Reality: The Taboo Against Truth, Chapter 1

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Reality

and The Taboo Against Truth

Hamlet’s Binary Circumstance

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play involving murder, ghosts, insanity and a change of government. At the heart of the play is Hamlet’s famous soliloquy where he ponders questions of existence, values and action:

To be or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?

As the play begins, Hamlet returns to Denmark on the news that his father, the King, has died. His mother, Gertrude, has married his uncle, Claudius, making him the new King. Hamlet suspects his uncle’s involvement in his father’s death.

Later on, Hamlet sees his father’s ghost who tells him that Claudius had indeed murdered him. Hoping to trick Claudius into a confession, Hamlet connives with a band of actors to put on a play recreating the circumstances of his father’s death to test Claudius’ response. There is no confession, but Claudius’ violent reaction satisfies Hamlet that his uncle is the killer.

Throughout the play, Hamlet’s rage and his quest for the truth make him appear mad to others. More than once, Claudius plots to have his nephew killed.

Hamlet is not only dealing with questions about the value and meaning of his own existence, he is testing for truth. He wants knowledge and facts in order to make sense of his environment. He designs the play as an experiment to determine whether his beliefs about Claudius’ guilt are true or false. His goal is to determine whether Claudius is a murderer or not; whether his uncle’s responsibility for the crime exists or not.

Hamlet, like all human beings, is caught in a web of binary circumstances. A binary circumstance is a situation that has only two possible states. It is an either/or dichotomy between two mutually exclusive possibilities. Hamlet knows that there are only two possibilities for existence in this world, being and not being. At times he is torn between action and inaction, sanity and insanity. In an effort to make sense of the events of his life, he struggles to know what exists and what does not exist, what is true and what is false. At the root of all his conflicts and the conflicts of the other characters is the question of what is real and what is not. These dichotomies are all binary circumstances.

In one scene, Hamlet goes to his mother’s bedroom and accuses her of complicity in his father’s murder. The implication is that he wants to know if an accomplice existed in his father’s murder and if his mother was the accomplice. Again he is looking for facts about existence to determine what is true. Either the accomplice existed or not, either the mother was the accomplice or not. Those questions are both binary circumstances.

In another scene, when he hears a sound from behind a curtain Hamlet stabs through the fabric thinking it is Claudius, only to discover that he has killed Polonius, the father of Ophelia, whom he loves. He acts on an emotional impulse and stabs at the curtain without first determining who was behind it. But Hamlet’s idea of who was behind the curtain did not change the identity of the person who was actually there. The person who existed behind the curtain was and objective fact beyond the control of his consciousness.

When the dead King’s ghost appears to Hamlet again but not to Gertrude; she believes he has gone insane as she watches him carry on a conversation with something she cannot see. Although Hamlet and his mother are in the same room, each sees a different reality. A ghost exists for Hamlet that does not exist for his mother. The ghost either exists or it doesn’t. Hamlet and his mother cannot both be right.

After Claudius watches the play based on information provided by the ghost, he runs to be alone. Hamlet has an opportunity to kill the king as he kneels in prayer but fears that murdering his uncle might send him straight to heaven. Hamlet obviously believed in the possibility of a heaven; therefore, it is difficult to understand why he was so tormented about being or not being. Being in heaven where he could be free from his troubled life with all its conflicts, power struggles, murders and grief would be more desirable than not being in heaven. He considers suicide, but is tormented by indecision, unable to know what consequences he might face after death. He has no knowledge of what heaven is or who gets admitted. This lack of knowledge is at the root of his torment.

The other characters in the play experience similar conflicts attempting to judge whether Hamlet is sane or insane. They wonder if he should be killed or allowed to live. They all know Hamlet exists, and they can determine if he continues to exist or not. Whatever they decide, there is no middle ground. Hamlet either exists or he doesn’t.

Hamlet is the story of individual, unique minds trying to survive by making sense of the world they share. Whether they will continue “to be or not to be” depends on whether they can successfully distinguish between what exists and what does not exist, between what is true and what is not true. Hamlet and all the characters who share his drama live in a labyrinth of binary circumstances where they struggle to distinguish between existence and nonexistence.

