What is Impenetrable? + On getting older

In My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgaard recounts a long series of failed attempts to write about his dad, redeemed only by the completion of My Struggle itself, in which he talks about him at length. Something about the subject of his dad and their relationship was hard for him to capture in writing - below I offer what is likely a flimsy and/or unoriginal hypothesis.

Capturing the essence of any real thing is not trivial, but it is harder yet when we are close to it. In our myopia, our understanding is often distorted. What I think is happening in these instances goes like this: we possess a mental construct of some thing (such as Knausgaard's concept of his dad) for which the core contents are inaccessible, the construct itself being impenetrable. In such instances, the 'surface' of this construct (the part we can still examine) are associated emotions which we have reinforced through repetition - an example being Knausgaard's reports that he felt anxious when he thought of his dad, even when he wasn't there - indeed, even after he had died!

Evidenced by the fact that My Struggle was published and it talks about his dad, Knausgaard got past his writer's block. But did he successfully capture the essence of who his dad was? I'm unsure.

It's been said that the best part of his book is his focus on the real, meaning what actually happened. He writes plenty about his dad and how he acted: the strict discipline and swift punishments, his fear from a young age, his dad's alcoholism and their awkward relationship as he becomes an adult. This brings the reader into Knausgaard's own state of doubt, rendering it clearly. But it never produces a satisfactory explanation as to why his dad is how he is, and Knausgaard draws few conclusions of his own.

It's a limitation of style, to be sure - Knausgaard mostly avoids speculating - and trying to answer why -which helps keep the book in the past, where it is at its best. But those why's might have been evident from what is written - certainly a person's actions can tell a coherent story, which I'm not sure they do in this case. It's odd in a book that he has said is about his dad that his dad's motivations remain so inexplicable (and note: saying he was "just an asshole" categorizes - and thus similarly fails to explain). 

Other readers might find the inexplicability interesting - I think it was a drawback for me, but that's okay, I did greatly enjoy the book as a whole. Left nagging at me is the intuition that there is something left un-penetrated in Knausgaard's understanding of his father. I suppose my flimsy hypothesis, then, is that Knausgaard hasn't fully come to terms with his memories and feelings for his father.

Before I go further: it's entirely possible that if I'm right, it just makes the book interesting in a different way. The risk, of course, is that I'm armchair quarterbacking his writing in a way that isn't useful or is off base. That's okay, it's just a sense that I felt compelled to explore by writing down. And besides, I'm getting old, it's about time to start telling stories whose points approach ephemerality, if not total nonexistence.

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In my own past, I've found quite a few topics to be impenetrable in the same sense - on some I've reached a breakthrough, while others I haven't. Sometimes it's hard to know - truth be told, it's probably not binary, but rather a question of degree. If that's true, then it follows that I only have my own intuition to tell me whether I've arrived at a satisfactory place. (Of course, this suggests lots of interesting possibilities, such as the epistemic uncertainty regarding how completely we have penetrated such a topic.)

I recently started writing about my early 20s. Disconnected as I've been from facts about that time period, my preconceptions were mostly made up of the things I've repeatedly told myself, which are self-reinforcing and reductionist. But a truth still existed! I just had to penetrate the surface that had formed over those memories. The process of doing so seemed to correlate with a period of intense dreaming, which I imagine as the psychic equivalent of how massaging a knot out of a muscle releases toxins.

Today I turn 40, and I find myself pondering what remains impenetrable in my past, and how to go about massaging those mental knots away. One of my biggest realizations this year has been that such 'humanist' pursuits (and not material ones) need to be my primary emphasis in the second half of my life. Otherwise, what may become impenetrable is my own pathological avoidance of the feelings and experiences of everyday life.

The Years of Magical Thinking

It's October of the Year Which Shall Not Be Named, we've just gotten an early season snowfall, wind is breaking the seals around the windows, and Signe is crying in the next room, asking for a hug while Merry gives her a time out. My door is closed, I'm supposed to be working, but for the past few days I've found myself fixated on a particular corner of my memories, the time period after graduation in 1999 until I moved into the Dewey house at the end of 2003. I spent most of this time on antidepressant medication, in and out of therapy. I remember it as a painful time, I've long glossed over it, generalizing it to myself as "the years I spent depressed", much of it spent alone in my room, during which I made little progress on anything that mattered.

