Reality Tunnels

On tribalism, English Prime, and walking a mile in someone else's shoes

Lately I have seen complaints that too many Substacks are about the art and craft of writing. A few successful authors have been bemoaning this and offering platitudes like "just write". I suspect they may be missing the point; I don't think Substack is a whole mess of wannabe writers clamouring for How-To pieces because they don't know how to write. I think a lot of writers, me among them, like reading about writing because we're interested in how other people do things, and we find that sometimes a particular tip or trick or way of looking at the work can unlock something or inspire us.

I'm taking this as a jumping off point into something I've been wanting to talk about for a while. It comes from the increasingly binary nature of online conversation which I worry has a knock-on effect on fiction writing of all stripes. And to use complaints about too many pieces on writing seems like a much more comfortable launch pad than an example based around race or gender.

So here's the thing; in fiction, we create characters and we get them to do things and by these actions we define them. And we understand that, almost always, the protagonist is some kind of coded version of the author, and we can even embrace the possibility that perhaps all the characters are in some way ciphered fragments of the author's psyche.

But not all characters do or say things as we would, or think as we do. It's not difficult to create a villain who is in opposition to our own worldview and have them act, objectively, as a villain. But it is less easy (I would argue increasingly less easy) to treat that villain subjectively; to step into their shoes and see the world through their eyes. And not just to see it, as an act of imagination, but to truly hold onto that perception, to that belief system, and to inhabit it. That stuff is uncomfortable and icky. It's also our job.

Robert Anton Wilson, in his book "Prometheus Rising" talks about how each of us inhabits out own "reality tunnel"; we see the world in a particular way, shaped by our education and experience and cultural priors. To us, that is the objective view of the world; the tunnel within which we live. Another person, a next door neighbour or a family member, may inhabit a vastly different reality tunnel that seems no less objectively "real" to them.

Wilson's point was that, to expand our understanding of our fellow humans, it might be an idea to experience life inside their reality tunnels. While you might not be able to live another person's life up to this point, an act of imagination could conjure some simulacrum of their subjective reality. As a thought experiment, Wilson suggests spending some time inside these alternate realities; spend a week seeing the world as a racist sees it, for instance; not just looking over their imaginary shoulder, but being inside their head; sharing their beliefs as deeply as you can until the things that trigger them also trigger you. It's not a particularly tempting way to spend time, obviously, but it is an interesting notion.

No one wakes up in the morning thinking "I am the villain of this piece." People generally act in what they perceive to be their own best interest and the best interests of their tribal group. Even though it's tempting to see some behaviour, especially in the online world, as performative, there is only so much faking it you can do until you make it. When did Elon trolling liberals give way to Elon's genuine enthusiasm for the far right? I can't pinpoint it, but it happened. And even now, I doubt that he rises and shines thinking anything other than he is about to spend another day helping to save the world from the scourge of... I don't know, diversity or something.

Actually, the Elon example is more interesting than I pretend. He has set himself us as a crusader for free speech. And to those of us over on the left, this translates as "He thinks people should be able to say bigoted shit." I'm happy to wave this away and move on with my day. Except does he have a point? Can Elon highlight instances of people not being able to raise reasonable points online without being attacked by the liberal left? We'd probably like to say no. But then stop and think for a second: is there any opinion you might express, or joke you might tell, to friends in private that you wouldn't put online, for fear of your own side ostracising you?

The point of this is not to litigate any of the old fights, it's simply to point out that if Elon might have A point, might he not have more than one? And by denying that one point that we know to be true, might we not reinforce his suspicions of a censorious Liberal cabal that is out to police everyone's thinking? And might Elon not soon have enough bricks with which to construct a reality tunnel? And would the world seen from within that tunnel not look different to the one we see from within ours, to the extent that it would be possible for Elon to genuinely see himself as the hero of his own story with no real understanding of how anyone could sensibly perceive him as the villain?

I'm not saying it's our fault that Elon Musk is a dick. But his reality is constructed, as we all construct our own, from a combination of adverse and supportive actions. When we tell someone that they "might as well vote for Trump" because they are not sufficiently left wing for our tastes, we are exiling them from our tribe. If another tribe welcomes them with open arms, then that person will set about reshaping their reality to allow that this new tribe is where they belonged in the first place.

None of this is complicated or controversial. It is the job of the fiction writer to be able to squat for a time inside a reality tunnel different from their own, so as to draw characters who think and act in a believable fashion and whose motives are sympathetic, even when we don't sympathise with them. When we do that job well, we don't just create heroes and villains, we create characters with realistic and understandable worldviews who inevitably come into conflict. And, as readers and audience members, we enrich our understanding of, and empathy towards, our fellow humans by participating in the story.

A worrying aspect of modern life, though, is that social media risks turning our reality tunnels into reality bunkers. Our social media feeds are shaped from algorithms and from our interactions and follow lists. "There are too many pieces about writing on Substack" might SEEM like objective reality to the author, but actually it is a product of the choices they have made, which results in them only seeing a tiny fraction of the overall Substack output. And that is a simpler version of how we construct our everyday reality; we carve our reality tunnels from our experiences of the world and our cultural, social and tribal inputs. We choose what to notice and we get so good at it that we forget that we were ever making a choice.

My social media feeds, as you might expect, disproportionally feature writers and creators. And I note now that none of us is immune from a pile-on. On any given day Person X is the "worst human on the planet" because of something they have apparently done, according to a widely shared headline to a piece that no one seems to have bothered to read. This is all fun and games and there is an element of catharsis and a necessary tribal group-dynamic to it, which I get. We're chanting our Two Minutes Hate and it releases some tension and anxiety (and writers need to release as much anxiety as we possibly can).

