Reality Always Wins
Or: Does the Universe Truly Need Another Substack?
Addressing the subtitle first, I guess time will tell. Hopefully I will manage to share some interesting or useful things here. You be the judge.
Where the title is concerned, “reality always wins” is one of the little phrases I find myself repeating over and over again. People who know me, or have heard me speak somewhere, might have heard this one or some others. Hopefully not to the point of irritation. I imagine that I will share most or all of the others over time, at least with those who can stick with me here. Because what is a Substack account really for other than to satisfy one’s intellectual vanity?
I say “reality always wins” because it (almost) always does. In a longer version of this sentiment, which I also often share, I say that “you can ignore reality as long as you want to, but it becomes more expensive every day.” This version is much more precise in capturing the way that reality wins—by punishing those who try to ignore it with escalating costs that they can eventually no longer afford.
To the best that I can remember, I first started saying “reality always wins” after reading a New York Times Magazine article by Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” in 2004. This article included a breathtaking quote from an anonymous White House official, who was critical of those “in what we call the reality-based community,” who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” The official continued to say that “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will, we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too.”
About a year-and-a-half into the U.S. war in Iraq, this bracing self-confidence already seemed shockingly arrogant, at least to me. From today’s vantage point, we can see that the reality that the Bush administration attempted to create in Iraq did not overcome the reality that the rest of us were living in. Others have tried to redefine reality in other places and through other means. Some are trying to do it today.
In fairness, of course, “always” is a little too strong. Reality does change. Usually through gradual evolution, because reality is rather large and complicated. Sometimes very abruptly, when something breaks. And the people who are trying to change reality abruptly (as opposed to those who are acting without understanding it or, alternatively, while willfully ignoring it) are thus often trying to break something.
Where it is possible, actually changing reality successfully, in an evolutionary manner, takes a lot more time and effort than most people really appreciate. The people who succeed, whether abruptly or gradually, often become heroes, which encourages more people to try to change reality. The fact that we have so few heroes like this demonstrates just how hard it is and, conversely, how often reality prevails.