Your Meditation Guide Blog

Just like a fever breaks, last night I felt a deep and rejuvenating release from the rising waters that had crested yesterday with my, "discouraged" post. It isn't the "cure" of liberation from the cycle of suffering and rebirth but rather a break in the fever that is discouragement. Writing out my emotions has long helped me process the disorienting thoughts that ensnares all of our minds. It is a form of honesty, which is a trait that I've been blessed and cursed with. Blessed in the sense that it helps me dissect confusing emotions with direct and exacting examination but cursed only in the sense that such honesty means facing sometimes painful and uncomfortable realities. Yet, despite the discomfort it seems to be one of the most direct and effective ways of dealing with obstacles and discouragement.

This release was initiated with my honest writings yesterday, and the sympathetic comments helped me let go of my guilt that somehow I was "failing" as a Buddhist. Intuitively I knew this deep within the recesses of my mind but hearing it from outside yourself always seems to help convince you that what you suspected is in fact reality, and not just your mind tricking you yet again with another delusion.

So, last night lying in bed I had the most unconventional yet therapuetic meditation. Lying in bed I embraced the exhaustion of the day and just enjoyed the feeling of my tired body being cradled by our cloud-like bed. The soft, soothing, rhythmic breathing of my wife cuddled against me brought me a deep sense of calm. Being fully present in the moment I was aware of my own chest rising and falling with deep, natural breaths. Absorbing the feeling as the boundaries and limits between my body and my immediate surroundings blended into the music of the band, "The Cure." Thus, the title of the post.

Feeling limitless yet grounded at the same time--like the sky stretching from horizon to horizon, free to flow yet held from disappearing into outer space by the grounding power of gravity. As I floated about in this state of pure awareness I soon drifted off in a deep restful sleep. Today I awoke feeling like a huge weight was lifted from my mind. A new day has dawned and yet I am thankful for the reminder lesson I was given in my months of struggle. As they say, "It's always darkness before the dawn" and yesterday was that darkest water mark before it crested and ebbed to make way for pure, stabilizing balance that comes from a deep grounding of oneness.

The other day I was picnicking in Central Park with my 13-year old daughter, when the issue of burden of proof came up. Yeah, I know, what sort of a geeky daughter and overly-intellectual father are we talking about? Nevertheless, Caley (my daughter) knows very well that I am both a skeptic and an atheist, and we occasionally have good humored conversations about these issues.

Specifically, the discussion was about how do I know that there are no ghosts (or other paranormal phenomena). I explained that I don’t know in the sense of certain knowledge, but that there are two major reasons I don’t believe in ghosts: a) Their existence would be at odds with much of what we know from science; and b) I haven’t seen any positive evidence (that has withstood scrutiny) that ghosts exists.

Caley’s response focused on (b) above: “yes, but you also don’t have evidence that ghosts don’t exist, so there.” This is, of course, a classic example of shifting the burden of proof, which is a well known logical fallacy usually described under the heading of “appeal to ignorance.” The idea, as I tried to explain to my daughter, is that the statement “I don’t believe in ghosts because there is no evidence” and the statement “I believe in ghosts because there is no evidence that they don’t exist” are not epistemologically equivalent, so that it is much more reasonable not to believe in ghosts (given the lack of positive evidence).

Although Caley listened to what I was saying, and she is a smart girl, it was clear that I wasn’t getting through. It just seemed logical to her, that it is okay to believe in ghosts if there is no proof that they don’t exist. I then switched tactics and used an example that she could follow more easily. I reminded her of what happens in courts of law (of non fascist countries): the burden of proof is always on the part making a positive claim, not on the one making a negative one. Most especially, one is always presumed innocent unless proven guilty (beyond reasonable doubt, another concept that also nicely fits with skepticism). It would be grossly unfair if we went around presuming people to be guilty of crimes with no other “evidence” than the fact that they can’t prove that they didn’t do it.

Caley paused, clearly understanding the example. But just when I thought I scored one for critical thinking, she went back to her original position: “well, you are making a claim too, that ghosts don’t exist, so don’t you have the burden of proof either?” No, I don’t , but by then it was really time to slice the bread and make our salami and provolone sandwiches, so that was the end of the conversation.

However, I have in fact had similar discussions over and over again — with adults — and have experienced the very same difficulty getting through regarding this concept . Why is it that few people seem to have problems with the burden of proof when it comes to the innocence or guilt of a murder suspect, but then cannot apply the same exact logic to more esoteric issues, such as the existence of ghosts, gods, and the like?

