I just realized why I blog so much, and write so much generally: I am creating worlds within which the world makes sense. I am creating artificial worlds, logical worlds, mathematical worlds, where A leads to B in an organic way, and everything interacts harmoniously.
This, as a sort of dissociative reaction to my own inner and continual turmoil. The klaxon is always sounding, but I find peace in making rational arguments and saying what I have every reason to believe are intelligent things. It softens everything. It helps. It is a balm of sorts.
And it is a driven balm. I am not just tempted by these other worlds, but in no small measure regularly pushed into them. I will find myself in existential doubt about some concrete task I need to complete–as indeed at this very moment–and find myself at the computer typing something or other.
I am getting very small, very momentary, fragments of relaxation. And it feels really, really good. My task at the present is figuring out how to integrate these moments into my overall emotional ecology as it has evolved under varied and often conflicting pressures.
It is an interesting task.
But I will comment generally that I think much of human life consists in this. I think we NEED it, and that it is natural for all of us. I push it too far, but that does not mean it has no place.
Rituals of all sorts are an alternative world. Games–sports–are alternative worlds. In a game the rules can be obeyed perfectly. There is someone RIGHT THERE to enforce them. Life is often not at all like that, and countless unpunished crimes of all sorts, from rudeness and thoughtlessness up to murder, happen every day.
Religion itself is a sort of alternative world too. It consists in ideas about things we cannot in general perceive for ourselves.
The path home, though, consists in existing fully in the present, and learning to see what had been invisible, and feel what had existed in cold, cold ice.
And I might put it this way: our alternative worlds are always poor simulations of Reality. We sense what is out there, but have a hard time finding our way back. I don’t know why. If we are honest, none of us REALLY know what all this is about, or where we are going.
This can be a source of terror, or curiosity and delight. And no doubt the whole thing is much better if we relax, and stop trying to impose demands on a world which rarely accepts them, and almost never without hard work on our part.