The title of this feature, “rEALITY iS wHAT yOU mAKE iT,” is a fun concept to work with, but I have to wonder sometimes about how others are handling this craft.
At some point, I have to consider the wisdom of one of this century’s great fools -- that you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had -- and concede that I may have to go through life with the reality I have, and not the one I wish I could make. It would help if this reality being forced on me made more sense.
For instance, I’m told that somehow evolution and intelligent design are mutually exclusive. But what I see is both, that everything was designed to evolve. Questions of if there is a cosmic blueprint and who drew it up are not science but philosophy. Science’s job is to figure out the design. We don’t obsess over who exactly wrote the Rosetta Stone, its mere existence unlocked knowledge for us, and that’s what the pursuit was all about.
Yet I’m told if I am to accept the designer, I am limited in explaining how he worked. I must accept a translation of ancient oral legend intended for barely-literate nomads as precise literal truth, yet presume that the product of the designer, and thus that holy designer himself, lies. I must treat my Bible as a spell book in which if any word is accidentally erased, the deity within dies.
Remember, gays are free to be themselves as long as they aren’t homosexual. And freedom of religion means you can honor the Lord Jesus Christ in any way you see fit -- or be Jewish.
I also have to contend with a society in love with the rule of law while it easily ignores ordinances large and small. As we drive seventy-five on the fifty-five mph freeway loop, we ask each other where people get the idea that they can just disobey laws they don’t like. We set an impractical drinking age and complain about the problems that follow. We believe that prohibition doesn’t work for booze, but will work fine for everything else. We bitch about illegal immigration as we tip the Mexican busboy. We listen to people who say they believe in limited government and personal responsibility convince us that the government should control and punish the content of television, movies, and video games, and that women should have no control over their bodies. (Let’s pause at this moment for another ED drug ad.) We yawn while the President suspends habeas corpus and approves torture -- after all, it’s to be used on other people, not us (right?).
We hold elections where we try to pick the person who is lying to us the least or whose lies sound better, letting ourselves believe that millionaires can identify with us common folks. That they will actually “tax the rich.” That they actually care about our children when they’re not in a photo op. That in spite of insurers and pharma companies’ heavy lobbying, and the fact you can carry health insurance and still go bankrupt from a major illness, they will fix health care.
No wonder my best times are with geeky friends in a world of swords, dungeons, starships, Klingons, Jedi, Browncoats, vampires, faux Pirates, and LOLcats. As the Rob Balder/Tom Smith song “Rich Fantasy Lives” declares, we’re selecting from a vast menu of alternate realities. We’ve “seen yours, and yours doesn’t cut it.”
But sooner or later, I have to come down to Earth, this world made by fools and the fools who follow them. I have to actually take some of them seriously. I have to pay the bills.
Oh, heck with it -- Where are my ruby slippers?
