PEACE. The small departs,
The great approaches.
Good fortune. Success.
The line statement is:
The wall falls back into the moat.
Use no army now.
Make your commands known within your own town.
Perseverance brings humiliation.
Although the first is positive and the second mostly negative, these bits of text (just seven and thirteen characters in the Chinese) give no clear answer, even in light of Frank’s specific question. While we might say that the first is vague (so many things could count as small or big), the issue with the second is its utter concreteness. What in Frank’s situation is the wall? What counts as his own town, and what would a command be? Frank focuses on the tension between the two outcomes, one good and one bad. His first insight is on how the two might relate:
Hell, he thought, it has to be one or the other; it can’t be both. You can’t have good fortune and doom simultaneously.
Or . . . can you?
Of course you can, and if all things are interconnected, you must! There’s no pure good or pure evil, no pure success or pure failure. So he immediately learns a basic lesson about complexity. But it isn’t just an abstract principle, as the question is: Which part of the situation is good and which bad? Frank’s first interpretation is that the jewelry business will succeed, but the very same actions will lead to a Third World War. Later, though, he brings about a different reading by returning to the complexity of the Changes itself. If the line at the top is changing, then the hexagram is on its way to becoming hexagram twenty-six, the Taming Power of the Great (Daxu). That too is a good outcome. The difficulties appearing in the line statement are necessary for transition to a better position. Good things arise through difficulties, just as difficulties arise from good fortune. Another lesson for living with complexity.
The meaning of the Changes results from active and creative engagement with the text, the concrete world, and our own mental state. The message we take from it can be revised again and again as the situation changes. When asking about the prospects for their business, Frank receives hexagram forty-seven, Oppression—Exhaustion (Kun ) (p. 102). The hexagram judgment is not quoted but it says:
Oppression. Success. Perseverance.
The great man brings about good fortune.
No blame.
When one has something to say,
It is not believed.
Tagomi receives the same hexagram at the same moment but finds nothing specific in it, just a general ill-omen (p. 102). Frank’s reading includes a moving line in the fifth place:
His nose and feet are cut off.
Oppression at the hands of the man with the purple knee bands.
Joy comes softly.
It furthers one to make offerings and libations.
What in Frank’s world is the man with the purple knee band? Who is punished by having his nose and feet cut off, and who gets the joy? Frank first decides that they will not get the money they need for the business. Then the money arrives. Frank reinterprets the situation and the lines. He concludes that it refers to some future trouble, but one he might not be able to recognize ahead of time. Childan receives the same hexagram and changing line, but in contrast to Frank or Tagomi, he is put at ease (p. 106). He has just given a gift to Paul and he now sees that making an offering will be helpful.
If the Changes is so open to interpretation, how does it guide? On the one hand, the Changes encapsulates general principles for dealing with complexity—bad results might come from what is good, outcomes lie not in our actions alone but in relationships, success can only come when the moment is right, the most important factors in a situation are often hidden. On the other hand, the process of interpretation requires attentiveness to the concrete complexity of the moment. The Changes forces us, as Childan says, to be yinnish. The characters ponder their situations, seeking the missing details that might map onto the images of the hexagram’s message. The interdependence of the question, situation, and hexagram requires continually attempting to construe the moment from different angles and with different frameworks.
Part of what we gain is self-knowledge. In the first appearance of the Changes in the novel, Frank asks how to deal with Wyndam-Matson and then whether or not he will see Juliana again (pp. 18–19). On the surface, neither outcome is helpful. The first is obvious and the second evades the question, telling him only that Juliana is wrong for him. Neither of these hexagrams are so explicit, though. The meaning is his own—the first hexagram confirms that he already knows what he needs to do and the second prompts him to recall something he tries to suppress. This conjunction of multi-perspectival reflection on the complexity of a situation along with widely applicable advice allows the Changes to function as a practical guide, even if we see the determination of the hexagram as just random. It gives no definitive answers, but definitive answers are more than we should expect.
The Inner Truth
One key point in the story might throw this interpretation of the role of the Changes into question. In the end we learn that the alternative reality depicted in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy was generated by the Changes itself. When Juliana asks the Changes why it did this, she receives hexagram sixty-one, “Inner Truth” (Zhongfu ) (pp. 246–48). The hexagram statement is never quoted in full, but is the following:
Inner truth. Pigs and fishes.
Good fortune.
It furthers one to cross the great water.
Perseverance furthers.
Juliana sees the message as unambiguous. It says the reality depicted in Abendsen’s novel is the truth, his alternative reality is the true reality. Are we to trust her? Juliana ignores any element of interpretation and evades the need to pause and ponder, but the function of the Changes in the novel and in practice shows that its messages are never so clear. Who are the pigs and fishes? What is the body of water that she (or we) should cross? Tagomi receives the very same hexagram, but, reflecting in the immediate aftermath of a heart attack, he sees its ambiguity:
What had the oracle last said? To his query in the office as those two lay dying or dead. Sixty-one. Inner Truth. Pigs and fishes are least intelligent of all; hard to convince. It is I. The book means me. I will never fully understand; that is the nature of such creatures. Or is this Inner Truth now, this that is happening to me?
