The couple had been with each other forever, held together by nothing but inertia, a sort of living monument to the sunk cost fallacy. The bride was goofy; the groom was grim. She wanted kids; he didn’t. They fought constantly. In their vows, they gravely promised to be together through the bad times; conspicuously, they didn’t mention good times.
And yet, they married! She wore a dress and he wore a suit and a priest bound them in eternity before God. Friends gave speeches and everyone clapped. We ate and danced and wrote them checks and wished them everlasting happiness.
I left a little shaken. It felt like you shouldn't be able to do that, like the machinery of matrimony shouldn’t move unless it's powered by true love. If you’re marrying the wrong person, shouldn’t the wedding dress burst into flames? Shouldn’t the priest get struck by lighting? Shouldn’t someone at least say something?
I was younger then, and more naive; I didn't realize it was possible to make such a bad decision with so much premeditation. (...)
Sorry I forgot to mention the part where the teens kill each other in the woods.
There is a way to become more ignorant through learning, a wicked feedback loop that can send you spinning in precisely the wrong direction. The genesis of that loop, the big dumb conundrum, is that most human experience is ineffable.
As I wrote in You can't reach the brain through the ears, we've got this kaleidoscopic inner life: emotions! thoughts! images! But your brain does not offer screen-sharing. If you want to convey what's inside your head, all you can do is waggle your tongue and hope to vibrate other people's ear-bones at a frequency that makes them understand.
This doesn't work all that well, and that's a problem, but it gets worse. Not only are we stuck describing a small part of our experience—it's a weird little non-representative part, and other people assume that part is all there is. Like this:
In a situation like this, there's no way the blue circle could ever expand to fill the red circle. At best, it can only reach the borders of the speech bubble—you can come to understand everything that someone is saying to you, but you can never understand the things they can't say. It’s like trying to throw a dart at a bullseye with your eyes closed, and the only feedback you get is someone shouting at you, and even when you’re a little left of the target, they keep shouting “A little more to the left!”
Here's a story I think about a lot, one that illustrates this problem well. Once, long ago, my friend's mom went to the library looking for a book for her kids. “Do you recommend this Hunger Games book?” she asked a librarian. “Oh yes,” the librarian replied. “It's about a world that's divided into districts, and each district makes something different: one makes grain, another makes energy, and so on. Your kids will really like it.” This is, of course, factually true about The Hunger Games, but it misses the point, which is that the book is actually about a bunch of teenagers being forced to kill each other in the woods.
The more you talk to this librarian, then, the less you will understand The Hunger Games. “District 8 makes textiles! District 10 makes livestock!” As you acquire more of these pointless facts, you'll probably feel like you're becoming a Hunger Games expert when you're actually becoming a Hunger Games dummy. (...)
Which brings us back to the wedding that should not have happened, because nowhere is this problem greater than in love—the human experience that is most discussed, but least understood. In fact, the more you discuss it, the less you might understand it, because the real heart of it, the what-it’s-like of it, can’t be put into words, and yet that’s pretty much the main thing we try to put into words.
That makes sense—we all want to know what love is. We're all asking, what is love?
And we hear: love is a crazy little thing, a battlefield, a drug, my drug, all you need, a secondhand emotion, something you can find in a hopeless place and that you can't help falling in, but that also lifts you higher and higher. It makes you want to write love songs and to not write love songs. It also makes you want to go to the mailbox. Love will keep us together and love will tear us apart. Some of the things that can make you fall in love are a movement, a shape, a way, a DJ, being a fool, the way someone lies, and a tractor.
If you want to know, could it be I'm falling in love? How will I know? Some signs are:
You can't keep your mind on nothin' else
You can't feel your face
The moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
There's no white flag upon your door
You are an Argentine without means
You are in an elevator
It's Friday
And yes, love is all of those things. But it's not only those things. There's a part that's more than words, a part that cannot be broadcast via radio waves, depicted in pixels, or embodied in ink. It can only be felt. That's why, at a happy wedding, the couple looks like they know a secret that no one else knows, a secret that no one else can know.