I suspect part of the answer is that in the latter cases most people are attracted to some intuitive (and wrong) notion of epistemic fairness: well, you are making one claim, the other guy is making another claim, the two of you are therefore on equal footing. This seems also to be the underlying philosophy — if there is any — behind the infamous practice by much of the media to “present the two sides,” regardless of how inane one of the two sides actually is. (Incidentally, the latter case is an example of an additional logical fallacy, the false dilemma: why, exactly, would we expect there to be two sides, as opposed to a number of possible, more nuanced, alternatives? Remember “you are either with us or with the terrorists”?)

But if this explanation is correct, then why don’t people also apply the same logic to the legal system? I think that’s because it is our very concept of fairness that shifts in that case: apparently, what is epistemologically fair for impersonal situations is suddenly unfair when people are involved. This may be similar to the case of trolley dilemmas-type thought experiments, which show that people shift from a utilitarian to a deontological ethical system depending on whether they have to make relatively impersonal or very personal decisions about somebody else’s fate (apparently, it’s okay to throw a switch to save five people while killing an innocent bystander, but not okay if you have to physically throw the innocent person in front of the trolley).

The job of the skeptical critical thinker is to convince people that these seemingly different situations are logically equivalent, and that it is therefore not rational to believe in ghosts without evidence at the same time that one wouldn’t dream of convicting a person of a crime just on the basis that she cannot prove her innocence. But as is often the case, human psychology gets in the way of rational thinking.

I'm struggling lately in my Dharma practice. I haven't meditated in months--not because I don't want to because I do, but I just can't get myself to do it. A large part of it is my mental illness that makes finding motivation extra challenging. Especially when the heavy medicating drugs I have to take to prevent mania and psychotic episodes zap me further of the will to do much of anything. It's difficult to fully convey how difficult it is to over-come.

Furthermore, I deal with a constant level of depression just beneath the surface of even my best days where I feel fairly decent. And please don't say, "Everyone gets depressed" because deep, clinical depression isn't like just having a bad day. Irregardless of that it's just an insensitive thing to say to someone who is living with clinical depression. It's chronic and biologically based on chemical imbalances in the brain.

And it's not as easy as just taking a pill because I already do, and still there is this underlying level of feeling like life isn't worth it. People think just because there are medications that they are cures--they help take the corners off the sharpest symptoms but they don't "cure" you in the sense that they don't bring you to the level of those who don't live with a severe mental illness.

Ironically, I was attracted in part to Buddhism because of it's psychological benefits, and I still believe it has immense help for those dealing with mental illness. However, Buddhism is difficult for anyone let alone for people with mental health challenges (unless you're enlightened, and how many can honestly claim that?). And it seems that the more I think I know about Buddhism the less I actually do. Everyone loves that "honeymoon phase" when you first taste the Dharma and it literally changes the way you see the world for the better but then the nitty-gritty, hard work begins and at times you stop and ask yourself, "Is this really worth it?"

It is. Buddhism can be a real bitch, and sometimes I wish I could just adhere to a religion where blind faith was about all I needed to do. However, I have felt those fleeting moments of enlightenment too profoundly to abandon the Dharma. I'm just discouraged about how poor my practice is right now, and has been for some time. An aspect of this discouragement stems from a lot of anger that I struggle with on a daily basis, which is, in part, again, rooted in the schizoaffective disorder.

I have Attention Deficit Disorder (or, A.D.D.) in conjunction with the affective side of things (affective simply means mood disorder, or bipolar. So, schizoaffective disorder is a combination of some schizophrenic symptoms and some bipolar symptoms). A.D.D. is a condition, which (in part) prevents the brain from being able to screen out stimuli that most people can relegate to the background.

So, while I am also hearing and listening to you talking to me, I can also hear at the same time: birds chirping outside, the kids screaming in their yard as they play, the traffic noise, the humming of the refrigerator and other appliances, the lawn mower going in the distance, etc. and I can't screen it out to focus simply on the conversation. All of this noise at once raises the stress in my mind and makes me impatient with the inability to focus on just one sound, which often makes me angry. In addition, I am hyper-aware of what is going on in the world and I get so angry because I just see humanity (and especially here in America) doing everything it can to destroy itself, its environment, its economy, its political system of democracy, its compassion for those who need assistance, its decency toward others in public places, its health care system, its acceptance of minorities and those of different sexual orientation, and on and on.