Where did this sudden curiosity begin? I suppose it was reading Knausgaard's autobiography, which is well-calibrated in observing distant topics, and engaging even about the banal. The "anxiety of influence" inspired me to write about my 20s, though I first intended to focus on the later years, when I lived at Dewey. I wrote about finding the house, what it was like those first few months, and what changed when I met my ex-girlfriend. But an energy kept pulling me backwards. Perhaps it was simply the narrative impulse to explain why. Why was _____ the way it was, why had _____ happened, why did I feel _____? All of these answers lay in the past, so I went searching for evidence - primarily pictures, but what I found were my old digital journals, which I had kept from the beginning of 2000 to mid-2004. What I've read in them over the past few days has re-awoken a world I had largely forgotten.

The events of those years have been weathering and congealing in my brain for over fifteen years, so of course I had forgotten plenty that occurred. And not just certain events, but the reasons for them, their sequence, how I felt about them and made decisions. And of course, most of my memories have proven vastly simpler than what I wrote in my journals. For example, did I spend a lot of time alone in my room? Well, yes, though mostly sleeping or journaling. I spent the rest of my time doing what most people do at the same age - working, in classes or doing homework, and seeing friends.

Harder to quantify, though qualitatively true: I despaired for joys past and to watch the days of my early adulthood burning away in the stasis of a life I didn't know how to live. I struggled with questions of meaning and often got hung up on the "meta" layers of decisions. Meanwhile, my tactical, day-to-day decision-making was atrocious, I didn't yet understand that success is usually a long series of small victories. I was discovering the world and was passionate about many things I was finding - music, writing, people. My writing lacked nuance, swimming in hyperbole. But I was sincere, I had real feelings, in getting excited over new possibilities I often went too far. More than anything, I was prone to magical thinking, often convincing myself of the impossible. I would do anything to shield my ego from the truth, that I was a novice at most things, and couldn’t avoid the hard work required to find my way. Instead I told myself that my misery must be other people's faults, or fate, the plight of the universe, or whatever steered its course.

It hasn't bothered me to be reminded that I was full of delusions. I already knew that, it was only a matter of degree, and the particulars I had forgotten, or repressed. And it reminds me that somewhere along the way, I did manage to climb out of the hole I was in - after all, I ended up where I am today. Things are not perfect in my life, but they are better than 21-year old me had any right to believe in. And indeed, there was a real magic in my thinking then, because imagination is a double-edged sword: engaging with the fantastic has its own capacity to enrich us. Maybe it's the imaginative potency of those years that my mind has latched onto the last few days, as the pendulum of my life may have since swung too far to the other end of the spectrum, where every minute is grounded in practicality (the constancy is, itself, practical). It's not too late to think magically again, though moderation this time might go a long way.

UBI and Inflation

Time for my one economic bloviation of the year - at least I'll try to predict something.

Armchair economists (and plenty of actual economists) have been predicting inflation for years, based on ballooning budget deficits. But both treasury yields and inflation 'break even' measures suggest little market concern. Why would this be?

I believe Robert Shiller generally when he says that the Great Recession changed people's mindsets in a lasting way. Monetary velocity has plummeted as budget deficits have ballooned - part of this may be explained by foreign dollar holdings (foreign governments turn over dollars slower than US consumers). The remainder, however, must be explained by people's time-value preference for spending and saving. Since 2008, people have essentially felt less certain about their own future financial security, and they are saving more to compensate. A third factor is that we are slowly inflecting from a pension-based system to a savings-based system. The latter puts the onus on the individual to concern themselves with things like withdrawal rates and adverse market fluctuations (and the popular narrative is that these are becoming more severe when they occur).

If all this is correct, I predict that we'll get inflation when a UBI (Universal Basic Income) program is passed, which I suspect may just be a matter of time. Why? Not because of budget deficits, but because UBI is essentially a state pension. It would increase perceived financial stability because it would be a permanent income stream (assuming people found the legislation's permanence credible).