For Hamlet and for all other humans, the relationship between existence and non-existence is the most fundamental binary circumstance. It is the ultimate either/or situation. Whether things either exist or not is the primary question that serves as the starting point for all other questions. If something exists, we can learn more about it. If it doesn’t exist, it can never be known.

Most individuals are familiar with counting in the decimal system, also known as base 10, which is characterized by the use of 10 digits, 0-9. The binary system of counting is called base 2 and has only two digits, 0 and 1. All computers are based on binary mathematics because computers are made of billions of switches and circuits. The switches are either on or off creating circuits that are either open or closed. Every circuit or memory location in a computer is a binary circumstance where a current or charge is either on or off.

When a computer programmer writes a program it must be translated so that the computer can understand it. The only language that a computer can understand is “machine code” which is a binary code with only two digits, 0 and 1. The huge number of circuits and memory locations in a computer make the possible combinations of those two digits virtually unlimited. It is the billions of different combinations of binary circumstances, 0’s or 1’s that allow computers to perform so many complex functions.

At any given moment, the state of a computer’s memory and storage devices can be described in binary terms by knowing which circuits are on and which are off. Similarly, the universe can be described in binary terms by knowing what exists and what does not.

Consciousness is existence that has become aware of itself. The existence of consciousness implies something to be conscious of. As far as we know, Man is the most sophisticated consciousness in the universe and Hamlet like all humans was a man with his own unique consciousness attempting to comprehend his universe and his role in it. His primary struggle was the struggle that all men face: to be or not to be, to exist or not to exist. Consciousness of existence implies an ability to separate existence from nonexistence, the real from the unreal. One cannot understand the concept of existence without understanding the concept of nonexistence.

Before anything can be known about something, it must be determined whether the entity that we want to understand exists. If it does not exist then it cannot be realistically described, discussed, or explored. If it exists it will have properties and characteristics; it can be described. It will have an identity. Once we know that some thing exists, we can then start to answer questions about what properties exist in the object and how it relates to other objects. But in order to identify something and test for particular properties and relationships it must first exist, and we must be conscious of its existence.

Reality is the totality of everything that exists. It is the universe. If we could know everything that exists and all the properties of things that exist and all the relationships between things that exist then we would understand the universe, including our place in it. We would have all the knowledge that it is possible to have if we were conscious of every thing in the universe.

On the contrary, there is no reality to things that do not exist. If they existed, they would be part of reality; they would have identity and properties. Things that do not exist cannot be described. They have no attributes or characteristics; they occupy no point in space and time, no place in the universe. Nonexistence can only be thought of in relation to existence. Beyond that it is impossible to think about nonexistence rationally because it isn’t there; there is no evidence to use as the raw material of concept formation and thought. Even scientific theories about the unknown must start from what exists, in order to be rational and testable.

The fact that it is impossible to know anything about things that don’t exist doesn’t stop people from believing that it can be done. Yet any concepts, thoughts or words used to discuss nonexistent entities must inevitably project reality onto the void of nonexistence creating a delusion that something exists where there is nothing like a mirage in the desert. Since nonexistence can’t be described, any attributes that are used to describe it must be borrowed from things that exist.

For example, when people talk about aliens from outer space, they imagine beings that have human characteristics like eyes, hands, and intelligence. This process is called personification. Humans project attributes borrowed from human existence onto the void of nonexistence in an attempt to make something out of nothing. We attach familiar qualities to nonexistence to make it seem familiar and understandable.

When people talk about God they engage in the same process, assigning human characteristics to their ideal of a Supreme Being; taking what they know and projecting it onto the blank screen of the unknown. Therefore God becomes a being that is intelligent, capable of conversations, thought, actions and emotions like love and hate. The unknowable instantly becomes knowable. It makes no difference that no sane person has ever seen or scientifically validated the existence of a Supreme Being with those characteristics or any other characteristics for that matter. Fear of the unknown is so untenable that the insta-knowledge of made up realities is too seductive for humans to resist.

