The Void
There is a hole in the center of our galaxy, a place where no light lives. This unnerving fact is the key to understanding: the black hole Sagittarius A* is the last answer. Once you’ve seen it show up in one place you start to realize how truly ubiquitous it is. Perhaps hiding beneath every rock or lurking behind every tree.
Solaris
Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris is the story of a psychologist named Kris who was sent up to investigate an alien planet. In this science fiction book, humanity had long ago discovered a planet that refused to communicate with humans; it was enveloped inside an ocean that was potentially intelligent but infuriatingly enigmatic. The ocean could configure itself into a vast array of structures and shapes often imitating things that were stored in the memories of the scientists attempting to study it. Shortly before Kris’ arrival, the station scientists bombarded Solaris with high-energy X-rays. In the wake of this experiment, the ocean began producing ‘guests’ - physical manifestations drawn from the scientists’ memories, often embodying their deepest traumas. Whether this was a response, a coincidence, or something else remains a mystery. In Kris’ case, his guest was his dead lover, Rheya. She committed suicide after years of despair, leaving Kris with the crippling survivor’s guilt of a partner who had not done enough. It is in this setting that Lem explores the limitations of rationality. The main example is the scientists’ complete inability to establish a teleological justification for the choices that the ocean on Solaris makes. Most assume that were an alien civilization to make contact, communication would be as simple as translating from Spanish to English. This is not the case with Solaris. Wittgenstein observed that “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” The idea touches not only on the difficulty of translation but also on the role linguistics plays in the creation of being. Linguistics is a plane that simultaneously anchors and suspends us above reality itself. When Kris is confronted with the apparition of Rheya, the isolation of this mode of experience is made evident. The guest is not Rheya, but Kris’ memory of her, including his simplifications and misunderstandings. As far as the scientists can tell, she is a strange neutrino structure held together by an unknown force, not unlike the memory from which she originated. In some ways she is the problem par excellence, the problem of the gap, the hole that is in the center of our galaxy. Language, the great web of signifiers and signifieds, is self-referential and the self at the center is a void. What makes the neutrino less plausible than a mental representation formed from various sense perceptions of the ‘real’ thing? This is a problem of closed systems; Solaris represents a parallel closed system that is inscrutable to our best attempts to peek inside. Like a Möbius strip, there is no entry or exit, only internal transformations. Any progress one makes towards ultimate realization is bound to collapse back on itself due to the untraversable gap between language and experience. Solaris’ ways are not our ways. As humans, there is a certain comfort to the idea of another system of rationality. Perhaps if there were, we would no longer feel so responsible as the sole namers in the universe. We would not be alone in bearing the weight of reflection. Maybe the new gods would know what the hole at the center of the galaxy was for? Various ideologies promise to deal with the void, but the solutions are often misdirection, pure sleight of hand; they move the void a few steps back, but it won’t be gotten rid of so easily. The lesson of Solaris is that even were we to find a companion god, this other thing would likely not share our burden, but would become yet another point of reflection. Another thing that can only show ourselves back to ourselves. A mirror is not an answer. In the end, it is authenticity that drives us from the inside out. To see things as they are, not as we wish them to be. While our experiences are destined to be shared in solitude, we can be sparks in a night. Landmarks for other seekers to see and reflect.