well.

Of course, things have changed a bit since the savannah. Indeed, the so-called news is rehashed for us daily by professional purveyors of negativity. (When is the last time you heard a report that inspired cheer?) Threat elicits fear and impotent anger. Yet, despite the litany of disasters, the ark of Spaceship Earth is not yet sinking. Yes, it’s having growing pains and a problem with the air conditioning. A long time coming, the very fact that the now-blatant symptoms find their way into official recognition is a hopeful sign. It’s like our global brain, still groggy and confused, is finally arranging its synapses into something resembling consciousness, capable finally of planning ahead.

Perhaps it is oddly embarrassing to our sophisticated modernity to dwell on success stories, even more on dubious promises of good things to come. With reason, we’ve learned to mistrust ideologies and pollyannas. The critic has a far easier lot than the creative: for the one has a ready-made target while the other must invent from scratch what will inevitably become a target of criticism.

Here’s a simple remedy to the chronic imbalance: a negativity alarm. It operates like a smoke detector and makes an unmistakeable ear-shattering “bleep” when the gist of discussion enters the zone of whining. Of course, this does not guarantee a change of tone; it could result in silence. But it could clear the air and exercise the imagination to at least allow for something more creative.

Perhaps what is called for is not just an alarm but a whole installation—like a heating system. Instead of a thermostat, it would be regulated by a humour-stat. Like a heat pump, it would warm the cockles or cool the mood by extracting something useful from unlikely sources. Or maybe it should be like a dehumidifier, to perk up soggy spirits with dry humor. One can breathe easier in an atmosphere “where seldom is heard a discouraging word.”

Critics are necessary. But so are visionaries. We all have a bit of both in us, and the art is to use their services jointly. It’s indispensable to think critically. Yet analysis (literally, taking things apart) is merely destructive if not matched with putting them back together in a better whole. While that’s easier said than done, not everything needs to be said in order to be done. Sometimes silence is golden, the thought counts, and the simple kind gesture speaks volumes. Even when unspoken, the ayes can have it.

The young man who would become the Buddha had the leisure to dedicate himself fully to enjoyment—until he realized that most people lacked that opportunity. At age 29 he was belatedly overwhelmed by the realization that life entails suffering. He gave up wealth and privilege to find out what to do about that. His advice was to refuse attachment: cling to nothing and you will not be disappointed! However, that is not exactly a formula for enjoyment. And it is a tall order for natural creatures, whose very existence depends on desire, expectation and judgment.

It is no coincidence that the word ‘happiness’ contains the word ‘happen’, just as ‘enjoyment’ contains ‘joy’. In principle, one might find joy in whatever happens, whereas suffering comes from expectation. But when do we even know what is happening let alone what will happen? In many cases, what leads to disappointment (and mischief!) is a wrong idea about what is happening or of what should happen. A different spin can evoke a different emotional stance.

Perhaps the important question is not how full the glass is, but when does it matter? If you sit in the evening sun with a glass of wine, you can enjoy to the last drop the taste, the colour, the glints and refractions of light. This sort of aesthetic appreciation enjoys one’s own perception as a private “show.” One naturally looks outward for satisfactions, to the realm of hopes and disappointments. Yet, one can also focus on sensory awareness as an inner creation, a sort of artwork, indeed the lifetime work of a nervous system. The greatest show on earth takes place in your own brain!

Disappointment is still possible if the show doesn’t meet expectations. We are conditioned to evaluate. This consumer stance toward experience translates into economic and even sexual behaviour: shopping for better deals or flying from one partner to the next, to satisfy a bottomless hunger for the best experience. It matters less, or differently, when we grasp that we are not only subjects who take in and judge experience, but also agents who can do something useful with it—actors as well as audience. The audience is there to be entertained. But the actors have a different relationship to the play, the scenery, the theatre, the audience, and the other actors. The goal could be to do one’s best in each scene, not to have the best experience on offer. Ironically, the best experience may come of doing one’s best.

