Boxes
by Romana Annette 03/31/2008
Taking an analogy from Process Theology, reality is like a story, complete with plots and adventures. The best stories have a sense of freedom and openness; the worst stories have dismal, restrictive plots. The best stories always involve some kind of creation of new plot elements. People often hope the hero and heroine will overcome their mutual differences and come together to create a new relationship and maybe even progeny, no matter how unrealistic such expectations might be.
Boxes are severe plot restrictions, and I have spent part of my life in such boxes. My boxes have been figurative ruts, with paths around the boundaries worn very deep. This was a consequence of Asperger’s Syndrome (AS,) a high-functioning form of autism. Having autism is like being severely shocked by reality, to the point that I could not comprehend, let alone participate in, all the social situations that average people deal with as a matter of fact. These situations included normal friendships, dating, and the many other aspects of maturation.
Asceticism came naturally to me, which helped to reinforce my boxes, since I viewed any subjective, touchy-feely stuff as too embarrassing for me to participate in. This was a form extreme rationalization. While I have been told that everyone is this way, most people do not understand the intense focus of AS persons.
Like most young AS persons, I had very few interests, but I have always liked stories, and have always wanted to be a writer. It should not be surprising that I was very much into science fiction. After all, classic science fiction stories were always about a better future filled with characters just like me. Once, at a science fiction convention, Kate Wilhelm, a famous writer, remarked that science fiction stories were ultra objective, filled with isolated characters that had no families and no relationships.
Without interpersonal relationships, everyone always got along just fine in science fiction stories, without a lot of conflicts. Spaceships ran with the precision of clockwork. Crews were also all men, so there were never any romantic entanglements, especially in an age before homosexuality was ever discussed. Just imagine, in contrast, how much NASA worries just about sending a twelve-person mixed crew of men and women to Mars. They really sweat the conflicts that might be caused by divergent personalities, and they absolutely will not restrict sexuality. One might not think of a trip to Mars being like a soap opera, but many envision it that way.
My resistance to all subjectivity extended to faith and religion, the so-described greatest stories ever told. I was strictly a non-believer. My earliest memory of my lack of feelings came late in grade school, when a boy took me aside and bluntly asked if I believed in Jesus Christ. He made it clear that it was urgent that I should come to a correct understanding, before I suffered damnation and a trip to Hell. I was totally unaffected by his illogical and improbable story about salvation.
I was not particular violent; however, if someone had urged me to grab a torch and go burn churches, because they were bastions of illogic and were totally irrational, I might have joined in.
However, I knew something was wrong with the plot of my own story. As illogical as it might have seemed, I knew could no longer ignore my fairly intense developing interest in women. I went on my first date at age nineteen, but the inability to show the proper emotions would sabotage all relationships for decades.
The plot of my story went through a major revision when I got married in 1980. I was definitely not being logical; after all, it is never a good idea for a non-Mormon to marry a Mormon. However, my wife became inactive for a few years, when her son became involved in homosexual relationships. This led to us getting involved in PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
PFLAG stressed coming out, so I really threw in a major plot twist, when I came out as transgendered. This was both excruciating and liberating, but I was definitely out of my objective element, in unexplored territory. Suddenly, my plot had become the stuff of talk-shows. I have been going through a kind of gender transition ever since.
In January 2002, I did something different. After attending a PFLAG-sponsored service at Unity of Kent, I decided to attend the church. Not long after that, I added a new plot element, when I actually joined the congregation. There was at least one church that was not awful; they had no dogma, and they spoke of God and Jesus Christ more in philosophical, than in religious terms. Most importantly, they let me be Romana Annette; in fact, they became leery of Dennis, since my male persona always brought so much baggage with him.
In 2006, I happened to catch an article about Asperger’s Syndrome on television. When I brought this to the attention of my wife and our therapist, the prognosis came quickly: I was almost assuredly AS. For me, this was like an awakening; now I knew why had almost felt drugged for most of my life. I also decided that the best change for my story was to work to this disability, rather than against it.
Suddenly, I realized that story of reality that was
unfolding had a far greater scope and a plot far more fabulous than anything
ever generated in
I used to be atheistically-oriented, and I can be very anti-fundamentalist, but I am moving away from ideological extremes, since these are not really useful plot lines for me. Still, I will never be born again, nor will I ever get baptized. When I die, I do not expect to live again. If there is nothing more than darkness ahead, that is okay, since it cannot be as painful as real life. I realize that this is wishful thinking, since the higher-level story of reality probably has plot lines beyond our comprehension.
