Who’s that dismantling my imaginary bridge? It’s the internet.
I’ve spent so long away from SOTM and I have ideas coming out my ears but it’s taken some time to transition back to the inner kingdom of thought that enables me to wrangle them into a digestable format. That’s a novel way of putting it, you might think, but actually I’m stealing it from The Rose Field, the third Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman.
In the story, one of the main characters travels (against his will) to the land of the gryphons – giant, intelligent creatures that are half lion half eagle. They’re super proud and stubborn, and to be honest, our time with them is a weird and mostly superflouous interlude in the novel except for the fact it introduces the crucial philosophical concept of the outer kingdom and the inner kingdom.
That’s my general critique of this series — the plot feels like it’s been loosely cobbled together as an engine for Pullman’s philosophical ideas. Luckily, his ideas are brilliant. The Rose Field has nothing on its His Dark Materials counterpart, The Amber Spyglass, though.
Back to those brilliant ideas: Pullman’s gryphons see themselves as rulers of two kingdoms:
The outer: which is the real world of mountains, valleys, oceans, and the creatures therein.
The inner: which is the land of myth, magic and faith.
You could call these two realms the real and the unreal but that would be less poetic. Of course, because nothing is truly new, Pullman himself borrowed and shaped this idea from those who came before him: Plato, Hermes Trismegistus, Carl Jung.
In The Rose Field, Lyra and Pan are on a quest to find her lost imagination, and they *PHILOSOPHICAL SPOILER ALERT* come to the realisation that human imagination is more complex than people think. They suggest it’s not simply a tool for ‘making things up’ but is instead a way of seeing the bridge between these two kingdoms — the inner and the outer.
For the last 4 weeks while on holiday, I’ve spent 90% of my time in the outer kingdom. In my day-to-day life, I spend around 80% of my time in the inner kingdom. My physical return home after this holiday is echoed by my metaphysical return to my own inner world, but I’ve found the bridge between the two kingdoms crumbling from lack of use. The connections aren’t coming so quick. In short: I’m rusty.
The reason I spend so much time inside my head is because my work is knowledge-based and predominantly conducted in the ether. I spend my work days in the inner kingdom, and at night I play there when I read books, watch TV, write my little think-pieces. The only time I spend in the outer kingdom is at mealtimes, hanging with my family, going to the gym, the shower… etc. If it weren’t for my physical body and its needs I reckon I could live almost entirely in my inner world.
I’ve been ruminating on what the optimum balance is between time spent in the inner and the outer kingdoms, because I don’t think either my real life or my holiday life are quite right.
The outer kingdom and the inner kingdom feed each other. The outer kingdom is the muse. The inner kingdom is the artist. Time spent in both strengthens the bridge between them — my imagination — from whence all my weird ideas come.
The outer kingdom is beautiful and frightening and fleeting and real. The inner kingdom is eternal and magical and creative and limitless.
I have this dark thought that I’ve not shared with many people that suddenly feels very relevant: the reason I really want to write a novel is because the characters would be mine forever. I’d be in complete control. Nothing could take them away from me. Unlike my actual physical loved ones who might perish at any moment, leave me, or grow up and slowly drift out of reach. Fiction is my own personal protective instinct — an emotional insurance policy against future heartbreak.
You can’t live in the inner kingdom. Not just because your body would wither away, but because it’s a world that knows no consequences. Without those, you lose your humanity. We can see this dystopian future playing out on the internet every minute of every hour of every day.
Technology is doing a terrifyingly good job of replacing human imagination as the bridge between the outer and inner kingdoms. It blurs the line between the two realms, presenting fiction as fact, fact as fiction. In place of connection, it can offer only content. Instead of incentivising action, it rewards stagnation. Safe behind our keyboards in our inner kingdoms, we forget about consequences, and thus trolls and incels are born by the thousand. That’s a world dominated by the inner kingdom, and it’s not one I want to live in.
On the other hand, if we live only in the outer kingdom we risk losing our expansiveness, our empathy, our understanding of the world outside our own bubbles. We need the inner kingdom to see the bigger picture that our tiny human brains can’t grasp without the help of stories.
It’s clear we need to nurture both our inner and outer kingdoms to be good human beings. So what’s the perfect combo, do you think? 50/50? 60/40?
Perhaps the right balance is unique to each person. Perhaps instead of looking for an answer I should instead regularly make myself take a kind of inner/outer balance survey:
Do you feel as if the world outside your neighbourhood is a scary place?
Y?
Treatment: more books
Do you feel lonely or disconnected?
Y?
Treatment: hugs, feet on grass
Are you using the internet more than your imagination?
Y?
Treatment: Delete all social media. Start a blog. Lol.