I will wait. I will see. Which it is.
Perhaps it is both. (p. 231)
Dick himself said that he used the Changes in writing the novel (Vertex interview). Did he ask the same question and get the same answer? Which then is the truth—the alternative reality of The Man in High Castle or that of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? Both? We never know the meaning of the Changes with final certainty. What the Changes reveals, though, is the contingency and complexity of any given world.
Our reality, the alternative reality of High Castle, and the alternative alternative reality of Grasshopper are all possible. That we ended up in exactly this one depended on a complex web of seemingly insignificant events, including farts and butterflies, ultimately beyond our grasp or control.
The Inner Truth is that our world arose with the same contingency as the throwing down of a bunch of yarrow stalks. Under such conditions, the best we can do is crawl slowly onward, trying to be as attentive, creative, and adaptable as possible.
16
How Close Is That World to Our World?
BRETT COPPENGER
The Man in the High Castle asks us to imagine a dystopian world. Dystopian worlds stand in stark contrast to utopian worlds: places where things could not be better. A dystopian world is supposed to strike us as frightening or scary (as opposed to the bliss of utopia).
If the Second World War had not gone our way, if the evil Axis had won the war, what scary world would we be living in? The Man in the High Castle aims to explore this scenario. The premise of the show is not what’s true in the real world (our world, where we defeated the Nazi
scum), but what the world would look like if the Nazis had won.
The Man in the High Castle and Possible Worlds
The Man in the High Castle is an exploration of what philosophers call a possible world.
As I write this chapter I am sitting at a bar, typing on my computer. That I am sitting at a bar typing on my computer is what is true of the actual world (our world: the real world).
However, that these things are true need not be the case. It’s easily conceivable that I could have chosen not to type this chapter right now, or even, not to come to this bar right now. What each of these situations describes is other ways things could have worked out.
That I am at a bar is a contingent truth—meaning that it is true, but it didn’t have to be that way. A contingent truth can be contrasted with a necessary truth. Contingent truths are those where we can conceive that they might not have been true. There is no absurdity in supposing that something else might have happened instead. Necessary truths are those where we just can’t conceive of them not being true.
That I am wearing a white shirt is a contingent truth. It’s true that I’m wearing a white shirt—take my word for it—but it’s easy to imagine me wearing a black shirt. However, that every triangle is three-sided is a necessary truth: it could not have been otherwise, we can’t imagine a triangle with four sides—that four-sided thing you’re thinking of isn’t a triangle, it’s a quadrilateral!
That I am typing this chapter is a contingent truth; it did not have to be that way. That I exist at all is a contingent truth, it did not have to be that way—I might possibly never have existed.
Each different potential outcome of how things are represents the many different possible worlds that could have existed. However, it seems to most of us, only one of those possible worlds is also real: the actual world. In fact, woven into the very fabric of the Man in the High Castle storyline is the continual tease of other possible worlds. Randall, the prisoner in the cell next to Frank Frink, describes the mysterious newsreel films being collected, showing the world not as it is, but as it could be—showing different possible worlds.
The Proximity of the Man in the High Castle World
What makes The Man in the High Castle especially interesting is not just thinking about a possible world where the Nazis celebrate VA Day. Instead, we’re asked to explore how close this fictional dystopia is to our world. Trying to cash out how close a possible world is to the actual world is difficult. One way of seeing the idea is to think about the number of truths that would differ between the real world and the possible world.
For example, the person sitting next to me in this bar has a black shirt on. In one very close possible world, everything about the actual world is the same, except she’s wearing a green shirt. So there could have been a world that’s exactly the same as our world, except for this woman’s different shirt choice this morning. That possible world seems very close to our actual world—the difference is very minor. In another possible world, we can imagine this woman’s parents never meeting. So this woman wouldn’t exist and couldn’t be sitting next to me in the bar. The world where this woman’s parents never met is further from the actual world (much more different) than the world where this woman merely chose a different color shirt this morning.
What makes The Man in the High Castle so exciting is trying to figure out just how close the fictional dystopian world really is to our actual world. The fictional world seems to be very much like the actual world. Both worlds revolve around human relationships on the planet Earth. Both worlds have the same physical laws and most of the same human history. In fact, as far as we can tell, both worlds are identical up until some point in the 1930s. We’re left to wonder exactly how and when the two worlds became different.
There are some clues as to what’s different. We know a nuclear bomb was dropped by the Nazis that fundamentally changed the course of the war. We know that America lost the war and the Nazis and Japanese won. We know this is why VA day is celebrated.