We recognize this difference from the outside. We are critical when we see a greedy-looking ego. We also know it from the inside, as a personal choice to be generous, to do good rather than receive it. Anxiety comes from self-concern: whether the right experiences will come to me and whether I can meet the situation. Of course, part of ego’s job is to manage experience. But this can be simply the part of doing good required to keep the local body alive and well. Another part of the job is to do good for others, and for the world. Concern for what one can do to improve their experience works out better for the world than self-concern alone—hence kindness has always been approved. The novel thing is that it may also work out better for oneself.

To paraphrase Jesus, satisfaction comes not from your input but from your output. Of course, to know what is objectively worth doing is tricky. It requires setting aside personal bias and refusing self-deception. For that sort of honesty, Socrates prescribed self-knowledge. Perhaps hemlock for him was just another moderately interesting experience. And we know how it went for Jesus.

Absdicate: to give up on exercise

Abjectivity: the ability to see things as they truly are

Academia: a deficiency of sense

Acadamnesia: refusal to take notes

Acrumbatic: a tidy eater

Adhockey: à la putt

Agraculture: making a bad situation worse

Agriphobia: fear of food

Ambleance: a slow emergency vehicle

Amfibulous: prone to lies

Arythmetic: no sense of timing

Asperoid: aimless wanderer

Autocrap: a bad dictator

Barbituate: tall thin blond with degree

Basturd: a real shit

Beleave: to abandon reality

Blackholism: politically correct nihilism

Burroughcat: professional go-fer

Buttress: a bustle

Carbaration: dietary bookkeeping

Catstration: fixation

Chicanery: Caribbean furniture

Clamor: molluscular love

Clandestiny: the tendency to be sidelined

Coargulation: debate

Condissention: disagreeing with everyone

Conflatulation: insincere compliment

Confusscation: much ado about nothing

Conglammorate: gone to the ladies’ room

Congradualization: what took you so long?

