She was arguing with reality when it occurred to her that maybe reality wasn’t as real as she thought it was. It wasn’t a full realization, it was more like a crack in her model. She had been using one model or another for her whole life. These were models of how the world worked, how others related to the world, and the importance of her own central location.
The models told her how to deal with the barrage of infobits she received; which infobits to let in, which to reject, and which needed to be tweaked before they were accepted. It wasn’t easy, and the model needed to be continually adjusted to deal with the occasional infobits that seemed like they should be admitted, but didn’t quite find a comfortable corner in which to inhabit.
Fortunately, this work was done for her. She had a subscription service from Model Infomatics. They had a number of reality models from which you could choose. Her favorite, and the one she had subscribed to for years now, was the Make America Great Again model. With every new update, she diligently applied the updates to her own model. She had the option to make adjustments to the model, but she liked it out of the box, so to speak.
But now, something was wrong. She was watching the news, and she felt a tinge of a conflict. There was a person on the news who, according to her model, was one of the good guys, but he was yelling obscenities. Her model told her to accept this infobit, because he was one of the good guys. But some distant memory told her that there was something off about his behavior. It nagged at her, but she couldn’t figure out where this was coming from.
This shouldn’t be happening. The model had worked perfectly up until now. Every infobit was neatly categorized: accept, reject, or modify as follows. But she couldn’t get around the fact that this infobit wasn’t following the normal patterns. This was weird. She sat pondering this, and trying to make sense out of what was happening.
She decided to check her email, and see if there was an update to the model that she had somehow missed. And there it was, in black and white. An email from Model Infomatics telling her that her subscription had lapsed because her credit card had expired. She breathed a sigh of relief. She logged into the Model Infomatics website and went to her payment options. There it was, an expired credit card. No problem. Her new card had arrived last week. She entered the new credit card information and pressed submit.
Almost immediately, she received an email thanking her for her payment and including a link to the latest model updates. She wasted no time applying these updates. Then she went back to the news. Now, it was obvious. The man who was cursing was a member of the AntiFa. Of course. She felt much better now.
Spiritual questions:
- Which models do you subscribe to?
- What would happen if you canceled your subscriptions?
January 7, 2021 - This was written with the Roundhouse Writing Group in Santa Cruz, Guatemala, remotely from Guanajuato, Mexico. The writing prompt for the session was: [blank] was arguing with reality when ...
This is one of my Parables for the Spiritual but not Religious Series.
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This is one of my Parables for the Spiritual but not Religious Series.
The photograph is by David Lee and made available through Flickr and Creative Commons, some rights may be reserved.
My full blog index is here.
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