Relative Necessity

“I was grateful to Newt for calling it to my attention, for the quotation captured in a couplet the cruel paradox of Bokononist thought, the heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality, and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it (Vonnegut 284)”.

I do not think that the premises of this paradox are necessarily true, nor that both halves of this paradox are necessarily heartbreaking.

If the first half is true, then the second half must be. If I must lie about reality, there is a lies layer, and a “reality” layer; however, the reality layer is also subjective, as humans cannot know objective reality. Thus, assuming the first half is true, I am contriving beliefs atop other convictions. Therefore, moving into the second half, it IS impossible for me to lie, because I am telling myself things while knowing that contradictory things are true. The coexistence of contrary realities in my mind renders complete self-deception impossible.

However, at least theoretically, the first half of the paradox is not necessarily true. I could have perfect conviction of a reality. In such a case, there would be no contrivance atop a subjective reality, but only a subjective reality. This state of belief would undo the second half, because lying about reality would be possible, because the lie is exactly the reality.

While I can conceive of this exception to the Bokononist paradox, I submit that certain scientific and/or religious “facts” are inculcated to us so powerfully that we all live in primarily involuntary subjective realities. Therefore, when we decide to integrate beliefs into our realities, they are bound to be contradicted by elements of our pre-existing “knowledge”. This entails a co-presence of “lies” and “reality” which renders the Bokononist paradox subjectively true.

As to whether both halves of the paradox are heartbreaking, I assert that the “necessity of lying about reality” is heartbreaking, as long as “reality” is inherently heartbreaking. If my reality is that the world is “objectively” meaningless, it is heartbreaking for me to try to convince myself otherwise, because the second half of the paradox determines that I cannot lie completely. However, the “impossibility of lying about” reality is not, at least in my case, heartbreaking. “Reality”, or what I have come to believe is fact, sets a baseline plane of existence, a mundane paradigm of life, which enables me to transcend something via my “lies”. I can feel that the world is objectively meaningless, but that my life has meaning, and the relative stature of my existence fulfills me. I can only be fulfilled when I feel above, special, magical, good, honorable, important: all of these sensations are relative. There must be something less for there to be something more. My subjective reality is less, my uplifting lies are more, and that is not heartbreaking, rather, it is why I am an extremely happy person.

There it is: extremely happy person. Relative to whom? I suppose it the conceptual beings in my reality whom I lie myself ahead of.