The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy

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The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy Page 19

by Bruce Krajewski


  What if Tagomi Influenced Our World?

  Now the question remains whether the TV show Man in the High Castle world holds up to the requirements of point #6, which says that a possible world must be causally isolated from other possible worlds (p. 78). This means that in any world, if an event A causes an event B, and in the closest possible worlds to that world, A does not occur, neither does B. For example, if reading this article causes you to read more philosophy, in the closest possible world that doesn’t have your Doppelgänger reading my Doppelgänger’s article, your Doppelgänger wouldn’t read more philosophy.

  Now, if an individual causes event B in world one, the closest possible worlds wouldn’t have that same individual causing event B. By closest possible world, I simply mean possible worlds that resemble the actual world in as closely as possible and with the fewest changes. For example, if in the actual world, Abendsen wrote The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which incited political unrest, then this political unrest cannot spread to the possible world since the possible world must remain unaffected by the actual world.

  Since Tagomi has had no two-way interaction in Season One of The Man in the High Castle, it’s safe to assume that he hasn’t been the cause of any events in our actual world. However, he holds a position of power in The Man in the High Castle world, and can presumably cause a great number of events. What happens, then, if he starts causing events using the knowledge he gains from the visit to our actual world? This may be similar to Abendsen in the books, since it is implied that he uses the I Ching to somehow glean information about the truth of how things ought to have been (the Allies winning the war) in order to write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.

  Mr. Tagomi, as the trade minister of the Pacific States of America, can influence the course of events when interacting with the Reich. What if it were the case that Tagomi used the things he saw in his vision to cause certain events in the Man in the High Castle world? Would this transgress criterion #6? It seems to me that this does not transgress point #6, if there is no two-way interaction between him and our actual world. His using this information to influence The Man in the High Castle events would be the same as anyone starting to influence events in their own world using spiritual revelations or even through information they learn about themselves through dreams.

  The book version of Tagomi does have two-way interactions with members of the other world. By speaking to each of the members of our actual world, Tagomi seems to be the cause of these events. Here, I’m defining events as loosely as possible—the police officer, passerby, and man in the coffee shop simply speaking where they may not have spoken were Tagomi not present counts as an event in itself. These events would mean that both the Man in the High Castle world has Tagomi, event A, cause conversations with individuals, event B. The actual world referred to in The Man in the High Castle, then, is no longer causally isolated from The Man in the High Castle, leading us to believe that the two worlds in the book are actually part of the same world where The Man in the High Castle is one “island world” and the representation of our actual world is another “island world.”

  What if Tagomi Really Did Exist?

  I left the discussion on point #1 until last, since the notion of asserting, as David Lewis does, that the Man in the High Castle world represented in the TV show is a really existing world may seem odd. It’s hard to suspend belief on the fact that this is a TV show, and is so clearly fiction.

  At the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned the if-then statement: “If the Allies had lost World War II, then North America would have been ruled by Germany and Japan.” We can use possible worlds to assess the truth of this statement; if in the closest possible world to our actual world where the Allies had lost World War II, North America had been ruled by Germany and Japan, the statement would turn out to be true. To be close to our world, the other world should have the least amount of differences as possible, and the differences that do exist should be plausible. It certainly seems to me that if the Allies had lost World War II, it’s possible that North America would have been taken over by Germany and Japan. The possible outcome of North America being ruled by Germany and Japan were the Allies to have lost World War II exists. It’s this existence of the possible outcome that we can refer to when thinking about how exactly possible worlds exist. If we think that the if-then statement above is true, then we must think that the world where such a thing occurs exists.

  There are some philosophers, called “strict modal realists,” who would say that these possible outcomes in the form of worlds really exist in time and space in the same way that our world exists. Remember that we wouldn’t be able to interact with this world (points #5 and #6), if it’s truly a possible world. In this manner, the world and individuals represented in The Man in the High Castle may really exist in the same way as our actual world, assuming that watching the TV show that represents this world doesn’t actually count as us interacting with the world, it could even be a possible world that makes the statement, “If the Allies had lost World War II, then North America would be ruled by Germany and Japan” true.

  Mini Worlds

  The Man in the High Castle gives us an excellent chance to think about the “What if . . .” scenario of the Allies losing World War II. David Lewis presents a few criteria for a world to be considered a possible world, and the TV representation of The Man in the High Castle can represent an actual possible world with Tagomi as a key individual in this world because it doesn’t go against any of Lewis’s criteria.

  The book version of the Man in the High Castle world, however, fails Lewis’s criteria of world isolation since Tagomi really does interact with members of the new American-led world he visits. This does leave the option for the book in its entirety to represent a new possible world—one with two mini worlds, the mini–Man in the High Castle world and the mini-representation of our actual world where Tagomi visits.

  I have only been considering Season One. Tagomi’s actions in the middle of Season Two certainly change the TV show’s classification as a possible world, so it may no longer be the case that the world presented in The Man in the High Castle can make our opening if-then statement true, and the world we think of when we think about the alternate possibility of World War II wouldn’t be The Man in the High Castle.

