Victor Davis Hanson has a brilliant take today, in which he writes:
“Canada is now governed by absurdism, and it is symptomatic of an ailing Western elite.”
I have long noted how absurd our times are, and how a certain political ideology, namely progressivism, thrives only because the obvious contradictions their beliefs rest upon are never addressed to a logical endpoint, requiring the rest of us in some sort of absurdist limbo, as if we are all trapped in a Salvador Dali painting.
Several years ago, I also observed that our elite ruling classes took in information about the world as if they are a “removed” party, someone several times removed from the actual event. It is almost as if they based their perspective of the real world on what someone read to them from a newspaper article that was written by a news service about a report submitted by another reporter who only interviewed one witness of many about any given event.
The Biden administration has condensed my thinking and I have come believe that, to them, life is perceived as if they are observing the world in something I have decided to call “Schrödinger’s Terrarium”.
Of course, Schrödinger’s Cat is the famous thought experiment where a cat is in a box with a vial of poison that is being subjected to radiation, the vial of poison may or may not shatter because of the radiation - and as long as the box remains closed, the cat is assumed to be both dead and alive at the same time because neither can be confirmed without direct observation.
Borrowing from both Schrödinger’s Cat and Plato’s Cave, I created Schrödinger’s Terrarium along those lines to explain why progressive thought can only exist in such an altered state of reality. In my thought experiment, the Terrarium is a singularity where a person can exist both inside and outside the terrarium at the same time, experiencing one reality and observing another without ever realizing which one is real – that is, unless and until the terrarium glass breaks and the two worlds become one.
I know that is a little bit on the weird side, but I do believe the “elite” ruling class – Victor Davis Hanson calls them the “zoom and laptop” class – observe the world as if it is a grand terrarium where they can stare at a closed ecosystem through the glass and believe they have total control of the care, feeding and behaviors of the inhabitants. They also believe that, being on the outside, they are unaffected by any decision they make or action they implement. That is why they believe that even the most unworkable ideas will work because they believe they know, understand, and can control all the variables. Inside Schrödinger’s Terrarium, life complies with their rules.
What they don’t understand is that this is all an illusion - because they are not staring from the outside in, they are the ones in the terrarium, staring out. They are the ones living in a protected and controlled environment, safe from the uncontrollable and infinite variables that exist on the outside of their glassed-in enclosure – and entirely dependent upon those outside the glass walls. In their world, food and water magically appear. Their world is temperature and humidity controlled and everything necessary or desirable for their comfort is provided. In short, that is how the believe the real world to be, and therefore why their ideas are never really are applicable to the outside world and rarely, if ever, work.
Hanson’s denouement begins with the analogy of a festering wound, disguised by the smooth scab that covers it – and now the Canadian truckers have peeled back at least a small part of that scab to reveal the pus underneath.
In my analogy, the actions of the truckers would be reflected in cracks in the glass of Schrödinger’s Terrarium.
VDH continues:
“What is now following is amplification and clarification of the Western divide. We the public are at the global theater. And we are watching a tragicomedy. On stage, a petulant cast of clueless Justin Trudeaus and bumbling Joe Bidens simply cannot fathom why few anymore are listening to them. More and more North Americans are perplexed why anyone would wish to follow such unimpressive mental and physical figures along with all the toxic hypocrisies they embody and weaponize.”
I don’t know why, but the old “Rock-a-Bye Baby” lullaby comes to mind:
Rock a bye baby, in the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
The same holds true for the glass walls of Schrödinger’s Terrarium. When they shatter, reality will rush into the world of the progressive, something for which they are entirely and utterly unprepared.
Feels a bit like we are all living in The Truman Show. And we are all Truman.