Material objects, energy, actions and the relationships between them either exist or they don’t. Things are either real or they’re not real. These are the only two possibilities. There is no in-between state that allows for something to exist and not exist at the same time. To be inside the frame of existence precludes being outside the frame of existence and vice-versa.

Things that exist have their own characteristics and properties; there is no reason to personify them by projecting human characteristics onto them. They have their own identity that can be independently validated. On the other hand, outside of existence there is no identity and no properties. Belief in such things can never be more than a fantasy or delusion.

Hamlet’s torment is fueled by his inability to distinguish existence from nonexistence, and his resulting attempts to comprehend and describe nonexistence. This is an impossible task since there is no evidence of properties or characteristics from which to build a rational description.

When there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of something, there is no basis for assuming it exists. Even new theories and discoveries are based on a reinterpretation of existing evidence or the discovery of new evidence. Discovery is dependent upon existence. We cannot discover any thing where no thing exists.

A binary circumstance is strictly confined to either/or situations. As such it must be distinguished from the process of bifurcation, which is the creation of a false binary circumstance. Bifurcation is an attempt to limit choices by creating a false either/or dichotomy, only allowing two choices when others exist.

For example, in the United States, people tend to think of political affiliation in terms of either conservative or liberal, as Republican or Democrat. An attempt to fit every person into one of those two boxes is a bifurcation because there are other political parties and philosophies. There are Democrats who on some issues think more like Republicans and vice-versa. Bifurcation fuels tension by creating polar opposites where more options exist.

Whether an individual exists at a specific point in space and time is a binary circumstance; he’s either there or he’s not. To say that there are only two possible locations in space and time where an individual can exist, however, is a bifurcation. There are many places on the planet where a person could possibly be.

The universe is full of binary circumstances that can be reduced to the primary binary circumstance--existence or nonexistence. An entity either has consciousness or it does not. Evidence tells us that consciousness exists in humans but it does not exist in rocks.

No two physical objects can occupy the same space at the same time. When Hamlet took a stab at the curtain he knew that somebody was behind the curtain but he didn’t know who it was, he just thought he knew. There could only be one man hiding in the same location behind the curtain. It could be Claudius or Polonius or somebody else, but no two men could occupy the same space at the same time.

Whether an individual object exists in a particular space at a particular time is a binary circumstance. It either exists in that space or it does not. If it is not in one space, it can be found in another as long as it still exists in the universe. Hamlet’s rapier is either in his hand or it isn’t, it either penetrates the curtain or it doesn’t. The same rule applies to human beings; each individual occupies a unique place in the universe at any given time and has a unique consciousness of the universe. To update Hamlet to the post-Einstein era: To be or not to be in a particular location in space and time; that is the question.

Some things exist in the universe as universal reality and other things exist as unique realities.

Characteristics of entities can also be universal or unique. All snowflakes are white, crystallized water, but every snowflake has a unique shape. Any characteristic that is universal cannot be unique; and whatever is unique cannot be universal. It is a universal reality that all humans exist at some point in the universe. The point where they exist is unique to the individual, however.

Not all characteristics are either universal or unique; some are shared by some members of a subgroup but not all members in the group. But it is true that universality excludes uniqueness and uniqueness excludes universality. All flowers have color; therefore color is a universal trait of flowers. Some flowers will be yellow, other will be red, and so the actual color is neither universal nor unique with respect to other flowers. The space that the flower occupies is unique to a particular flower, however. Therefore it cannot be universal to all flowers.

In Hamlet, all the actors share the same story and stage. That is their universal reality, the world they share in common. But each actor has his own role, his own place on the stage that is not shared with any of the other actors. The roles are unique to each actor.

Every human being has a unique consciousness which is dependent upon his existence; that consciousness ceases to exist when he ceases to exist. The universe, however, is not dependent upon the existence of individual consciousnesses for its existence. Universal reality is a uniform, objective reality that can be experienced, independently validated and understood by any individual, unique, subjective consciousness as long as that consciousness exists.