This is, of course, a big problem for people who are trying to figure out whether they should spend their lives together. It’s easy to think, “Hey, our love is a battlefield, it lifts us higher, we can’t keep our minds on nothing else, maybe we should get some rings and make this official.” It’s also easy to think, “Well, we can feel our faces just fine, maybe we ought to call it off.” And both might well be mistakes.
So what do you do? How do you know that you know the secret that no one else knows? This problem is most fraught in love, but appears anywhere that our ability to experience outpaces our ability to describe, which is everywhere: how do you know you’re living a good life, choosing the right career, having enough fun?
As I wrote in You can't reach the brain through the ears, we've got this kaleidoscopic inner life: emotions! thoughts! images! But your brain does not offer screen-sharing. If you want to convey what's inside your head, all you can do is waggle your tongue and hope to vibrate other people's ear-bones at a frequency that makes them understand.
This doesn't work all that well, and that's a problem, but it gets worse. Not only are we stuck describing a small part of our experience—it's a weird little non-representative part, and other people assume that part is all there is. Like this:
In a situation like this, there's no way the blue circle could ever expand to fill the red circle. At best, it can only reach the borders of the speech bubble—you can come to understand everything that someone is saying to you, but you can never understand the things they can't say. It’s like trying to throw a dart at a bullseye with your eyes closed, and the only feedback you get is someone shouting at you, and even when you’re a little left of the target, they keep shouting “A little more to the left!”
Here's a story I think about a lot, one that illustrates this problem well. Once, long ago, my friend's mom went to the library looking for a book for her kids. “Do you recommend this Hunger Games book?” she asked a librarian. “Oh yes,” the librarian replied. “It's about a world that's divided into districts, and each district makes something different: one makes grain, another makes energy, and so on. Your kids will really like it.” This is, of course, factually true about The Hunger Games, but it misses the point, which is that the book is actually about a bunch of teenagers being forced to kill each other in the woods.
The more you talk to this librarian, then, the less you will understand The Hunger Games. “District 8 makes textiles! District 10 makes livestock!” As you acquire more of these pointless facts, you'll probably feel like you're becoming a Hunger Games expert when you're actually becoming a Hunger Games dummy. (...)
Which brings us back to the wedding that should not have happened, because nowhere is this problem greater than in love—the human experience that is most discussed, but least understood. In fact, the more you discuss it, the less you might understand it, because the real heart of it, the what-it’s-like of it, can’t be put into words, and yet that’s pretty much the main thing we try to put into words.
That makes sense—we all want to know what love is. We're all asking, what is love?
And we hear: love is a crazy little thing, a battlefield, a drug, my drug, all you need, a secondhand emotion, something you can find in a hopeless place and that you can't help falling in, but that also lifts you higher and higher. It makes you want to write love songs and to not write love songs. It also makes you want to go to the mailbox. Love will keep us together and love will tear us apart. Some of the things that can make you fall in love are a movement, a shape, a way, a DJ, being a fool, the way someone lies, and a tractor.
If you want to know, could it be I'm falling in love? How will I know? Some signs are:
You can't keep your mind on nothin' else
You can't feel your face
The moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
There's no white flag upon your door
You are an Argentine without means
You are in an elevator
It's Friday
And yes, love is all of those things. But it's not only those things. There's a part that's more than words, a part that cannot be broadcast via radio waves, depicted in pixels, or embodied in ink. It can only be felt. That's why, at a happy wedding, the couple looks like they know a secret that no one else knows, a secret that no one else can know.
This is, of course, a big problem for people who are trying to figure out whether they should spend their lives together. It’s easy to think, “Hey, our love is a battlefield, it lifts us higher, we can’t keep our minds on nothing else, maybe we should get some rings and make this official.” It’s also easy to think, “Well, we can feel our faces just fine, maybe we ought to call it off.” And both might well be mistakes.
So what do you do? How do you know that you know the secret that no one else knows? This problem is most fraught in love, but appears anywhere that our ability to experience outpaces our ability to describe, which is everywhere: how do you know you’re living a good life, choosing the right career, having enough fun?
by Adam Mastroianni, Experimental History | Read more:
Image: uncredited