It makes me wonder what's the point of doing anything?!! Why participate in society and voting when it doesn't seem to make a difference or matter. What is the difference between letting karma do it's thing and predestination because some Buddhists seem to just shrug their shoulders in the face of struggles as if to say, "Eh, it's just karma doing its thing--what's the point?" And, yes, I know that suffering is inevitable and everywhere. I know that the world is not the place to look for stability. However, it seems that in response, many Buddhists take the default position to disconnect from society and disregard politics.

Yet, I struggle with this solution because it seems rather fatalistic, nihilistic and a form of avoidance. It seems to me that we owe it to ourselves to try and do our best to make it a better world--even if it can never be perfect. Aren't we making things worse if we just disconnect from society? Don't we have a duty to try our best to help build a better society? What if everyone just disregarded politics and civic responsibilities? Isn't it a bit selfish in a way? If no one tried to maintain some sort level of a stable world then it seems to me that some dictator would just take advantage of that and wipe out whole sections of the globe. Isn't that basically just letting suffering multiply? It's one thing to realize that suffering on some level is inevitable. However, to just disconnect seems to ironically cause more suffering from less and less good-hearted people participating to crafting how a country's general society behaves.

I'm certainly not giving up on Buddhism by any stretch but I'm discouraged today and it has been building. I guess my discouragement is with a lot of things but my Buddhist practice has me a bit frustrated, dispirited and depressed. I know it's not Buddhism that is the problem, and I know that I have a lot of work to do but please don't just post simplistic comments saying things like, "All you have to do is 'A' or 'B.'" Or, "You're problem is 'X.'"Everyone is full of advise but it's all easier said than done.

I'm not necessarily looking for answers, or advice--just some sympathy and assurance that I'm not the only one with these discouragements. I mean, intuitively I know that I'm not the only one but the things I hear sometimes from my fellow Buddhists makes me feel like I missed out on some meeting where everyone gained enlightenment. I'm not any kind of expert and I've got plenty of rust around the edges but I am always skeptical of people who seem to think they have it all figured out and that they're going to set everyone straight on how to be like them.

I have deleted the post on Buddhism and quantum physics because it appears that I didn't fully understand quantum physics before attempting this write-up. I apologize for any confusion that I might have created. I do still believe though that there is a strong connection between Buddhism and science.

-James R. Ure

PHOTO CREDIT: Gail Atkins

The next Rationally Speaking podcast will tackle the topic of superstition, in honor of that being our episode 13... We are going to talk about it from a slightly different angle than usual. There is of course a consensus within the skeptic community that superstition is bad, and indeed the point of having a community dedicated to skeptical inquiry is precisely to fight superstition (though, curiously, skeptics disagree on whether religion falls under this heading or not).

A recent post by our friend Steve Novella, over at NeuroLogica, however, brought up the possibility that superstition may, at least some of the time, have beneficial effects (just like religion, not to keep pushing that button too much). Steve refers for instance to a paper published in 2008 in Science, which suggests that lacking control over a situation increases people’s propensity to see illusory patterns — the implication being that the latter (a typical component of superstition) ameliorates stress when we feel that things are out of hand.

Sure enough, a very recent study published in Psychological Science shows that superstition improves people’s performance on certain tasks, presumably by making them more self-confident than they would be otherwise. Add to this a recent article in Scientific American to the effect that people with Asperger’s syndrome (increasingly considered to lie along the autistic spectrum) are less likely to project agency onto life’s events (and hence tend to be less superstitious), and suddenly the skeptic might not feel so cocky about being skeptical.

Of course, just like Steve Novella, I don’t think we’ll end up advocating in favor of superstition on the sole ground that it may be psychologically helpful. Still, what happens when something that we devote so much time fighting against turns out not to be entirely bad after all? And incidentally, why are so many people superstitious? Is it because this peculiar habit of mind has been selected in favor due to its positive effects, or is it rather a byproduct of complex brains that are capable of uncovering (real) patterns and dealing with (real) agency?

