Giving Birth to Konrad - My realism vs anti-realism dual personality
Actually written DECEMBER 8, 1994
Hi. I’m a person with a split personality. That means I have two separate minds, two separate personalities, sharing this same body. I even have two separate names for each of my personalities. One is called Konrad, the other, Luke.
You may have heard of, or even met other people with two or more personalities. Most often we think of multiple personalities as a disease that afflicts its victim without the victim’s knowing what happened. And in the extreme cases, the multiple personalities may not even know about any of the other personalities.
On both these points, I am different. First of all, I became multi-personalitied deliberately, by choice. I actually wanted another personality, so I created one, gave it a name, and learned how to become that new person at will, and how to return to my old personality at will also. And second, both of my personalities know about one another, and maintain a complex relationship as if they were partners in life.
One could say that I’m not really multi-personalitied at all, but just pretending to be. Perhaps I'm just using the idea of multiple personalities as a metaphor for some other psychological game I’m playing with myself and others. Am I not really just one person tricking myself into believing that I’m two separate people? After all, as I speak to you now I use the word ‘I’ to refer to both of my personalities. Doesn’t this indicate that there is some overall persona that unifies my two personalities, and that I’m now speaking to you as that overall persona? Maybe so. I don’t really know.
On this point about my using split personality as just a metaphor for my psychological game, I should say the metaphor is the game. Perhaps by metaphorically pretending to have two personalities, I achieve the same goal that a literal, psychotic multi-personality would achieve. All I know is that it works. It gets me what I want; and that’s all that matters.
Right now I am Konrad. And later on I will let Luke speak to you. You will see the difference between us, how we relate, and hopefully, the reason behind all this. Apparently it’s a bit complex. Luke and I don't quite see our relationship the same way. That's how extreme the personality split is. According to Luke, I, Konrad, do not fully understand the meaning of our relationship. In fact, Luke thinks I’m incapable of understanding such things.
I suppose I should trust his judgment about this because it was he who created me. He claims to have very complicated reasons for creating me, or at least reasons I'm not able to understand or believe.
I don't know. Maybe he is right. I mean, Luke and I have the same knowledge, the same memories, the same life experience and information to work with. He made sure I shared all that with him. So I know fully the reason he created me in terms of words and concepts and logic and all, but I must confess that when I look at it all, I don’t get it. That is, I don’t see why all that reasoning persuades him to create me. I understand the reasoning; but I don’t understand the convoluted passion that made him create me. In my judgment, there were other, easier, more sensible alternatives to his problem than creating me.
But hey, I’m here now. Who cares why?
I suppose I should be bothered that I disagree with the reasons for my own creation. I mean, suppose I convince Luke he was wrong. Wouldn’t he then decide to revoke my existence – to kill me, basically? Well, the irony here is that Luke created me not to care about such things. That much I do understand. And it worked. I don’t care. And, ironically, I don’t care for the same reasons I don’t agree with his choice to create me: I am a pragmatist.
Yes, I am Konrad the pragmatist. That means I think and act according to whim, according to whatever seems appropriate at the time. I believe and do whatever works, whatever it takes to survive and to feel good. I reject all principles in favor of workability, accept – and here’s a bit of irony for you – accept when principles work for me.
You could say, as Luke does, that this means my beliefs and actions are prone to contradictions. My reply is that I simply don’t care. Contradictions are not a problem for me. So what? It works. And that’s all that matters.
You may object, thinking I’m an opportunistic ass-hole. But please hear me.
Just because I’m a pragmatist does not mean I am prepared to be cruel to my fellow human beings. I’ll have you know that I love my fellow human beings very much. Benevolence is my highest value, in fact.
But you may object yet again that benevolence cannot be my highest value since it could not be so without being so in principle. And since I embrace no principles, you are worried that at any whim I could overturn my benevolence.
My response is this:
First, you cannot justify any principles whatever. They are a myth, social constructs at best.
Second, your concern for principles is itself no more than a whim that works for you.
You too are a pragmatist – everyone is – but few of us know it, and fewer want to admit it.
And third, well ok. I’ve changed my mind. I accept benevolence on principle – it works for me at this moment.
Get it?