Constipatience: long on the toilet

Cordial: drink made from fermented string

Cornflakration: nothing in the cupboard but breakfast cereal

Corredespondence: discouraging news

Costic: fatally expensive

Crapology: a bad excuse

Crapsicle: frozen turd

Craptitude: ability to do poorly

Crapulence: abundance of schlock

Creamatorium: a cow

Creduless: cut off by the bank

Cretinaceous: era when idiots ruled

Crossword: an angry outburst

Damnation: an activity of beavers

Deadication: ceremony after burial

Deligent: a sophisticated food shopper

Descartography: philosophy of maps

Diognastician: a bringer of bad news

Dismay: year with 11 months

Dogmatic: a robot pet

Downing #10: British perfume

Dysturbanism: traffic noise

Elips: digital mouth

Enemia: trouble getting along

Exhaustion: death by tailpipe

Exxonerate: evade liability

Factitious: delightfully informative

Falsom: full of it

Fanity: popularity

Farticulate: to express oneself anally

Fartitude: strength of odour

Farty: flatulators celebrating

Fastenation: stick-to-itiveness

Felicity: a large town for cats

Fig Newton: an antigravity cookie

Flatulence: a plane in the ass

Flabbergasted: unable to lose weight

Fognosis: a very uncertain outcome

Follytician: political leader

Formication: how ants do it

Frogress: when the princess turns into a frog

Genuflex: to stretch the truth

Glab: unjustifiably cheerful

Godderel: trite hymns

Goofracious: prone to hilarity

Gorgeous: prone to binging

Graftitude: thanks for illegal services rendered

Grampy: old and cantankerous

Grindiose: too much coffee

Groundiose: unable to fly

Growtusk: a serious dental problem

Grueling: a stage of infancy

Harmacy: dispensary for bad drugs

Helography: map of the lower depths

Haploid: accident prone

Herm: gender neutral pronoun

Himn: praise to the Father

Honky: an impetuous driver

Hornia: rupture from too much sex

Horribilia: gothic kitsch

Huft: the size of a really deep breath

Hurticulture: deliberate maliciousness

Hypathetical: exceedingly piteous

Hypnocritic oath: any pledge of allegiance

Iambic parameter: a measure of existence

Incongruous: the American parliament

Incorgyable: ineligible to be Queen

Incutable: ugly

Indiginous: without fingers

Indigrestion: a sticking point

Infamished: unknown

Insex: opposite of outsex

Inupt: in over your head

Irreverend: an avid non-believer

Jockular: muscle-bound

Kantdenkerous: prone to philosophize

Lactation: fresh water swimming

Largess: bignitude

Leibschnitzel: breaded philosopher

Lassitude: effeminacy

Lumptitude: laziness

Macademia: where the professors are nuts

Magnafucation: prolific sex

Malicious: tasty but bad for you

Manic: crazy for men

Mathmactitude: precision

Mistermeaner: a bad guy

Nobodomy: death

Neckless: a bracelet

Neoplutonism: revival of the ninth planet

Neuterant: low food-value

No’bility: can’t-do

Nocturnal remission: getting back to sleep

Nomanclutcher: a lesbian

Obstrepreposterous: silly squared

Obtooth: dental emergency

Octopus: an eight-legged cat

Orgynize: really get things going

Origonal: the very first polygon

Ornrithology: the study of difficult birds

Outgroining: getting too big for your britches

Parafemalia: makeup and jewelry

Parcipitation: getting your hands wet

Pastime: expiry date

Pedantrick: cure for academia

Pedifile: a nail clipper

Penal code: gentlemanly behavior

Perpedickular: erect

Phallocene: the era of rule by men

Philososlur: a thinking drinker

Planetude: abundance of habitable worlds

Plattertude: love of vinyl

Poorification: economic entropy

Porgraphony: bad penmanship

Practicle: an atom of common sense

Predention: brushing your teeth

Prolaps: cuddly

Prolipic: inclined to kiss

Quastity: the ability of something to be whatever you want it to be

Radioactive: frequently tuned in

Ramification: frontal attack

Rebuttal: head banging

Rectaltude: rigidity

Rectitube: a laxative

Redundunce: one idiot too many

Relentrification: winding down

Renoun: redundant part of speech

Reverberation: another redundant part of speech

Roamantic: a serial lover

Sanserity: emptiness

Scrapture: religious graffiti

Scurriless: slow

Sendimental: telepathic

Sequester: the following semester

Sexpod: any six-legged creature

Sheroics: feminine bravado

Shurds: ancient baked turds

Sintax: penalty for misbehaviour

Skiptic: a stutterer

Slututation: an irreverent form of address

Sortified: correctly organized

Stiltify: stretch the legs

Strump: to carry on like you-know-who

Suck: past tense of sick

Surroyal: of or pertaining to the monarchy

Trumperance: political sobriety

Trumpette: a supporter of you-know-who

Turdgid: hard and shitty

Underrider: a horse

Youthfemism: preference for younger women

Zane: opposite of inzane

Zenophobia: fear of philosophy

 

Civilization is one example of biological life, which simply happened in ways it could on this planet. That’s one summary of our existential lot, quite at odds with the myths indulged over the ages concerning our origin, nature, and destiny. People have always had a story to account for their existence, for the world around them, for why it does not always meet their hopes and what they can do about it. Such stories are the heart of religions. The modern scientific story is less engaging—descriptive but not normative.

That is changing. While climate change is not the first existential threat to humanity, it is among the first to be addressed scientifically. Humanity is finally required to act globally, using scientific knowledge. Along with urgency come many questions. After all, what precisely about human life and civilization should be preserved? According to what criteria? We may agree about the threat, and even what needs to be done, without agreeing why it should be done—let alone actually doing it.

Every society has its mores and values, a vision of a properly lived life, often contradicting those of other groups. Imagine a rational and objective committee charged to sort through diverse cultural practices and values, to salvage the best of them and reject the worst, to define a species-level program for the future. What might that program look like?

The word utopia dismisses its own possibility, since it means literally “no place.” We know enough of history to be cynical. We know that ideals and idealizations never fit the whole of reality or perfectly. We doubt that anyone can be truly objective and rational. We now understand that humans are not gods but primates, simply part of the bizarre natural world that happened because it could. We are caught in a game we did not make, whose labyrinthine rules we scramble to grasp. We are not part of a plan—yet.