When I say, "not because of budget deficits", what I mean is that I believe inflation will follow even if the program is deficit-neutral. I don't even have to know the details - my prediction assumes the dollars being spent into existence in this program will have a profound impact on monetary velocity. Why? Because, as I said, UBI is like a state pension, and thus eliminates the need for proportionate savings. Just for argument's sake, if UBI were $1k/month ($12k/year), how much required savings per person would that eliminate just to 'break even'? It depends on withdrawal rate, etc., but assuming an annual 4% withdrawal rate, it would offset $300k of savings.

What would happen if every American suddenly realized they could do some combination of: spend $300k of savings they already had, or forego saving $300k of future income? Would that have a profound effect on inflation? My modest guess, as of August of 2020, is yes.

Goodnight

The other night putting my daughter to bed, she gave me a hug without me asking and said, 'love you, daddy', and I had a moment of recognition for how fast she is growing. I also imagined, quite suddenly, that she will be there when I die, standing over me as I lay in a bed, and in that moment she might bid me farewell much as I bid her goodnight so long before, as if pushing out from the shore onto a lake shrouded in fog into which I would, in a moment, disappear.

In that gesture, my daughter was also a primitive sort of savior, guarding my passage into the following realm.

(It's not that I believe anything awaits, but if this is all we have, then it is more important yet.)

The Unveiling

In his 2008 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett described the financial crisis which had just passed: "As the year progressed, a series of life-threatening problems within many of the world’s great financial institutions was unveiled." His choice of the word "unveiled" struck me from that first read, though I couldn't put my finger on why. Now, living through the modern Coronavirus pandemic, I think I finally understand it.

The world today is no different than it was a few months ago, but it did resolve itself to the present in one particular way - a relatively lethal, and quickly-propagating virus spread across the globe. It could've happened at any time and place, but the world has just unveiled to us that it will happen here and now.

For me, this has occurred with a peculiar backdrop:

1. At the beginning of March, we went to Arizona for Merry's work conference and a family vacation. I had kept up on the virus's spread and I knew we were cutting it close to travel when it might already have been spreading through the local population.
2. I planned to finish working in June of this year, by which time I expected to have both adequate money in my checking account and IRA to constitute a safety net. Now my real estate businesses are in distress (tenants aren't paying rent) and my IRA value has collapsed, making this unviable.
3. Now, due to the virus, all our travel plans have been put off and we necessarily spend almost all of our time at home. Merry and I both work from home and Signe's daycare is closed.

There are many silver linings, though:

1. Though Signe being home while we have to work is a logistical nightmare, it is also "immersion therapy" for a degree of accountability to my family that I had avoided for the past three years.
2. I get to spend lots of time with Signe every day, as her language and imagination are quickly developing.
3. Going nowhere and without daycare expenses, we spend almost no money.
4. My habits are strongly-formed, and anything that pushes me out of them is probably a long-term benefit. To give two examples: my drinking has decreased to almost zero, and I have cut out buying many things that had grown habitual.
5. Much of this is a glimpse into what a post-work life could be like, before I choose to go through with it.

When I look out the window in this new world just unveiled, I see something quite different than before. I see a world in which travel is impossible - indeed, much of the outdoors are literally off limits - and quitting work is financially infeasible. The world didn't change - before & after photographs out that same window would be indistinguishable - this unveiling has simply occurred with ruthless speed, along an axis I of which I had never conceived, and I stand disbelieving the sight before my eyes.

Another Country, A Second Reading

I wrote a story a few years ago called Another Country that is still my favorite thing I've written. And then I mentally let it go. About six months ago, though, I went back to proofread it and clean up some grammar (stuff that should've happened before I ever considered it finished) before finally showing it to a friend. That re-reading allowed me to see aspects of the story that weren't apparent to me when I wrote it. I've read about this phenomenon, but I had not experienced it for myself until then.

What did I notice in that second reading? Mainly, that the story contains a metaphor of women - and specifically possible romantic partners - as countries. Both are 'places' that we may visit for a length of time - short or long - and in which we may experience a great deal or a little, shallowly or deeply, leaving us anywhere between unchanged, and profoundly changed. (Funny: the metaphor isn't just apparent in the story - it's almost heavy-handed, making it that much more remarkable that I didn't notice it while writing it.) Furthermore, any Freudians would likely notice that "country" is even prefixed phonetically by an especially foul (though pertinent) term.