As you can see, I’m a sort of sophisticated pragmatist, a self-reflective pragmatist. And that’s just what works for me. I enjoy it. I have rooted my pragmatism in the study of philosophy and am comfortable with it at that level. Doing philosophy, which ordinarily calls for principles, has enhanced my rejection of principles and made me secure in my pragmatism. In short, I am one of the few pragmatists who knows he is a pragmatist, who accepts it and nurtures it even.
Most people are pragmatists who don’t know it. They too believe and act according to whatever works for them. Even when they believe that they believe on principle instead of whim, that belief is itself founded on no more than whim – it’s just a rather persistent whim that has a reputation of working well for them. In other words, believing that one is not a pragmatist is itself a pragmatic belief.
Now I must tell you that Luke does not think he is a pragmatist. He believes in principles. He believes in an absolute truth, “out there” like they say on the X Files.
Well, so do many un-self-conscious pragmatists from time to time. And that is the way I think Luke is. The thing is, Luke thinks of himself otherwise.
“So what?” you may ask. Well, the thing is, this makes Luke very boring, and if not boring, very un-flexible and even self-centered. In short, it makes him basically an anti-social pain in the ass.
I’ll say this much. I don’t like being with Luke very much. I mean, I know he means well in general, but I’d really rather hang out with almost anybody else.
Life is so much more than some obsession with absolutes. Life is the simple joy of smiling and shooting the bull with others. Life is action, doing things that matter right here and now. It’s being with people and doing things we can all understand and appreciate. And it’s even about doing our own things from time to time – but not at the prolonged exclusion of others – the way Luke does it.
I “look” at Luke in wonder sometimes. I look at him and feel sad. I look at him and feel a long, drawn out pity.
Luke is a very lonely person. But I can’t help feeling that it’s his own fault, his own choice to be that way. He’s very stubborn. And there’s just no use in trying to change him, or persuade him to change himself.
And that’s where I come in. At least this is the story he gives me. He claims to have created me to give expression to his pragmatist sympathies, or more exactly, his extreme desire to find social solidarity.
That’s me he’s talking about: the socially acceptable pragmatist. It’s my job to give Luke his social life – to be his social life. Can you believe that? What a conceited reason to create me!
And that’s not the whole story either. It gets even more conceited than that. Check this out: Luke thinks he’s like, some sort of “chosen” guardian of some marvelous perspective on the world so rare and valuable that he feels compelled to cling to it at the expense of social intimacies.
Talk about self-absorption...
The world is full of too damn many self-absorbed martyr types like Luke, all of them thinking they’ve got some precious, revolutionary idea – and all of them dreaming of saving the world, and all of them ready to inspire the masses with their bullshit, and driving these masses into bloody war with one another.
And to think that I owe my very existence to one of these self-absorbed, would-be leaders of war-fodder! I'm a bit angry that I owe my “birth” to such bullshit. But, hey, I’m here, so I’ll make the best of it.
Anyway, I want to tell you more about my predicament here. Now get this: It’s my job to give Luke some social satisfaction so that he can continue to “guard” this precious idea of his.
This is just crazy. I don’t see how it could even work. Right, so I go and have fun and he’s supposed to feel it? Well, I guess, sharing the same body and all. But if he’s gone to so much trouble to make me separate from him, I think it might also keep him out of the fun I’m supposed to have. Did he think of that? He says he did – says it’s worth a try.
Right, so like, I’m some big experiment? And if it don’t work – I get to die, right?
Ok, so I’m venting here. And I'm contradicting what I said earlier about not caring about this issue. Big deal. I’m a pragmatist, remember? And so is everyone else. Let me vent.
I must be fair. Luke also considers the possibility that it would be he that dies, and I just take over from there.
How would he decide such a thing?! Why would it be his choice, after all, maybe I’ll just dominate in the end and it will be too late to stop the experiment.
This whole experiment seems just too crazy to believe, and yet I owe my existence to it. I don’t see why Luke didn’t just become me outright, you know, maybe just cut the idealistic martyr crap and admit his humanity – maybe even change his name to “Konrad” and be done with it.
But now this is what Luke might say in reply:
He created me mostly in his own image with one major exception:
I don’t understand this precious perspective of his.