Some examples of universal facts in Hamlet are: the story takes place in Denmark, Hamlet’s father has died, Claudius has married Hamlet’s mother, and Hamlet has returned home. The universe, including Denmark and all the other characters in the story did not end with the death of Hamlet’s father. The drama of the story stems from the fact that each character has a unique perception and relationship to those facts and a unique response. Each individual has a unique consciousness of the universal reality (UCUR) of the play and each individual is trying to protect and preserve his unique view as the ultimate truth.

No character can change the facts that already exist as the universal reality of the story. What exists exists and what is true is the truth regardless of how each unique consciousness perceives the situation. Claudius is the murderer or he is not. The ghost of Hamlet’s father exists or he does not. Each character has his own unique view of the universe in the play, but no unique view tells us if Claudius was the murderer or if the ghost really exists. Those facts lie outside the control of the individual consciousness, and are universal--a function of existence itself; not dependent upon any unique consciousness for their existence.

Like our universe, the universe of Hamlet is constantly changing. As the story unfolds, new emotions, perceptions, suspicions and actions come into existence as a function of each character’s relationship to reality. Those individual points of view, once they exist, become part of the universal reality of the story, though their existence is transient, a tiny speck of reality when compared to the existence of the earth, the sun, or the universe itself.

As part of the process of distinguishing existence from nonexistence, the mind must distinguish between what aspects of an existent are unique to individual experience and which aspects can be universally experienced and understood by all. It is essential to distinguish between a unique experience like an emotion or the appearance of a ghost, and something like the universal reality of the law of gravity. Your emotions can push you around, but gravity pushes us all around, regardless of how we feel about it. It is essential to learn the difference between beliefs and emotions that are a function of a unique consciousness, and objective facts that can be scientifically validated as universal, and applicable to all.

It is an objective, universal reality that each individual is genetically unique with the exception of identical twins or clones. In addition, each individual has unique experiences and occupies a unique point in the universe. This creates a unique relationship with universal reality for each individual consciousness. It is not possible for two individuals to see the universe in precisely the same way. If their perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and resulting actions were identical and occurred at the same point in time and space; they would be the same person because they would have the same characteristics and location.

The existence of so many unique consciousnesses is a function of the process of evolution that has created all species of life including the human race. The human race has accomplished so much because of its high level of consciousness and intelligence. Intelligence is nothing more than a consciousness understanding the facts of reality. Humans have an unprecedented, organic capacity to perceive and analyze the physical world so that we can use it to our advantage.

Man is made from the same elements as the earth; his existence grew out of the earth and it is inextricably linked to the earth and the universe. All the evidence suggests that Man does not exist outside the physical environment of the earth. As the earth’s environment changes over time, Man like all species must also change by evolving.

Evolution is possible because of genetic diversity--the uniqueness of each individual. Genetic diversity gives a species the ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment; as the environment changes the species has more options for how to respond to that change. Organisms that can’t adapt die off while those that can adapt produce new generations of offspring that are better suited genetically for the new environment. If all organisms in a species are identical they can be easily wiped out by a single disease or any other force that threatens the survival of the species. A disease that kills one can kill all because they are identical. Genetic variation prevents a universal susceptibility to a disease or other selective force.

So what does all this have to do with Hamlet?

Hamlet, like all men, was unique. How he dealt with his dilemma, to be or not to be, was a function of his unique consciousness of existence.

Whether we choose to accept or reject universal reality is a binary circumstance. We attempt to know it or we don’t; we either succeed in acquiring knowledge or we don’t. There is no guarantee that we will succeed even if we try; there is only a guarantee that humans as a species won’t survive if we all reject the nature of our existence in the universe.

We can devote our minds and our lives to acquiring knowledge; but it requires that we focus on existence. Hamlet was trying to do this, but his failure to understand the binary nature of existence caused him to put equal or greater weight on what he could not know as what he could know when making choices. As a result, he, like so many others, wanted to believe that the blank slate of death “’tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Hamlet’s confusion left him feeling powerless and depressed.

To die, to sleep--

No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.

Pause indeed, dear Hamlet. Take a long pause. It either exists or it does not. Ay, there’s the rub.