My previous post on Arthur Danto’s New York Times article about the performing art of Marina Abramovic has generated quite a discussion on Rationally Speaking. Apparently, Danto got quite a reaction also on the NYT’s web site, so much so that he has felt compelled to do a follow-up post to answer some of his readers’ questions. Unfortunately, the new post doesn’t really shed much light on Danto’s thinking about art, except for a single hopeful paragraph, which the author himself immediately, and unwisely, dismisses (more on this in a moment).

Let me start with a few comments on Danto’s second piece, and then broaden the scope of this post by addressing some of the remarks posted on RS. In response to the obvious question posed by one reader, “is performance art really art?” Danto launches into a brief — and somewhat idiosyncratic — history of the philosophy of aesthetics. He starts out, predictably enough, with Plato’s theory that art is a form of imitation. While initially influential, just like pretty much everything Plato wrote, that view has gone out of favor in philosophy a long time ago.

Danto then moves to where I think the answer actually lies, citing Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance concepts,” the idea that many concepts do not admit of a small set of necessary and sufficient conditions that provide a sharp definition of the concept itself. Wittgenstein’s famous example was the concept of games: it is surprisingly difficult to define, as you will discover for yourself if you spend a few minutes trying. (Games are not defined by having rules, because plenty of non-game activities have rules; or by being competitive, because not all games are competitive; or by a scoring system, because not all games have scores; and so on.)

Danto correctly says that “yet not having a definition does not stand in the way of our picking out the art works from a pile of assorted things.” Indeed! But then he goes on to dismiss Wittgenstein and to tell us that art can be just a pile of things (Duchamp’s famous urinal, Warhol’s Brillo boxes), because, you see, “the work of art has meaning; it is about something.” Ah, but by that definition, pretty much everything human beings do is art, because everything we do has meaning (for us). Not good enough, methinks.

Danto then goes back to defending Abramovic’s specific work (remember, she was just sitting on a chair staring at whoever happened to be sitting across from her). He says that “it was in a sense a sacrifice on the artist’s part, an ordeal, an immense favor conferred on those who sat with her ... The sitters are honored to be in the presence of the artist. It is a ritual moment, and understood as such by their own ordeal of waiting ... These are some of the hermeneutical aspects that the artist understood.”

Oh boy, you know you are in trouble when someone brings in hermeneutics (the theory of interpretation, which has gone down the drain ever since Heidegger). I seriously doubt that Abramovic went through an “ordeal” for her performance (except for the self-imposed, and rather silly, rule of not getting up to go pee when nature called). As for a paying customer at the museum being “honored” by her still presence, well I guess that truly is a matter of taste. None of this, however, answers the question of whether this particular instance of performing art was either art or a performance in any non-trivial sense of those terms.

Danto does attempt to define performance art more broadly: “what distinguishes performance art from the rest of art is the presence of the artist’s body.” Okay, but is the mere presence of that body art? Is it a performance? Which brings me back to the broader issue. I do not pretend to have a precise answer to what art is. Indeed, I fully subscribe to myself a Wittgenstein-type family resemblance concept of art, which means that it intrinsically does not admit of precise definitions. But as Danto himself acknowledges, this doesn’t mean that the concept is either meaningless or arbitrary.

Several comments on our previous thread challenged the whole premise of my post, insisting that art is what artists do, or some variant thereof. But the only people who can coherently maintain that approach are cultural relativists — and even they would have to admit that if I declare that snoring on my couch is performing art, then so it is.

What I find interesting is that very few people would actually agree that there is no rhyme or reason at all in discussing what is and what is not art. Those same people go to museums, which means that they trust the (presumably not entirely arbitrary) considered opinions of art critics as experts (Danto wrote a long essay for the Museum of Modern Art about Abramovic’s piece). But the whole idea of expertise, or aesthetic judgment, doesn’t make any sense if art is an entirely arbitrary concept.

In some sense there are some interesting parallels (not to be pushed too far, to be sure) between this debate and the one I’ve been having here at RS with Julia, on whether ethics is a matter of entirely arbitrary taste or whether one can make rational arguments in favor of one ethical decision and against another one. Again it seems to me that many people lean toward some type of moral relativism, only to presumably recoil from it when one points out consequences like the conclusion that genital mutilation of young girls is okay. (On the latter point, at least, I agree with Sam Harris’ critique of relativism, even though I do think his answer to the question of the foundations of ethics is wrong.)

