Reality Mutation

Suppose it were possible for reality itself to spontaneously mutate, I wondered? This is the question I have been wrestling with for a number of months now. Suppose it were possible for reality to spontaneously mutate into something else, something different, something that wouldn’t even have been recognized as reality before? Or even recognized as anything else. And so the question that follows on from this is of course ‘What happens then?’ What would happen to us in that event, seeing that we are all very much at the mercy of reality, to put it mildly? This whole subject is of course a minefield, I realize that. It’s a tricky topic to broach because no one particularly likes to think about reality morphing into something else, something that we would not previously have recognized as being in any way real – it makes people think about psychedelic drugs or about psychotic mental illness and whilst we might agree readily enough that this is very probably going to be an issue for anyone who is either a regular user of hallucinogenics or suffers from some kind of psychosis, we certainly don’t want to be going too far down that road ourselves. Or any distance at all, even. That’s just human nature – we like our reality to be consistent. We might like to change our outfit or our underwear everyday but not our reality…

 

For personal reasons however I have found myself unable to ignore the topic. Questions keep going around and around in my head. For example, suppose that reality mutated but you weren’t able to? Suppose that you just didn’t have that flexibility – and who does, if we’re to be honest? So in that case, suppose that reality mutates and you get left behind? What happens then? The answer to this is obvious – if reality moves on and leaves you behind then you don’t get to be real anymore! You get left behind as a sad ghost, half-heartedly haunting a world which is made up entirely of your own insubstantial memories. You get stranded on the sandbanks of time like a dead starfish or old shoe, all washed up and out of luck, no good for anything. That kind of has a familiar ring to it, doesn’t it? Kind of makes you think, yeah – I know that one. I know that one all right…

 

Damn right I know it, I think to myself at this point. Why wouldn’t I know it? Isn’t that the story of my life, just about? But then – on the other hand – suppose that when reality mutated and went off at a tangent all of a sudden (as a lot of people, and not all of them diagnosed with a psychotic mental illness, will happily tell you it does, much more often than you realize in fact) you were able to move with it, and ride the wave or whatever you want to call it, then what happens in this case? I’m not so sure I like the sound of this either, come to think of it! If you were to mutate radically along with reality then you would no longer exist, pretty obviously. You wouldn’t be yourself anymore and if you aren’t yourself any more then you’re gone, you’re no longer there. You’d be gone and no one would ever miss you because you’d no longer be part of the history of the new reality. You’d never miss you either because you’d now be the new you, the you of the alternative time-line. That’s worse than dying if you ask me because you would never have existed in the first place. It’s a bit eerie. More than just a bit. How can anyone possibly be OK about that?

 

This business of reality suddenly and unaccountably mutating and jumping in an totally unknown direction is a very tricky business you see. It undermines everything. I don’t really think that there’s any winning in it for the reasons that I have just explained. You could of course just pretend that it never happens and put a lot of energy into ignoring all the evidence. A guy I met once told me that – in his opinion – a lot of people suspect that reality mutation is going on but decide out of fear to play dumb and act like it isn’t happening. I actually think he was right. Playing dumb is a big thing these days, for sure. A lot of people are into that, I’d say, and to be perfectly frank with you I can see where they’re coming from.

 

 

 

 

 

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