Escaping the Unconscious Collective

Taking back control through mindful individuality

Revisiting & Relearning

While re-reading Josiah Bancroft’s Senlin Ascends (2013) this week, a scene struck me in a new way - mirroring an idea about societal systems I’d explored in one of my previous posts and helping me to see connections with other topics on mindfulness and self-determination as well.

So, I don’t know that I’ll be discussing anything brand new today! Instead I hope to bring together a few ideas and synthesize a broader moral for us all to take away. After all, picking up tidbits of knowledge is great, but don't we really learn when we begin recognizing patterns and seeing connections between previously disparate ideas?

The Parlour

Impressive worldbuilding is always a great way to get me interested in a book, and The Books of Babel series certainly doesn't disappoint. The Tower is an incredibly strange setting, its chaos heightened by our point of view character Tom Senlin being entirely unprepared for it.

(Much of his prior knowledge comes from the in-world text Everyman's Guide to the Tower of Babel, a hilariously uninformative and unhelpful tourist handbook full of vague aphorisms about life in the Tower. Might be a fun topic for another post.)

As I discussed in my previous post about the series, Senlin is immediately separated from his new wife Marya (this is supposed to be their honeymoon) and is promptly robbed twice before he begins to realize his preconceptions might be slightly faulty. After a stint on a beer-me-go-round (art below) to stay hydrated, he eventually makes it to the second level of the Tower, called the Parlour.

Senlin Ascends Limited Edition interior art by Thomas Kidd

Here he learns that, rather than casually taking in a show as the Guide suggests, every visitor is assigned a role in the current theatrical scenario which they are expected to complete before ascending. Failing to obey the rules – only travelling through your character's doors, stoking the fireplace in each room you enter – yields branding on first offense and loss of limbs on subsequent ones.

Suffice to say that Senlin's performance doesn't go very smoothly, to no fault of his own. He and his new acquaintance Edith barely escape their drunk and murderous co-star, but along the way Edith has accidentally violated both rules. Senlin attempts to see her pardoned through the Parlour's backstage roughshod legal system, but to no avail. It's only when he's leaving, separated from Edith for the present and sent up to the Baths, that he learns his and Edith's representative – and by extension everyone in the Parlour – is in fact just another actor, doing his best to fulfill his role.

I think there are two main morals to take from this episode and revelation. First, the simple but hidden truth that no one in our world really knows what they're doing. We're all just actors faking it until we make it and/or trying things to see if we like them. But I think Senlin (and the book) are more focused on the second: that normal people, by doing their best to follow simple instructions, are unconsciously perpetuating such a cruel and unjust system.

It's philosopher Hannah Arendt's explanation of the banality of evil, reframed by having all participants take on roles and thereby separating them from responsibility for their actions. Part of what is so eerily compelling about the Parlour to me is that, as far as we know, there is no evil force currently pulling the strings here. Someone set up the system at one point, and we later learn that another person indirectly benefits from it, but it is simply actors carrying out the everyday evils of torture, injury and dehumanizing bureaucracy.

Empire

I previously brought up a similar idea with regard to Seth Dickinson's Masquerade novels; the minds behind the empire of Falcrest hope to establish exactly the same kind of self-perpetuating system that would inherently shape people to behave civilized ('hygienic') and keep them that way.

But even before then, it's harrowing to realize that people like Baru and Xate Yawa – who want to bring down Falcrest from within – are further perpetuating the system by both their compliance and predicted betrayals. I shudder to imagine a world where every single person doing their best to break down the cage around them are unknowingly reinforcing and strengthening it with every blow.

Partly because that's exactly the world we live in. An idea I've come across recently is that seeing or hearing other people discuss societal problems makes us less likely to take action as individuals. With the abundance of online content that reaffirms our beliefs, why would we ever have to take personal action? Someone else will deal with it, right? Turns out by having everyone rattle the cage a little bit, we might actively be prolonging our incarceration.

Individualism?

So, what the hell do we do? Well I'm certainly not vouching for Randian Individualism – if anything, I think acting solely for oneself makes it that much easier to be predicted and controlled by the systems we find ourselves in – but rather to be mindful and socially responsible.

Baru takes a long time (and a lot of physical and emotional trauma) to realize the multiple levels of control she's been under, but eventually learns to truly think and act on behalf a nobler goal and a vision of a better world. For us and for the actors who make up the Parlour, the path isn't going to be much easier.

(Turns out stoking the fireplaces is part of another massive, multi-floor system that keeps the Tower running, though very few individuals know it. It would be thereby be hard to start affecting any change or flexibility on the Parlour's rules and punishments – just as truly dealing with systemic issues in our world will quickly run up against things we see as absolute necessities.)

But by being a little more mindful and present, recognizing our responsibility for our actions, practicing a little more empathy and encouraging others to do the same, maybe we'll begin to see a shift. Better to do our best than be totally controlled, no?

If you know of other examples of this imagery – unwilling cogs making up a terrifying system – I'd love to hear about them!

Thanks for reading and until next time <3