As Julia put it in the discussion thread about my previous post (where she was disagreeing with my take), “unless, Massimo, you want to try and make the case that people's positive reactions to Marina were somehow faulty — e.g., that they report positive reactions only because they were caught up in the hype and cachet around Marina.” That strikes me as a correct inference. I’m not sure about people’s reactions being “faulty,” a reaction is a reaction. But yes, I do think that a lot of contemporary art (not just Marina’s piece, and not just performance art) is in a sense a sham, a matter of hype fueled by self-important critics and artists, not to mention museum curators. It is fitting that Danto invokes Duchamp, whose “set pieces” were actually meant precisely as a not too subtle criticism of the pomposity and sometimes downright absurdity of the art world. Apparently, he succeeded far too well in making his point.

* I recently caused some heated discussion over on Ophelia Benson's blog regarding the ability of science to handle the question of the existence of God.

* If you're having a reproductive crisis, don't go to a Catholic hospital, says Angela Bonavoglia.

* Not news, but a nice reminder considering the rhetoric we often hear: none of the Ten Commandments are in the U.S. Constitution.

* Good reading on the issue of whether doctors, pharmacists, and other health care workers should have the right to refuse to provide services that conflict with their religious beliefs.

* Why does Obama consult with experts? So he knows "whose ass to kick."

* Christopher Hitchens takes Prince Charles to town for attacking science and reason in a recent speech.

* "Is the meaning of the Constitution clear? And is the task of divining that meaning easy?" Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter discussed those two questions at his recent commencement address at Harvard. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick provides analysis.

* Tim James, a candidate for governor in Alabama, wants to stop offering the state driver's license test in 12 languages, and only offer it in English. In his words: "This is Alabama. We speak English. If you want to live here, learn it."

* And finally, a touching tribute to Jay Gallagher, an award-winning journalist and author who died in late May of pancreatic cancer (obit here). Gallagher was a fantastic bureau chief at Gannett News Service's New York Capitol Bureau in Albany for 20 years. I interned under him my senior year of undergrad, in 2005.

Literature teaches us about life. Literature helps us understand the world.

I'm sure you've heard these claims before, and maybe you agree with them. It's practically a truism that one of the reasons literature is valuable -- worth writing, reading, studying, and promoting -- is that it's not just entertaining, but that it actually teaches us profound lessons about the world, and about human nature. But does it?

I recently read How Fiction Works, by James Wood, a book I strongly recommend for its analysis of writing techniques, of what works stylistically and what doesn't. But towards the end of the book Wood makes the case that fiction is a good source of knowledge about the world. A representative example: "Consider -- just to pluck one kind of struggle -- what extraordinary empirical insight the novel has given us into marriage and all its conflicts," he writes.

As far as I can tell, this belief in truth-from-fiction is the party line for those who champion the merits of literature. Eminent English professor and critic Harold Bloom proclaims, in his bestselling How to Read and Why, that one of the main reasons to read literature is because "we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are."

But why would we expect literature to be a reliable source of knowledge about "the way things are"? After all, the narratives which are the most gripping and satisfying to read are not the most representative of how the world actually works. They have dramatic resolutions, foreshadowing, conflict, climax, and surprise. People tend to get their comeuppance after they misbehave. People who pursue their dream passionately tend to succeed. Disaster tends to strike when you least expect it. These narratives are over-represented in literature because they're more gratifying to read; why would we expect to learn from them about "the way things are"?

And even if authors were all trying to faithfully represent the world as they perceived it, why would we expect their perceptions to be any more universally true than anyone else's? Just like the rest of us, authors see a limited slice of the world, made up of their own experiences and the re-told experiences of their acquaintances. There's no reason we should expect that slice of the world to be a representative one. (In fact, we might instead expect the world we see in literature to be systematically biased by the traits characteristic of writers. Not to paint with too broad a brush here, but I'd be willing to bet that writers are more sensitive and more introverted than average. And although I can't predict exactly how each of those traits would bias their representation of the world, it seems likely that they would bias it somehow.)

So I can't see any reason to give any more weight to the implicit arguments of a novel than we would give to the explicit arguments of any individual person. And yet when we read a novel or study it in school, especially if it's a hallowed classic, we tend to treat its arguments as truths. At least in my experience, the conclusions people tend to draw from classic novels are more of the form "The Great Gatsby shows the hollowness of the American dream," rather than, "The Great Gatsby shows that F. Scott Fitzgerald believed the American dream to be hollow."

