The Digital Circus and the Human Condition

In a world where nothing is real, and reality bends to whimsy, what does it mean to truly exist?

Image: themarysue.com

My son is obsessed with an animated series called The Amazing Digital Circus. The show is a frenetic dark comedy featuring a cadre of colorful, surreal-looking characters engaging in all sort of comedic hijinx. They are led by a charismatic AI named Caine, who is basically a pair of eyeballs embedded in a set of chattering teeth…with a top hat.

None of the “human” characters know what they’re doing in this digital world or how they got there, though one has a faint memory of putting on a VR headset. Caine sets up various scenarios to keep them occupied and entertained, such as working at a fast-food restaurant, ghost hunting, and capturing bandits who have stolen syrup from the Candy Canyon Kingdom.

These activities are important in that they keep the group occupied with something, as it is apparently easy to go insane in the Circus world. This got me thinking about how much of what we do daily is purposeful and how much is just rote ritual and distraction that prevents us from escaping the colorful absurdity of our lives. Looked at with this idea in mind, like any good absurd comedy, the show is a mirror to the human condition, exploring the critical themes of identity, purpose, and existential angst.

The Need For (Actual) Meaning

Image: themarysue.com

Human beings naturally crave meaning, and when we don’t get it, our psyches begin to fray. As Canadian psychologist John Vervaeke notes in Awakening From the Meaning Crisis, there is “a nebulous problem in our modern epoch … it has something to do with the decentering of the human life from its cosmic significance, a decline in our sense of purpose, and a sensation that we have lost the soul that gave earlier human societies their adaptiveness and vitality.”

One of the societal reactions to this state of affairs is a renewed interest in wisdom and an openness to searching for purpose and meaning. We see this trend in the contemporary rediscovery of psychedelics, the mindfulness movement, and the massive interest in books and videos that purport to teach happiness. All of this is positive, a nascent outreach beyond the quotidian to something that can scratch the painful itch of our meaning deprivation.

But here’s the thing. How exactly do we know if these activities (meditation, mindfulness, etc.) are any more meaningful than the antics within the Digital Circus? Is this entirely subjective? If I find immense meaning in my stamp collection, is that good enough? Is there a way to prove that building a hospital is any more meaningful an endeavor? Or worse, what if someone finds great meaning in raping, torture, or killing, for its own sake or as a distraction from meaninglessness, which a great many cultures have in the course of history (and still do in some quarters)?

I have spoken with some great minds who readily admit that, in the absence of provable meaning, everything we value, including our families, careers, memories, and everything else, is essentially a story we have made up and are agreeing to act out, precisely the bleak situation presented in The Amazing Digital Circus. Nonetheless, any meaning we assign to such a story is fundamentally unreal. In a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Don’t Believe in God? Lie to Your Childen,” psychologist Erica Komisar makes the argument that to be saddled with the burden of meaninglessness is so pernicious to young psyches that it is better to lie about it.

But how long can that strategy work? In the absence of a true, gut-level confidence in life’s meaningfulness, a gnawing doubt will always bubble up to eat away at our malnourished minds. How, then, to escape the Digital Circus?

The Escape Plan

Image: youtube.com

Step 1: There’s a voice inside your head. Realize that it’s nuts. On a minute-by-minute basis, we are bombarded from within and without by a slew of falsehoods, half-truths, mistakes, confusions, and misperceptions. Like a circus ringleader, our inner voice directs our attention towards stimulating (but not necessarily meaningful) images and ideas. As author Michael Singer has pointed out, if we were to personify the voice in our heads, we would come to regard it as literally out of its mind. Yet, we routinely take its advice as if it has a good track record. We know this from personal experience. The information we are getting is not very good.

Step 2. Know that there is an actual Truth out there. Stamp collecting is not as significant as hospital building because an aspect of the nature of the Truth is giving. This is part of the fabric of reality. The more aligned with this reality, the more pleasurable and harmonious our lives become. All religions and spiritual traditions at least pay lip service to this idea. However, as religion and spirituality are conducted by humans through their aforementioned broken filters, it is easy to fail to capitalize on what these traditions have to offer.

Step 3. Purge your perception. Most of us can’t see beyond the craziness of the circus due to distraction, hyper-emotionality, false beliefs, ego, ennui, and a host of other stumbling blocks. It takes real work, courage, and a sustained commitment to cleanse our warped and distorted faculties, but it can be done. We’ve all had moments of great clarity: the sunset on the mountain, the birth of a child, the first “I love you.” This is a taste of The Truth. These transformative experiences can serve as signposts that inspire and guide us along the path, even as they are a drop in the Infinite ocean of ultimate reality (and the pleasure that comes along with connecting with it).

The Amazing Digital Circus is surreal but also a profound exploration of the human condition. It reminds us that connection, reflection, creativity, and a touch of humor keep us grounded in the face of absurdity.

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