#33: Trust Fall
“Some people have a strong internal moral code. / Some people adhere to a collective one.” — “Good For Them” by Alisha Wexler, HAD.
I was listening to the latest episode of Between The Covers with Caren Beilin, and it's interesting to me that a ‘discordant clause’ can capture the multifaceted nature of life — a point Beilin makes, one that I agree with — but a discordant clause doesn't necessarily capture the heightened, cartoonish aspect of life. Which exists. Nor do we seem to realize that the simulation hypothesis — which Ezra Klein and Emily St. John Mandel discussed on Klein’s podcast, amongst other things — flows from what one could reasonably argue is just a misread of corporeal data, i.e., our brains are constantly translating and interpreting sights, smells, touch, balance, space, time, and more, and they’re sometimes doing this in a way that doesn’t make immediate intuitive sense, i.e., the visual image we receive of the world lands on our retinas upside down1.
I’d argue that these gaps both highlight and heighten the idea that communication is trust. The cliché of dismissing ‘business speak’ as a parade of jargon stems from the unease at seeing hermetically sealed language introduced that makes a point of saying trust isn’t the point — that the point is power. Even coded language still requires trust amongst those who use it.
But it also raises the question — what is the shape of our trust for the things outside language, where every form of language fails and the body can only guess?
What would happen if we asked every haiku ever written to name every silence they have ever known?
‘A Magician Up There’: How It Feels to Watch Ja Morant Fly / Someone turned Snoopy’s Plane into a real thing! / “I cannot break through imaginary glass.” / "Just that instant / when thinking becomes / too much / and go becomes maybe / becomes not becomes / flinch” / “I’m broke and eating chocolate ice cream out of a novelty helmet” / “We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.” / “The next queued delivery ends with a special comment requesting Thomas bury the contents of the order in the ground next to the gig’s front door.” /
Header image: “The land of miracles,” René Magritte, 1964, via.
I am wayyyy less interested about folks getting the simulation hypothesis ‘wrong’ than I am about other stuff — like, you want to go on and recite what you heard/saw on Lex Fridman’s podcast? Fine; live your best just-seen-The-Matrix life, my guy — but I like the way these points pair together.