But I see the same people taking part, over and over again, often banging the same drum for the same subject. They're not inquiring, they are not finding any new information; they are re-posting the same headlines to the same unread pieces and screaming the same vitriol. And during that time they are also trying to do their day job as storytellers, and I don't believe for one second that their abilities in that direction are not taking a big hit.

Because we're faking it until we make it again here. We're playing the part of the belligerent idiot who cannot possibly understand an opposing viewpoint, and we're playing it so well and so often that, lo and behold, we become it.

A writer is supposed to stand apart, to observe, to inhabit for a while, and then to depart again. That is a tool that requires polishing and sharpening. But if we're spending this much of the day in ideological pitched battles, without care for nuance or complication, then we are blunting that tool, we are letting it rust. And when we come to need it, it no longer works. Our characters cease to be layered and believable and astutely-observed, becoming instead cartoon heroes and villains.

Witness too, the modern reception of the book or movie that attempts to present an alternate viewpoint seen from within the reality tunnel of an otherwise unsavoury character; more often than not, the author or film-maker is now accused of condoning that behaviour, of making art that is somehow in favour of it. God forbid that a character we find charismatic might espouse a value we don't share.

And so now enter the antidote. It's not a real antidote, insofar as it is largely a silly idea with little practical use, except in as much as it can act as a thought experiment: English Prime.

English Prime, or E-Prime for short, came to light in 1965, in an essay by D. David Bourland Jr. It was a semantic idea, intended to clarify thinking. In a nutshell, English Prime does away with the verb "to be". That's a really simple notion with a whole host of obvious practical downsides; "It appears to be raining" makes you sound like a twat. But think about the restriction of the definite article when it comes to binary thinking and reality tunnels...

You can't have "These people are wrong". "Are" is not allowed. You can have "These people espouse an opinion with which I do not agree" (just), but even then, you're already starting to subtly shift your position away from certainty.

"Elon Musk seems to think that there are some de facto restrictions on freedom of speech imposed by a kind of left-wing groupthink." To which my knee-jerk response might be "There aren't" or "He's a prick". Both of which contain the definite article and are therefore disallowed. So now I have to engage with the idea. Or not; E-Prime doesn't stop you walking away from the fight, it just discourages definitive statements which are, scientifically speaking, ALMOST ALWAYS incorrect.

And this might be the crux of the matter. "Water boils at 100 degrees celsius" would seem to be a nicely definitive statement but, depending on a host of factors, it is wrong. And if we can't even be certain about that, can we really argue that the political point du jour is anything other than infinitely nuanced?

A recent news tidbit did the rounds, related to the wildfires in Los Angeles, claiming that the city mayor had last year cut the budget of the LA Fire Department. You might even now be nodding sagely because you know that to be true. Stop nodding, it isn't. Or at least, as with all things, it's a bit more complicated than that. I learned about some of those complexities reading an article in the New York Times which, I am reliably informed by my Bluesky feed, is a terrible newspaper that hates democrats/trans people/immigrants (delete as applicable). A casual poll of the NYT haters on Bluesky revealed not a single paying subscriber among them. Given that the paper is paywalled (and it's output on any given day vast), how are these experts on the innermost thoughts of the approximately 1,700 journalists who work for the New York Times getting their information? From screenshots and headlines perhaps?

None of which is to say I'm right and you're wrong, because that is precisely the opposite of the point. Actually, we're all wrong about almost everything most of the time. Removing the definite article, or at least experimenting with its removal, lays bare the extent to which we cannot be certain about anything.

Do we believe things? Of course. I believe that Trump is a disaster, that the people who voted for him are venal or idiots or venal idiots, that Brexit was a catastrophe etc etc. That's the view from my reality tunnel. The view from Donald Trump's is different. Seeing the world through Trump's piggy little eyes does not necessitate agreeing with him or taking his values as your own. But the ability to do so is an intrinsic part of the writer's tool kit.

The writer should stand apart. I don't mean that in some grandiose way; it's just that if we don't, who does? If we're scrapping on social media, believing whatever headline is being bandied about without context, and piling in on partisan arguments, then we are blunting our tools. We should be able to stand back and view the world through multiple sets of eyes. Because the truth is not a definite article, it is never binary. Our job is to present, even and especially within fiction, an honest point of view from a believable position that need be neither comfortable nor safe. Our work should make the reader or audience member ask questions, probe their own understanding and opinions, and perhaps step briefly out of their own reality tunnel to see the world from a new angle.

And this doesn't have to be political; what's it like being vegetarian or coeliac? What's it like being afraid of spiders, or flying, or the colour orange? How might it feel to be disabled or able-bodied or taller or shorter or dyslexic or anxious or cowardly or stupidly brave? If our job is to show people the world they know from a different point of view (and it is), if it is to present characters with different life experiences and cultural norms (and it is) then we have to be able to imagine ourselves into those people's lives. And in order to do that, we need to be able to say "I wonder..." and "I don't know." And the starting point on that journey is not throwing shit at someone on social media. That's how we got into this mess in the first place, it's definitely not the way back out again.

You write because you're curious. Curiosity is about asking questions and finding stuff out. It's about heading off into the unknown and presenting what you found there, accepting that there may not be any neat, pat answers, but that the findings might be of interest nonetheless. Acting more in that spirit not only helps the work and keeps your tools sharp, but it might also improve the online discourse immeasurably.