St Anselm's Senior Common Room
The afternoon sun spilled through the long windows of St Anselm's Senior Common Room, illuminating suspended dust with the solemnity of tiny theological disputes.
Professor Quillibrace sat near the fire, reading.
Mr Blottisham burst in carrying a newspaper and the expression of a man who had recently defeated an argument in the privacy of his own mind.
"Quillibrace!"
Professor Quillibrace lowered his book by approximately two millimetres.
"Blottisham."
"I've been thinking about ideology."
Quillibrace sighed.
"I see."
"No need to sound frightened."
Miss Elowen Stray looked up from her notebook.
"What have you concluded?"
Blottisham sat down triumphantly.
"Most people overcomplicate these things. Reality is perfectly obvious."
Quillibrace closed his book.
A dangerous silence followed.
Blottisham continued:
"People invent absurd theories and ideologies and complications, but eventually common sense cuts through all of it."
Quillibrace stared at him.
"Common sense."
"Exactly."
"And what is common sense?"
Blottisham looked delighted.
"Reality."
Quillibrace closed his eyes briefly.
Miss Stray smiled into her tea.
After a moment Quillibrace spoke.
"Blottisham, have you ever noticed that different societies possess rather different versions of what they describe as common sense?"
Blottisham frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"Practices once considered obvious later become strange."
"Yes."
"Things once regarded as absurd later become ordinary."
"Well yes."
"And social arrangements repeatedly appear inevitable while they exist."
Blottisham blinked.
"...yes."
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"So perhaps common sense deserves slightly more suspicion than one gives weather forecasts."
Blottisham looked unconvinced.
"But surely some things simply are natural."
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
"Natural?"
"Yes."
"You say it with remarkable confidence."
"Because it's obvious."
"Ah."
Quillibrace leaned back.
"The favourite word of naturalisation."
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
"So perhaps the question is not whether worlds are constructed."
Quillibrace nodded.
"But why some constructions stop appearing constructed."
"Precisely."
Blottisham frowned.
"I don't follow."
Quillibrace stood and walked toward the bookshelves.
"Suppose a social arrangement begins visibly."
He counted on his fingers.
"It is debated."
"Right."
"Defended."
"Yes."
"Contested."
"Mhm."
"Justified."
"Quite."
He turned.
"But after sufficient repetition across institutions, language, narratives, and everyday practice..."
He spread his hands.
"...it sinks."
"Sinks where?"
"Beneath awareness."
Blottisham stared.
"Good Lord."
Miss Stray tilted her head.
"So successful ideology disappears into the background conditions of experience."
"Exactly."
"It stops appearing as a worldview."
"Yes."
"And begins appearing as reality prior to interpretation."
Quillibrace smiled faintly.
"The beginning of common sense."
Blottisham looked suspiciously at the room around him.
"So common sense isn't reality?"
Quillibrace considered.
"Reality exists."
"Oh good."
"But what becomes socially obvious within reality is another matter."
"Oh no."
Miss Stray laughed quietly.
Quillibrace sat again.
"No symbolic world becomes natural instantly."
Blottisham frowned.
"What does that mean?"
"It means worlds acquire apparent inevitability through repetition."
He gestured around the room.
"A distinction appears in schools."
"Right."
"In law."
"Mhm."
"In stories."
"Yes."
"In institutions."
"Fine."
"In language."
"Fine."
"In ordinary routines."
Blottisham nodded slowly.
"And eventually?"
Quillibrace looked at him.
"It acquires weight."
"What sort of weight?"
"Ontological weight."
Blottisham looked horrified.
"You can gain ontology now?"
Miss Stray ignored him.
"So repetition changes perception itself."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Precisely."
"People cease experiencing interpretations as interpretations."
"Yes."
"They experience them as direct perception."
"Exactly."
Blottisham frowned.
"But if something feels obvious, doesn't that suggest it's true?"
Quillibrace stared at him.
"Blottisham, many things feel obvious."
He paused.
"Until they don't."
The room fell quiet.
Rain had begun again outside.
Miss Stray spoke carefully.
"So naturalisation reorganises what becomes immediately visible."
"Yes."
"What feels realistic."
"Quite."
"What alternatives appear imaginable."
"Precisely."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"Alternatives?"
"Yes."
"Alternative realities?"
"Alternative social worlds."
Blottisham looked relieved.
"Oh."
Miss Stray continued.
"So ideological closure isn't merely making alternatives undesirable."
Quillibrace nodded.
"It often makes them feel impossible."
Blottisham frowned.
"But impossible things are impossible."
"Not necessarily."
"Then what are they?"
Quillibrace adjusted his spectacles.
"Unconstruable."
Blottisham stared.
"I preferred impossible."
The fire shifted softly.
Miss Stray looked down at her notes.
"This would also explain why criticism often fails."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Go on."
"If criticism addresses explicit ideas..."
"Yes."
"But common sense operates beneath explicit belief..."
"Precisely."
"Then people may reject systems intellectually while continuing to inhabit them practically."
"Very good."
Blottisham looked unhappy.
"So even if I reject a system, I might still live through its categories."
"Indeed."
"Use its institutions."
"Yes."
"Organise my expectations through it."
"Quite."
Blottisham stared into his tea.
"This keeps becoming less encouraging."
After some time he spoke again.
"There's something else."
Quillibrace looked mildly surprised.
"Good heavens."
Blottisham ignored him.
"If people grow up inside these worlds..."
He hesitated.
"...they'd learn what sorts of ambitions make sense."
Miss Stray nodded slowly.
"What futures seem possible."
Quillibrace said nothing.
"What identities feel normal."
Still silence.
Blottisham looked up.
"So the world doesn't simply shape ideas."
He looked around the room.
"It shapes the sorts of people who feel at home inside it."
A long pause.
Quillibrace removed his spectacles.
"Elowen..."
"Yes?"
"I believe we may be witnessing another event."
Miss Stray smiled.
"A rare atmospheric condition."
Blottisham sat quietly.
Then:
"So the strangest thing about ideology..."
He looked toward the rain against the windows.
"...isn't that people mistake fantasy for reality."
"No?" asked Quillibrace.
"It's that reality itself begins arriving pre-arranged."
The room went very still.
Quillibrace looked at him over steepled fingers.
"Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"...stop doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Understanding things."
End of discussion
No comments:
Post a Comment