Archive for the ‘Buddhism’ tag
Purpose: To Rehabilitate Reality through Metafiction
It might seem that I am trying to demonstrate the unreality of reality. Many others have done so, including Taoists, Hindus and Buddhists. Jews, Christians and Muslims, following Plato’s lead, think God’s ideal realm is realer than this world. Religious people are not the only ones to call reality an illusion. Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” and Jacques Derrida suggested, “There is nothing outside the text.”
Instead, my purpose is to show that the distinction between fiction and reality is artificial, created by language. Fiction and reality both exist as concepts within the same linguistic structure; symbols and stories are essential parts of our reality system. Everything we talk and write about is fiction, yet fiction has material existence, therefore it is real. Separating fiction from reality only drives us, like Don Quixote, to narrative madness.
Recognizing how fiction is our reality will not cure our insanity, but the realization will give us more freedom to reconstruct reality. The purpose of speech and writing is after all is not to record or comment on the world, as the Greeks suggested, but to act upon the world, to shape it and make sense of it. On the other hand, most of our actions are symbolic, referencing linguistic roles. When I stand before a class, I am saying, “I am the teacher. Listen to me.” A whole scene is suggested by the placement of my body. Speech is action and action is language. To understand what we are doing and saying, we must recognize that language and action are part of the same symbolic system.
Why Meta Matters
Metafiction is the narrative quest for narrative, an attempt through stories to understand what stories are.
Why do stories matter? Because we are stories.
The Truthiness of Apples in a Basket
Absolute truth: My dad wrote in response to my blog, “There are countless absolute truths. Example: Two apples added to a basket containing two apples will make a total of four apples in the basket.” I agree absolutely. I believe in baskets and apples. I believe in reality. (What a ridiculous statement!)
Subjective truth: Let me take out the “I believe–” and say, “Reality exists.” (Was I able to remove the “I believe–”? I wrote the statement “Reality exists,” so it must be what I believe. Strangely enough the existence of reality has been in question for quite some time, maybe even some of you readers doubt reality.)
The Magic Trick: Fiction is Reality!
Now that I have ripped up the book, I hand it back to you whole. I told you all writing is fiction, now I tell you all fiction is real. A magic trick!
As all of you know, magic tricks are fake. Alas, how we regret learning that the magic trick which put us into ecstasies of delight was false. Our father teaches us the important lesson that the magician was performing tricks to entertain us. We do not believe our dad until he shows us how the trick was done, and then we realize begrudgingly that the magician was a liar. Yet we hold out the hope that the next magician will have some real power. We watch carefully trying to catch him at his tricks, but we hope, nevertheless, oh how we hope, to find one trick that cannot be figured out. We wait for the day when there will be magic, real magic! We are ready at any moment to believe.