We struggle to find our own versions and visions of a proper world. Though not gods, we would be. This power to define how things shall be is asserted through technology, where we use the rules and elements of the external world to shape an environment more to our liking than raw nature. The raw nature within us, however, has hardly changed. Aside from breeding practices, the means to change it deeply has not existed until now. For good reason, the very notion of changing it has been taboo, since it thrusts upon us a task that has always been left to nature and accident: defining what we should be.

That is the crisis we face. As natural creatures, we could go the way of nature, dictated by forces beyond our control, resigned to the fate of 99% of species that ever existed. But we have this other side, which imagines mastering the forces that control us. We imagine also the possibility of eutopia, a world expressly designed for our well-being and happiness. Despite our hopes, neither God nor nature provided such a world. Whether it will ever exist is up to us.

We’ve bumbled along a middle path, asserting power for unworthy ends—using technology to cause as much harm as good; defending human rights and “right to life” while waging wars and failing to humanely curb population. We’ve likely passed the point where it seemed plausible to live “in balance” with nature. We’ve never lived for long in harmony with each other. In fact, these have never been our actual goals. Still, we can imagine them, and where there is truly a will there may be a way.

The problem of knowing what is true or real is as old as lying and deception. The modern threat of “deepfakes” began with Descartes, who understood that input from the senses to the brain could maliciously be falsified. He claimed solace in the belief that God would not permit such deception. Until recently, naturalists could take solace that natural selection would not permit it. But human beings have a long fascination with illusion, the unreal, the artificial, the unnatural—ultimately with the prospect of re-creating the world artificially. Consequently, more than half of humanity now live in cities. Even scientific modelling attempts controllable simulations of natural realities: to fake nature.

Digital technology presents easy access to demagogues and influencers—and also an endless arms race of one-upmanship, of coding and code-breaking, encryption and hacking, fake news and cumbersome attempts to defuse it. There is a growing market for protection against malware and now AI deep fakes. Where there is technology to falsify reality, there will surely be technology commercially available to counter that. This arms race has class implications, if only affluent consumers will be able to afford the truth.

So far, these battlegrounds remain largely outside the human nervous system, not yet directly hacked. But precisely because we still believe our senses, the surrogate world presented to them by digital technology is a theatre for manipulation, our perceptual Achilles heel. If our eyes do not deceive us, our screens easily can.

There is much hype about the creative potentials of AI, which includes the possibility to manipulate or fake any digitized content whatsoever. Deep fake video is already upon us, alongside increasingly realistic computer-assisted entertainment. With the creative power of digitation come nefarious use.

Given the power of computation—both as technology and as metaphor—the romance with simulation is perhaps inevitable. After all, our daily experience is a virtual reality created by the brain! If it’s all simulation anyway, why not play with the possibilities? Doesn’t art do that, deliberately blurring the distinction between real and imagined? That may well be half the human story. But, as Freud acknowledged, the other half is the reality principle, with a potentially lethal reality behind it. Individuals who cannot tell the difference between real and imagined don’t survive, or are locked up. Whole societies that cannot tell the difference go berserk.

If our digital interface with the world cannot be trusted, we are in real trouble. Already we live in an ethos of suspicion, with the plethora of would-be “authorities” enabled by social media. In the absence of collective received wisdom, reality is up for grabs. Though we’ve not quite reached that desperation where we dare not trust our screens at all, it may come soon.

We evolved to deal with bad actors face to face. Deception is old as the hills, but so is common sense and intuition based on personal contact. If digitation plays havoc with that confidence, it may be the downfall of civilization. Or, at least, of digital civilization. The hierarchical complexity of modern society depends on complex and energy-intense communication networks, vulnerable to hijacking or outright failure. Since our leaders mostly do not live among us, how can we trust that we are ever dealing with the real them? We could revert to personal contact—face to face rather than Facebook to Facebook. That would mean civilization devolving to a simpler organization. Things would go a lot slower, as they once did, which may be better than going rapidly to hell.