  VI

  A Video Darkly

  18

  How to Deal with Reality when We’re not Built To

  T.J. ZAWADZKI, STEPHANIE J. ZAWADZKI, AND MACIEJ A. CISOWSKI

  We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.

  —Baynes in The Man in the High Castle, p. 236

  Philip K. Dick’s writing can be infuriatingly confusing. It feeds readers many ambiguous signals that convey no real sense of closure—and The Man in the High Castle is no exception. Perhaps bewildering the audience is the intent, not a side-effect.

  We crave closure for many of the questions we find in Dick’s books, and he consistently denies us any real sense of arriving at definite answers. Lingering confusion and the gnawing feeling that the true nature of reality is just out of our grasp have been the dominant themes of both Dick’s narratives and philosophical and psychological studies for decades. Together, they all attest to how important understanding and embracing confusion can be in the business of dealing with reality.

  Detecting Disrupting the Obvious

  Much of Dick’s writing can be read as an internal dialogue, telling the story of a person who is venturing into the outer-most limits of his ability to understand reality. Through his ventures, Dick shows us just how universally limited human cognition actually is, and how he just can’t seem to shake the feeling that his brain may not have his best interest at heart.

  Dick and his characters are unusual, statistically speaking. A person stuck in an uncomfortable state of indecision and confusion is considered psychologically anomalous.
Philosophy begins in wonder, claimed Socrates, but most of us effectively avoid wondering too much about the overwhelming world around us. We are great at building simplified models of the world that fit neatly within the bounds of our comprehension.

  There’s a mountain of evidence that the vast majority of people are excellent at both ignoring and misrepresenting reality. In The Man in the High Castle, characters’ lives are shaken when those simplified models come into question. As the characters’ coping strategies break down, they react differently to the signs that another, parallel reality might exist. What ties these various reactions together are the characters’ efforts to rebuild reality into a single, predictable, and sensible whole.

  Cognition Is Easy Hard

  The world we live in is far more complex than any one person can comprehend. In the mid-twentieth century, psychologists (and, apparently, Dick) were simultaneously inspired by the boom in technology and horrified by the crimes of the recent two world wars. And so, they sought the limits of human understanding and moral decision making. They didn’t have to look nearly as far as they had hoped.

  Psychologists quickly discovered just how much information our brains are tasked with processing and how poorly they cope with funneling that information into our consciousness. Over the decades, thousands of psychological experiments have demonstrated the surprisingly constrained limits of human understanding. Our brains have incredibly short attention spans and an extremely tight bottleneck through which they ingest the world’s information. It turns out that our brains are fundamentally lazy to a point where research psychologists started calling the human mind a cognitive miser. Nearly every study seemed to uncover a new way that our brains prevent themselves from spending energy to, you know, think.

  People are not sponges that passively absorb all the information they’re exposed to. To be able to process and react to our highly complex world in a meaningful way, we need social and cognitive programs—a kind of brain software that helps us organize and filter information. The conditioning we experience as children (in addition to some basic programming that we receive right out of the box) teaches us how to perceive and understand (and distort) the world, allowing us to become functioning members of society.

  Patting ourselves on the heads and stroking our bellies at the same time is already a tall order for our brains—not to mention keeping us upright citizens who salute the proper flag and reasonably respond to infinitely complex moral dilemmas. To deal with the incessant demands of life, our cognitive misers have developed endless arrays of coping strategies which fundamentally change the way we view and interpret the world.

  Our brains are incredibly selfish and insincere, hiding from us just how many cognitive blind spots they really have. The research is in: our brains are lazy and they’re lying to us, especially when we’re under pressure. Left alone, few of us would rationally and peacefully come to terms with the existence of parallel realities, even if the evidence was clear as day on a screen right in front of our eyes.

  Psychologists revel in such self-deprecating knowledge. They’ve spent decades cataloging and defining what they like to call cognitive biases that demonstrate just how stupid we are as proud members of our species. They’ve found hundreds of them. These biases affect every aspect of our thinking. You don’t have to be Obergruppenführer Smith to be susceptible to the just world bias, which allows him to dismiss his war atrocities as “necessary evils” in the face of a people (his own people, by the way) whose “decadence” was adequate justification for their country’s subsequent division and occupation. Because, in a just world, there are no unjust punishments.

  These hundreds of cognitive biases suggest a fact which Dick was equally thrilled to revel in: our perception of reality is a creative process. Neither he nor psychologists were the first ones to toy with this idea. Philosophy’s radical skeptics have a long-standing tradition of undercutting assumptions about what’s considered obvious, real, and objective.

  Why is this skepticism so radical (and possibly far out)? It questions the validity of our most fundamental experiences and thoughts. Here’s a thought experiment: Bertrand Russell’s “five-minute hypothesis” challenges readers to prove that the universe did not spring into existence five minutes ago and instill in them a complete set of false memories. Radical skeptics challenge the very foundations of reality with the same tools that other philosophers use to build apparently seamless rules of linear reasoning. Likewise, The Man in the High Castle skillfully builds a compelling and feasible alternate world, just so it can leave us confused about this new world’s fundamental nature.