He claims there is some special set of concepts responsible for his perspective that I simply cannot grasp. He created me explicitly without the ability to grasp these concepts and their implications. He calls these concepts “philosophical axioms,” some sort of unprovable, yet self-evident truths that add up to some way of looking at the world in some new, exciting way that makes him dream of paradise on earth.
And so it is these “self-evident truths” that he made me blind to. And this, he would say, accounts for the difference between us.
If you ask me, this is just some bullshit rationalization. It’s always easy for the deluded to claim those who do not understand them are simply unable to understand them. He’s not fooling me.
I think I understand all too well. Luke is just a scared fool stuck in his ivory tower built on a foundation of defensive bullshit. How conspicuous it is that this precious perspective of his prevents him from social intimacy. He simply can’t have both. So there’s some connection here, between his delusions and his alienation. It seems pretty clear it is his alienation that causes his deluded perspective, not the other way around.
Tragic, really, when you think about it. He’s so thoroughly alienated himself that if anyone reaches out to him, he calls them fools who cannot understand his perspective. Always back to his precious fucking perspective, everything is always back to his unique view of things. But it’s all just tragic bullshit trying to lure you under his spell.
Oh ya, it’s a spell all right. That same spell cast by every self-alienated would-be dictator, or actual dictator, over those too ignorant, too innocent, to see through it. And it’s so perfect, so watertight. Anyone speaking against it can be dismissed as a fool who cannot understand.
And so I was made, a “fool” made to not understand, but a fool made to live a happiness he cannot.
Ha! I’ve got half a mind to kill myself just to deprive this conceited bastard the happiness he hopes to live out through me.
I mean, what would you do in my position? Think about it. How would you like to be created by someone who thinks so little of your mental faculties that he pretends to have some view of things you cannot ever grasp?
In effect, he’s trying to play god with me.
Ya, that’s exactly what he’s doing – and trying to dumb me down like some sort of hopeless inferior. It’s truly insulting. It’s just more of that elitist bullshit that’s been the scourge of humanity from the beginning. And the truly sad thing is that he thinks this shit is real. He’s drowning in his own bullshit and he thinks it’s bricks of gold.
Ya, so that pisses me off. The way I see it, I should just take my best revenge on this jerk. Ya, I’ll go and live that life of social connectedness he can’t have, and I’ll live it well, and I’ll enjoy intimacies he can only dream about. I’ll make him cringe with jealousy. I’ll push him to the edge and make him give up his stupid delusions of grandeur. I’ll make him disintegrate altogether and re-integrate into me, Konrad, the truly human person he should have been all along. In the end, my revenge may do him a big favor.
The thing is, Luke seems to understand all this. And this fact, the fact that he understands that he may become me for his own good, that makes me feel as if...
Nevermind. Shit like that can’t go anywhere.
Well no. I want to be fair. This is a complex issue and there are some things to consider.
What I mean can be illustrated in the fact that Luke’s vision of paradise, however deluded its basis may be, prescribes that the citizens of paradise might comprise people like me, pragmatists, even unacknowledged pragmatists; as opposed to people like him.
In other words, he admits that paradise might be no place for self-absorbed, anti-social people like himself. I’m with him here. It’s just about the only sane thing he asserts.
So why the fuck won’t he stop being incompatible with that very paradise he dreams about?! This is the part I don’t get. Except that it can only be a bunch of bullshit from the get-go.
But no, here too I know his answer. It’s actually just part of his deluded martyrdom complex with an interesting twist. He sees himself as being a martyr to the very paradise that would likely exclude him as he is right now. He would “build” the very house for others that he himself could not live in without becoming someone else. He claims that, if such a paradise were on the brink of reality, he would gladly become totally me.
I suppose this can take some of the sting out of him thinking me inferior. If I’m more suited for his paradise than he is, what’s that say about him? Maybe it says he’s not so great after all. Or maybe it says nothing more than the fact that he seems remarkably inconsistent (oh! could he be a pragmatist also?), perhaps even confused. I should wonder why this inconsistency doesn’t bother him, especially if he’s going to pretend he’s got some “superior” mental grasp of things.
But here again his oh so “mystical” grasp eludes me. Mine is not to understand such things. What a pompous jerk.
[Drop the mic. Cue: Melanie Safka - Stop. I don’t Wanna’ Hear It Anymore.]
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