It wasn't just that the metaphor eluded my conscious consideration - the whole notion that this was a story about women, or relationships, was not what I considered myself to be writing. It began as a story about travel, and the way places imprint themselves on us. The women worked their way into the story, I think, as part of the natural 'backdrop' the narrator experiences (or so it seemed at the time). I can only suspect that from that point, the metaphor took hold subconsciously, which pulled them further into the story, reinforcing the metaphor, in a virtuous cycle. This would at least explain the relative elegance of the narrative alignment to the metaphor - the narrator's encounter with each woman feels harmonious with the place - not in the sense that the women "belong" in their locations, but rather that you believe his memory of each country could never be separated from his memories of the particular women. And, vice versa.

It's interesting to me that Gabby, herself traveling between countries, seems to transcend the framework in which the other women exist. So what is she? She could be seen as the counterpart to the narrator - someone else whose romantic attachments change with each country. Interestingly, both characters' home countries are referred to - early in the story, their having departed them, and near the end, their returns (the narrator's occurring in the story's last line, albeit only in his mind). This parallels the way our relationships exist within the bookends of our lives, as we arrive and depart from this life alone.

No Way Back

It it tempting to view life as climbing a mountain of greater and greater recognition of the workings of the world around us. This may or may not be true, but by certain outlying moments of my life, I've come to the conclusion that the steps a person climbs on this journey slowly evaporate behind them. The journey we each take cannot be retraced, nor do we necessarily retain the steps we've taken - no matter what we believe we have gained, our memories of learning are one and the same with the wisdom of knowing, and as the memories turn to echoes in our psyche, all we are left with is habits of thought and action.

"That is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They don't grow wise. They grow careful." - Ernest Hemingway

A More Refined Take On Alternate Realities

I went through a period after high school where I was obsessed by the idea of alternate realities, and later, their relationship to so-called "multiverse" theories in physics. Of course, I didn't yet understand topics like probability and expected value well, so my conception was basically, "everything is happening somewhere", which isn't what the theory actually suggests.

In a nutshell, even a very large number of permutations on the same building blocks should NOT be expected to produce stochastic output (though it may, of course, at one or more resolutions). It's more likely they would produce distributions and clustering of the same nature that we see in our single universe when we analyze most discrete phenomena across a large number of observations.

So what? Well, at some point it occurred to me that the first rule of ecology ("you can never change just one thing") is probably intertwined with this. Those early thought experiments of mine always took the form of, "what if the past looked just like my past, except for X?" (e.g., "what if I had done better in college classes my freshman year?") These might be fun to think about, but there's no reason to think that they are viable "alternate realities." After all, how likely is it that some alternate universe is different in one way that is so local? (Everyone is the same except me, and my differences don't manifest at all until the age of 19.) You can have fun, I suppose, assuming not very much would have to change for a different sperm to have fertilized the egg I grew from, but even that is a flawed assumption, is it not? After all, they were all obeying the same physics that all of history had to obey. Are you telling me that a change that would make a different sperm win wouldn't have had an effect even 5000 years ago (much less a billion - outlier variations tend to amplify through time) that would've led to a meaningfully different present?

Something that might be more useful to consider: what would make my example alternate reality plausible? In other words, let's answer that question first, then work backwards. The reason this might make sense is because nobody who is examining the implications of alternative realities as a way of understanding themselves and their own past decision-making actually cares about whether envisioned alternate timelines are likely reconcilable into the multiverse.

It's not crazy to think that if my brain chemistry had been a little bit different, lending more to discipline and less to impulsiveness, I might have succeeded my freshman year of college. But I likely would have grown up with different experiences, giving me a different personality (not *just* "more discipline"), and making it unlikely that I would have been at the same college, with the same friends, the same perspective on life, or the same values.

I think it's a MORE rigorous thought process this way - at least, in the way rigor matters for what we're trying to assess. When the difference first occurred to me, I perceived this as "sucking the fun out of the exercise," which is how it often feels as we solidify a process that felt creative, but I think it also helps train me in planning for the future. Because the future also requires a careful dose of imagination, tempered by an understanding of how the world works. It only stands to reason that the more fully-formed is the latter, the less space exists for the former.