  Philosophy’s radical skepticism, mainstream psychology, and The Man in the High Castle share a common sentiment: our brains aren’t able to handle much more than an unshakable sense that we are competent in dealing with reality. Instead of freezing our mental processes in an endless loop of trying to prove that the world exists, we move on. In order to function, we need closure and a feeling that the worldview we’ve created does not contain glaring holes and inconsistencies. So, our brains manufacture a view of the world that works around skeptical questions.

  Creating an Ideal a Justified World

  “But I thought my brain and I were close . . . Aren’t we on the same side?”

  Unfortunately, you’re not. Your brain is limited, selfish, constantly under assault by your senses, and incessantly bothered for direction from your body. Your brain needs an easy way to protect itself from you and the world around you. It needs a blanket to hide under.

  Consistency is a Snuggie for your brain. Consistency makes your brain feel good, like warm apple pie in your favorite Canon City diner. As soon as any new obstacle or decision crosses your path, your brain seeks its comfort zone in the familiar and the known. Feeling consistent lets your brain go into autopilot mode, content with its cognitive frugality. No extra thought wasted.

  But, sadly for our little cerebral misers, we’re sometimes forced to make choices in situations that are radically new, with no readymade answer, or to act in ways that we don’t believe are morally right. These situations cause our brains to panic, creating what psychologist Leon Festinger called cognitive dissonance.

  Presenting a brain with anything that challenges its usual functioning causes great discomfort to its owner. While Dick was writing The Man in the High Castle, Festinger was running experiments that showed just how easy it is to instill this deep psychological discomfort. Cognitive dissonance occurs every time we act inconsistently with our existing beliefs, feelings, or previous actions. It causes intense emotional and physical irritation, like needing to pee with no bathroom in sight. After having his worldview challenged in many ways and being forced to act against his fundamental values, Tagomi tries urgently and endlessly to restore his balance. No wonder! His brain was experiencing a dissonance overload.

  A lengthy conversation with a radical skeptic might result in a similar response. The questions they have for us, not unlike the confusing events that The Man in the High Castle’s characters have to deal with, can burrow into our deepest sense of self and upset the unwavering certainty with which we assume the world to be a concrete, real, and stable object.

  Usually when a new situation appears that requires we think or act inconsistently with our previous beliefs or behavior, our brains immediately want to know who’s to blame. If there is something outside of us telling us how to act or think or feel, then there’s no problem. We have an excuse, an external justification, for our inconsistency. Voilà! We were only following orders. Dissonance dissolved. Feeling consistent again brings the needed sense of a satisfying resolution.

  In the show, Frank Frink, a previously upstanding citizen of the Pacific States of America, has an impressive battery of such external excuses for his newfound rebellious and dangerous behavior. Frank’s cellmate talks him into opposing the Kempeitai and ultimately expediting his sister’s death. The Kempeitai’s murderous actions inspire his assassination plot of a peace-l
oving crown prince. Juliana Crain’s recklessness leads Frank into absurd standoffs with the Yakuza, the Resistance, the Kempeitai, and the Nazis. And while his actions might be seriously inconsistent with his previously cautious character, he has plenty of external justifications.

  Not everyone can be so fortunate. For Joe Blake and John Smith finding excuses will not be so easy. Joe, a Nazi double agent infatuated with a Resistance member, will have to figure out how to reconcile his allegiance to the Reich and his love for the woman he’s been ordered to kill. John, on the other hand, will have to decide whether it will be easier to kill his own son or try to keep him alive in the Reich’s America.

  When there’s no one else to blame, internal justification is the only cure for cognitive dissonance. We simply have to change our perception (of ourselves or the world) in order to stay consistent and eliminate any lingering confusion. Both Joe and John will have to either change their belief in the Nazi ideology, or change their beliefs about the people they hold dear. Only once they settle on an internal justification can their brains kick back and click the consistency autopilot back on.

  In the book, Tagomi, an otherwise balanced and peaceful man, murders two Nazi assassins disguised as street hooligans. Baynes fears that Tagomi will never mentally recover from having committed the murders. The mental math is just too clear: two lives killed to save one cannot be justified. The evil Tagomi has committed does not fit with his understanding of a balanced, Taoist world.

  Where One Can Do Right Wrong with No Effort

  Situations like Tagomi’s are where Dick’s views on the discomfort of cognitive and moral confusion shine. Following the murders, a traumatized Tagomi swims in a muddled reality. He doesn’t know what to do next. He doesn’t know how or if he can ever go back to his old way of thinking. He wanders to a park bench. Uncomfortable and overwhelmed, he grips a small token of reality—a shapeless, formless piece of jewelry. He stares at it, seeking an answer, desperate to know why his life has led him to this point. What could possibly justify his actions? However, he does not seek any external justification, an outside excuse to explain away his shame and discomfort.

 

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