For that matter, how can we tell whether a novel's portrayal of the world is "truthful" or "realistic"? People certainly tend to feel like they can tell. Wood writes, "Kafka's Metamorphosis and Hamsun's Hunger and Beckett's Endgame are... harrowingly truthful texts. This, we say to ourselves, is what it would feel like to be outcast from one's family, like an insect (Kafka), or a young madman (Hamsun) or an aged parent kept in a bin and fed pap (Beckett)."

But whether you finish a book and say to yourself, "That's exactly what it would be like," or "That's not at all what it would be like," what are you basing that judgment on? All you have to evaluate a book's portrayal of the world by are your pre-existing perceptions. So if the novel's portrayal of the world matches what you already believe, then you deem it "truthful." But then how can a novel ever teach us something new about the world that we don't already believe?

It's also worth keeping in mind that whether or not something feels realistic isn't necessarily a good indicator of whether it is realistic. In fact, experiments have revealed a common cognitive bias that leads people to judge an event as being more likely if it's described in more detail. For instance, during the Cold War, psychologists Tversky and Kahneman asked political leaders to estimate the probability of (1) the U.S. withdrawing its ambassador from the U.S.S.R., and (2) the U.S.S.R. invading Poland and then, as a result, the U.S. withdrawing its ambassador from the U.S.S.R. People rated (2) as more likely. Of course, (2) is a subset of (1), and is therefore by definition less likely. But because it has a narrative built in, it feels more plausible.

Science fiction is especially good at making us feel like we've learned a lesson about the world, because it's perfectly suited to "What would happen if..." questions that vividly portray the consequences of a particular course of action. And it's easy to confuse "this is one theoretically possible outcome that could result" with "this is the outcome that will result."

My brother Jesse Galef unearthed a striking example of this phenomenon. George W. Bush read (uh, technically, his advisor read to him) passages from Aldous Huxley's dystopic science fiction novel, Brave New World. "'We're tinkering with the boundaries of life here,' Bush said when I finished. “We’re on the edge of a cliff. And if we take a step off the cliff, there’s no going back. Perhaps we should only take one step at a time.”" His conclusion: we should avoid stem-cell research.

But as Jesse points out:

Aldous Huxley had a vision of how society interacts with technological advances. He thought such a scenario would lead to hatcheries, deception, and nightmarish conditions. That possibility scared Bush into a position on stem-cell research. So? Huxley has no particular authority on the subject. Someone else could come along and write a story about a world in which technology creates excellent living conditions! If someone had read that story to Bush, maybe he would have gladly supported research.

I've also come to suspect that even when we're not explicitly trying to learn about the world from fiction, it seeps into our unconscious anyway, and starts to bias our sense of "the way things are." We form our general impressions of how things work in the world from a jumble of accumulated experiences -- our own, along with secondhand experiences that we've read and heard about. And my suspicion is that when we read fictional stories, our memories of them get automatically added to that jumble. Thus, when we ask ourselves questions like, "What's likely to happen when I pursue this girl who seems out of my league, or quit this job to chase my dream, or commit this crime?" we're basing our answer not just on the real examples of similar situations we've heard of, but also, unwittingly, on the ones we've read about in fiction.

I've definitely noticed this tendency in myself. A while ago I realized that I had the habit of thinking, on some not-quite-conscious level, "Let me imagine as many things that could go wrong as possible, because if I think of them ahead of time then they won't happen." Where did that superstition come from? My guess is, from fiction. A satisfying disaster, narratively, is one that is unexpected. So my brain reasoned: "Disasters tend not to be anticipated, so if I anticipate something then that means it won't happen."

I'd be genuinely curious to hear if you, or anyone you know, has actually learned something profound about the world or human nature from literature. Remember, it must be both true, and also something you didn't already know before reading the novel. It seems logically impossible to me, based on the reasons I outlined above, but perhaps I'll realize an error in my reasoning if someone can give me a counterexample.

An embarrassing footnote: I very nearly ended this essay by giving you an example of how literature skews our view of the world -- Emma Bovary, in Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary, who reads too many melodramatic novels as a young girl and proceeds to evaluate her adult life by the standards of fiction, viewing her everyday life as dull, and passion as paramount, which gets her in a heap of trouble. See? I was going to say. Emma Bovary's experience shows the problem with using fictional stories as a guide to how things really --

...and then, of course, the absurdity of my argument finally hit me, like a ton of circular bricks.