However, we also know there are a lot of similarities between the actual world and the fictional world. In the fictional world Frank still has a sister named Laura. In the fictional world there’s still a San Francisco and a New York (of course, in the fictional world these have ceased to be cities in the United States!).
Knowledge in the Real World
Traditionally, philosophers have thought that knowledge is “justified true belief.” Just because someone believes something, does not mean they know it: some of our beliefs are false. But just because someone has a true belief does not mean they have knowledge: the person may have arrived at their true belief simply by chance. Think of someone who believes that the US president is in New York City simply because they consulted a magic eight-ball and it told them the president is in New York City. Such a person doesn’t really know the president is in New York City, even though they believe it and it happens to be true. For them to know it, their belief has to be, not just true by chance, but true and justified. So, the argument goes, some kind of justification—such as good evidence or good reason to believe it—is needed for a true belief to qualify as knowledge.
Recently the theory that knowledge is justified true belief has fallen on hard times. A number of philosophers, beginning with Edmund Gettier (“Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”), have pointed out that you can have a belief that is true and justified, and yet still not knowledge.
Here’s an example of a Gettier-type problem (though this one was put forward not by Gettier but by Alvin Goldman). Consider the (imaginary) example of Barn Façade County. Barn Façade County is part of an extensive movie set. In Barn Façade County most of what appear to be real barns are simply barn façades. The producers of the movie wanted a landscape with a lot of barns, so they constructed a lot of barn façades, since it was a lot cheaper to construct a lot of barn façades than to build a lot of real barns. There are some real barns in the landscape, but only one in ten of what look like barns are real barns. The other nine out of ten are just barn façades.
Now imagine the following scenario:
As Joe Blake drives from New York to the Neutral Zone he naturally forms lots of beliefs about the world around him. He believes the air smells clean and refreshing, he believes the road is open and smooth, he believes he will not be caught with the film, and he casually believes that the structure directly to his right is a very nice barn. However, as it turns out, unbeknownst to him, he is actually driving through Barn Façade County. But by an unlikely coincidence, the structure directly to his right really is a very nice barn, a real barn and not a barn façade.
In this case, it seems as if Joe’s belief is justified: he’s looking (in broad daylight) at the structure to his right. If any of our perceptual beliefs are ever justified, then surely this one is! In addition, the belief is also true. As it turned out the structure is a real barn! However, many philosophers tend to agree that in that kind of case Joe would not know that the thing to his right is a really nice barn. Mere chance played too crucial a role in this scenario.
Remember, the vast majority of the barns in question are not really barns, they are barn façades. If he had pointed in any other direction, we can imagine, the thing that he would have pointed at would have been a barn façade. Joe was rather lucky to have actually pointed at the one thing in the vicinity that was a real barn.
Robert Nozick’s Account of Truth Tracking
According to Nozick (Philosophical Explanations) knowledge requires meeting a very specific set of conditions. According to Nozick, “To know that p is to be someone who would believe it if it were true, and who wouldn’t believe it if it were false.” Nozick’s analysis of knowledge can be boiled down to the following four necessary conditions where p = some proposition, S = some subject:
Condition 1: p is true.
Condition 2: S believes that p.
Condition 3: not-p → not-(S believes that p).
Condition 4: p → S believes th
at p.
Conditions 1 and 2 are straightforward enough. My knowledge that today is Friday requires that it actually is Friday (the proposition is true), and that I believe it’s Friday (the proposition is believed.) The remaining two conditions express subjunctive conditionals; if something were the case what would happen. Condition 3 requires that our beliefs be safe, If p weren’t true, S wouldn’t believe that p. Condition 4 requires sensitivity, If p were true, S would believe that p.
Nozick uses the idea of possible worlds in an effort to help explain safety and sensitivity. Thus, to understand condition 3 we need only consider the closest possible world where p is false. If, in that world S would not believe that p is true, then S’s belief is safe. Additionally, to understand condition 4 we need only consider the closest possible worlds where p is true. If in that world, S would believe p, then S’s belief is sensitive.
Nozick’s Account in Action
Nozick’s account is aimed at capturing the intuition that says this should not be an instance of knowledge. To see why Nozick’s account delivers this result, one need only consider the closest possible world where it is not the case that the thing in front of me is a very nice barn. Clearly, in that world, the thing I would be pointing out would be a barn façade (remember, this is the closest possible world: we’re trying to imagine the scenario most like the scenario in the example except for that one detail). However, if the thing in front of me was a barn façade, crucially, I would still believe that the thing in front of me was a very nice barn.
And so, since in the closest possible world where the thing I believe is false, it would still be the case that I would believe the same thing. As a result, my belief would be a violation of condition 3, and thus, would not qualify as knowledge. Put another way, in the closest possible worlds where p is false my beliefs do not change, so my belief is not safe. In Nozick’s terms, whatever it is that is that’s causing my belief in this world, that thing is not tracking truth in close possible worlds, and as a result the belief fails to be knowledge.
The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy Page 17