The Truman Show
The Truman Show, 1999, is a rich and thought-provoking source of metaphor (imagine here that I pause to watch the whole movie again ...)
The Truman Show Delusion is a variety of paranoia where the sufferer imagines himself to be "on stage" all the time - the centre of a grand performance. I have tasted this one myself in the early days of what came to be called "bipolar illness" - a rather useless term that has come to refer just about any dislocation in the "normal" way we feel about ourselves and our relationship to "reality". I'm all better now, thank you, but my earlier struggles have taught me that there are many alternatives to what is called a "normal" frame of mind.
Almost everyone has a version of the Truman Show Delusion. We all feel ourselves to be the centre of the universe. That's an illusion created by our brains. If that function is not working, we can have "out of body" experiences. But the "normal" illusion (that we are this particular lump of protein) creates a lot of problems, most notably the feeling that what is going on around us is mainly about us.
The movie features another key character in the delusion -- the Godlike creator of the show who is watching over us from birth. God is an essential character in the Truman Show Delusion, lending by His very presence, plausibility to the idea that life - your life - means something, even if you don't know what.
Challenging this illusion is one task of Zen: to let go of "I, me and mind", even for a few minutes, and experience the world as it is, or at least, as it is when not viewed through the lens of our own desires, plans, prejudices, hopes and fears. Of course, without the illusion of self, the need for the ghostly creator also vanishes.
I keep coming back to another metaphor in the Truman story: the bubble universe that Truman lives in and ultimately escapes (sorry, plot spoiler). It's easy to imagine that we live in such a bubble and that there is a world outside to be explored if only we had the means to find the "wall" and punch through. This idea is supported by the illusion mentioned above: that we are in our bodies and therefore somehow inside the "bubble" of the Universe.
Others feel that there is no wall. Given the time and the technical ingenuity, we can eventually discover all the secrets of the Universe. Such optimism is captured in the "Theory of Everything" that physicists seek - one master "explanation" for all the forces in the Universe - an exhaustive inventory of what can be.
Something strange happened in the early 20th century. First Einstein showed that it is not possible to remove the observer from any description of what is happening. There is no "godlike" point of view, no absolute "platform" from which to describe the Universe. Then the same problem arose in Quantum Mechanics, in a far more troubling form. Quantum Mechanics predicts the result of experiments in astonishing precision, but has nothing whatever to say about what is "really going on". It only describes interpretation of results of experiments. Again, the observer cannot be subtracted from the theory. This is made even more troubling when certain results, though predictable, make no logical sense. Particles do not "have" properties, they are not "in" any specific position. They only produce predictable results when subjected to an experiment by an observer. What is going on between observations is cloaked in mystery. This "cloak" seems to be a fundamental aspect of reality, or, if you will, experimental proof that Truman's wall has no secret door.
Of course, there are many who believe that "outside" the bubble of human experience, there is a whole "supernatural" world. Some would say that this world is the real world and what we experience is (like the Truman world) just a stage. The true meaning of experience is only known outside of the bubble. Such people generally claim to have some special knowledge of the view from outside the bubble - the "God" perspective if you will. For others, such as myself, such claims are paradoxical at best (claiming to know what is unknowable by definition) and unimaginative fairy tales at worst.
To me, the Zen experience takes me to the wall, but no further. I must accept the limitations of being human and on a more fundamental level, being an observer. As a human observer, there is only so much I can know and experience. What I can do is challenge the hard-wired assumptions that come with a human form. As a human, I have a strong tendency to build a bubble within the bubble, to devote my attention and energies to maintenance of the illusion of "self". Keeping with the metaphor, then, the goal is to make the inner bubble as transparent as possible.
If we return to the Truman metaphor, this might be like escape from the inner bubble to explore the "real" world. Or not. It's just a metaphor after all ...
The Truman Show Delusion is a variety of paranoia where the sufferer imagines himself to be "on stage" all the time - the centre of a grand performance. I have tasted this one myself in the early days of what came to be called "bipolar illness" - a rather useless term that has come to refer just about any dislocation in the "normal" way we feel about ourselves and our relationship to "reality". I'm all better now, thank you, but my earlier struggles have taught me that there are many alternatives to what is called a "normal" frame of mind.
Almost everyone has a version of the Truman Show Delusion. We all feel ourselves to be the centre of the universe. That's an illusion created by our brains. If that function is not working, we can have "out of body" experiences. But the "normal" illusion (that we are this particular lump of protein) creates a lot of problems, most notably the feeling that what is going on around us is mainly about us.
The movie features another key character in the delusion -- the Godlike creator of the show who is watching over us from birth. God is an essential character in the Truman Show Delusion, lending by His very presence, plausibility to the idea that life - your life - means something, even if you don't know what.
Challenging this illusion is one task of Zen: to let go of "I, me and mind", even for a few minutes, and experience the world as it is, or at least, as it is when not viewed through the lens of our own desires, plans, prejudices, hopes and fears. Of course, without the illusion of self, the need for the ghostly creator also vanishes.
I keep coming back to another metaphor in the Truman story: the bubble universe that Truman lives in and ultimately escapes (sorry, plot spoiler). It's easy to imagine that we live in such a bubble and that there is a world outside to be explored if only we had the means to find the "wall" and punch through. This idea is supported by the illusion mentioned above: that we are in our bodies and therefore somehow inside the "bubble" of the Universe.
Others feel that there is no wall. Given the time and the technical ingenuity, we can eventually discover all the secrets of the Universe. Such optimism is captured in the "Theory of Everything" that physicists seek - one master "explanation" for all the forces in the Universe - an exhaustive inventory of what can be.
Something strange happened in the early 20th century. First Einstein showed that it is not possible to remove the observer from any description of what is happening. There is no "godlike" point of view, no absolute "platform" from which to describe the Universe. Then the same problem arose in Quantum Mechanics, in a far more troubling form. Quantum Mechanics predicts the result of experiments in astonishing precision, but has nothing whatever to say about what is "really going on". It only describes interpretation of results of experiments. Again, the observer cannot be subtracted from the theory. This is made even more troubling when certain results, though predictable, make no logical sense. Particles do not "have" properties, they are not "in" any specific position. They only produce predictable results when subjected to an experiment by an observer. What is going on between observations is cloaked in mystery. This "cloak" seems to be a fundamental aspect of reality, or, if you will, experimental proof that Truman's wall has no secret door.
Of course, there are many who believe that "outside" the bubble of human experience, there is a whole "supernatural" world. Some would say that this world is the real world and what we experience is (like the Truman world) just a stage. The true meaning of experience is only known outside of the bubble. Such people generally claim to have some special knowledge of the view from outside the bubble - the "God" perspective if you will. For others, such as myself, such claims are paradoxical at best (claiming to know what is unknowable by definition) and unimaginative fairy tales at worst.
To me, the Zen experience takes me to the wall, but no further. I must accept the limitations of being human and on a more fundamental level, being an observer. As a human observer, there is only so much I can know and experience. What I can do is challenge the hard-wired assumptions that come with a human form. As a human, I have a strong tendency to build a bubble within the bubble, to devote my attention and energies to maintenance of the illusion of "self". Keeping with the metaphor, then, the goal is to make the inner bubble as transparent as possible.
If we return to the Truman metaphor, this might be like escape from the inner bubble to explore the "real" world. Or not. It's just a metaphor after all ...
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