I may have received some kind of enlightenment or epiphany recently. I do not remember anything special happening, but my outlook has changed. I have a better sense of subjective situations, and I no longer believe that objective methods will ever be sufficient to analyze subjective situations. I understand that life situations contain emergent phenomena that can never be reduced to simple facts. It is also comforting to know that, in all the time since the original creation, no one has figured it all out. Much of the exposition for older stories has been lost, while we are too immersed in our part of the plot to see any larger picture.
Now I consider myself to be a believer, just like everyone else. I even doubt that there is such a thing as a non-believer, since being alive means to believe in something. Still, unlike most people, I try to document my ever-changing beliefs.
I now believe that churches do serve useful purposes, especially in improving social plot lines, but I doubt that anyone will ever be saved by a church in a biblical sense. I tell everyone to find and attend a church because of the people and the connections they offer. People will often argue that there is no one like them in churches, but I tell them that this is not true. All churches have great diversity of beliefs, even if the congregations do not believe so.
One could ask what makes me qualified to explore high-level philosophy, which can deal with the most abstract and subjective content present in our reality? I am, after all, autistic and not very good with complex social interaction. I am also pessimistic, skeptical, irreligious, doubting, and very good at boring and repetitive tasks. I would have made a good monk or scribe in a past age. I do realize, however, that simplistic, objectively-oriented stuff does not make for good plots. Relationships, freedom, sexuality, adventure, novelty, enjoyment, and exploration are actually more interesting.
While my personal interaction can be poor, I do observe how other people live their stories. I am very analytical about what I see, and I try to keep personal biases to a minimum. I do notice that there is always a lot more going on than bare plots; sometimes, people are not even aware of the depth of their lives.
One can only speculate what an initial creation might have been like, but our current multi-verse of processes runs with no one in charge. This makes our stories more personal, since if a higher-level being were to be interfering all the time, the stories would actually be about that being.
For the sake of modeling, some have created a virtual controller, especially to document how parallel processes run. In the case of the development of a fetus, all the sub-plots converge at the end with the emergence of a completed organism. Process Theologians often carry this logic one step further and call God a virtual controller, since actually putting God in charge would make a terrible plot device. However, the Process version of God is not a master craftsman; in fact, this God looks more like a committee. All of creation ends up resembling a ponderous jumble of sub-plots and expository rules that barely manage to come together.
We observe all this going on; then we ask what is the significance of our stories, as if we are separate from the creation itself. I ask the question, instead, why there are any observers and stories in the first place. As an exercise, just try to model a universe free of observers. If there are no observers, one cannot make any subjective comments about such a universe at all.
This leads to my personal question: exactly how do we, the collective of past and present observers in the multi-verse, affect stories and plots in higher-level reality? I suspect that, in any search for interfering intelligences, we do not have to look far.
I do not mind if reality ends up being incomprehensible, or if all attempts to document its stories end up being futile. Except for a few basic physical laws, most of reality does not make any sense to me, but it does look fresh and extremely uncontrived. I am willing to allow plot lines unfold as they may, uncolored by my unreasonable expectations. The promise is not that things to come will always be better, but that they will likely be different. There will always be unexpected twists, both good and bad. When we die, our particular story will come to an end; yet, major plot lines for reality will always remain unfinished.
One goal of Process Theology is to create high-level philosophical standards in an age when people can no longer look to absolute religious concepts for faith and hope. All reality is filled with creation and perishing, the most basic plot lines. There can never be any static ground, since nothing happening is not really a story.
Eastern religions have considered these ideas for a long time, but their solutions have tended to be avoidance and asceticism, rather than participation. Clearly, for the last 550 million years, life has followed the participation model, not the avoidance model. Self-denial is a very unpopular and weak plot element.
I am concluding exactly at the point where all my favorite philosophical readings end. This is a polite way of saying that the mystery is ours to explore, even if the high-level plot can never be resolved. The problem is death: people think it is unfair, so they seek an antidote that cannot be found. I do not think death is unfair, since it is the ultimate equalizer. In true reality, the villains do not often get their deserved punishment, a fact that I find very frustrating. Some kind of revenge would be nice. It is comforting to know that most villains will soon be dead any way, without me raising even a finger against any of them.