The Not-So-Fun Funhouse
“Puzzling World” might as well be the Earth’s new name
Puzzling World is a good-natured funhouse located in Wanaka, New Zealand. A decade ago, we took our kids there when they were young, and we all stumbled from one crazy mind-bending room to the next, laughing at our inept perception of true reality.
In one room, you think you are gigantic or tiny; in the next, a room designed to undermine your balance makes you appear to tilt like the tower of Pisa when you’re standing perfectly vertical. The room filled with optical illusions spins minds into a dizzy disarray.
We had fun.
Of course we did — we chose to be there, and we knew what we were signing up for: disorientation as entertainment. At any moment, we could theoretically walk out into the cool air of Wanaka and find our feet on the earth (ah, yes, the “real” world), though none of us chose that option.
We also had fun because we were all together. We could stare at one another in disbelief, thinking wow, that’s crazy. Wide-eyed. Agog. All of us. We shared the unreality of this manufactured reality; we all saw the deception, felt it, and laughed at our silly, temporary belief in it.
When it’s voluntary, when you see it for what it is, and when you go with a group, a funhouse can be big fun. What we’re living in now? Not so much.
Technology has hijacked the unsuspecting lot of us, delivering us to a deep-faked world in which our perceptions of reality are curated, twisted, packaged, and programmed to such an extent that we literally cannot discern truth from falsehood.
, one of my favorite TruthStackers™, says this:“Nothing is harming us more than the degradation of the information environment. It becomes a little harder every day to just know what happened, in very basic ways.”
He’s right. How can we solve any problems facing us — national or global — if we can’t discern fact from fiction? And on a smaller, more personal level: how can we even relate to one another?
Early in 2020, when my husband Peter and I disagreed about what was real and true about covid, I remember saying in anguish to a friend, “how can he and I stay in relationship if we are living in completely separate versions of reality?”
My pained question was warranted; there is almost no way to be in close relationship with people who view your reality as fiction, and vice-versa. You can love them, and befriend them in all the kind ways human beings do, but eventually you run out of things to talk about… unless you are deeply curious, open-minded creatures who have the humility to admit either ignorance or misperception or both. I probably don’t have to tell you, those creatures are rare.
I thank God daily that Peter and I found our way back to a shared reality, and to each other — a story for another day.
But what we experienced in 2020 has only accelerated since. We’re all moving through halls of mirrors that deceive, dismay, and dead-end. They are set up to obscure the true path, to intentionally confuse us. What should I eat? Does recycling making any difference? Is gender the same as sex? Who’s really running this country? What news source should I believe? Is the national debt real? Is the sun harmful? How should I cure my cancer? Why are teens suicidal? Does voting matter?
(As an aside, the next time you’re with extended family, choose any one of those questions to start a conversation and see how fast dissent descends upon the group.)
Unlike Puzzling World in Wanaka, this fabricated version not only traps us in opposing views, it degrades our will forces: the more confused we are, the more overwhelmed, the less likely we are to take action.
(Forgive me if I’ve mentioned this before, but I call this the Blockbuster Effect, named after my leaving empty-handed after an hour in the eponymous store due to my inability to choose a video among the crushing volume of choices. It’s real, and it’s debilitating.)
Induced inertia, in turn, makes us very, very easy to control. And the funhouse expands.
More lies. More “fact-checking.” More contorted narratives; more finger-pointing in all directions.
More mirrors.
Unmoored from any collective understanding of the truth, we splinter into tailor-made belief systems, individual not-so-fun funhouses not of our own making, isolated in a singular perception of the world.
What I believe to be true, looks to you like a funhouse boxed in by lies and propaganda; you think the same about what I believe. We each think the other is hopelessly lost in “Puzzle World,” and we’re both right. Each of us is in a personal funhouse with his or her own personal reality. Mine is completely different from yours, but no less disorienting.
As I wrote in a recent comment to Bray:
“It seems that "profound degradation of the information environment" differs from solitary confinement only in matters of degree. None of us can agree because none of us is viewing the same reality.”
Look. The human experience is a funhouse already from a metaphysical point of view. We are all living in separate versions of reality, as each individual peers out from his or her egoic self and interprets the world in a totally unique fashion. It’s endemic to the hominid condition, and that’s what makes horse racing, as they say.
The last thing any of us needs is yet another layer of deception piled on top. Aren’t we all baffled enough by the demands of this befuddling life? Isn’t it hard enough?
What’s to be done?
Wanaka’s Puzzle World may very well hold the answer.
Once the five of us had “completed” all the rooms in the building, we exited out the back to the final challenge: the maze.
We split into two groups: parents vs. children. Which group would find the way out first? They went their way, we went ours, and soon we couldn’t even hear them, let alone run into them. It is a gigantic maze.
Pete and I worked as a team, offering suggestions, trying to remember where we’d turned last or which lane had no outlet. The more we strategized and conferred, the more hopelessly lost we became. Left, right, left again… no wait, that’s wrong… let’s go back… no, let’s keep going… wait, we’ve been here before…
I could sense Pete getting more and more frustrated and agitated. Suddenly, we heard our kids’ giggles from on high. Looking up, we could see the three of them, perched like smug little birds on the network of bridges that criss-cross the entire maze, enjoying the spectacle of their hapless parents floundering around and making the same mistakes over and over, their dad palm-slapping his forehead in exasperation.
Pete was not giggling. Committed to logic and a keen sense of direction, he was relying heavily on his cranium to weave himself out of there and therefore felt a creeping sense of failure. I, on the other hand, with no discernible sense of direction and an annoying faith in the universe to lead me out, was still having fun.
Our children kept offering hints which Peter and I roundly rejected; even if we were on opposite sides of the enjoyment spectrum, we were still going to do it ourselves, dammit!
Once it devolved into arguing about which way was out, I decided to strike out on my own. Abandoning the left side of brain almost completely, I just blindly trusted my instincts, turning left or right on total impulse… and within minutes, found myself at the exit. The kids cheered. I imagined the impact that “hurrah!” had on Peter, then witnessed it myself when I joined the kids on the bridge: he was really not having fun.
At some point, as I watched my beloved make wrong turns and sink further into grim doggedness, I thought: Aha. This is how our divine guides must feel. Every day, they witness our “earnest striving,” as Rudolf Steiner put it, bumbling around on this crazy planet, unable to see the path from a higher vista and unwilling to ask for help.
Eventually, on his own, Pete found his way out. The kids and I clapped energetically and he managed a wry smile.
In order to, as
says, “resurrect our sense of shattered reality,” we have to level up. Like Einstein’s famous quote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”I’ll go one higher/better. (On Einstein. That takes some chutzpa, don’t you think?)
Escaping the funhouse does not depend on intellect. We all have access to those criss-crossing bridges, but they exist beyond thinking; they will appear when we tap into the collective unconscious, the power of all of us saying together: “show me the way out.”
That’s when we will, as
put it, “exit the collapsing hall of mirrors prison built for us and innovate together to create a humane system.”In Wanaka, our kids wanted to tell us how to get out of the maze but we wouldn’t accept their help. I can see both sides to that. On one hand, rising to the challenge of doing it yourself is important, because it develops persistence, resilience, and patience. You learn lessons that way. You grow.
On the other hand, accepting help from a higher power is essential to leveling up. Hmm… perhaps this analogy doesn’t work — our kids aren’t a higher power. Or are they? And doesn’t God work through others? I’ll let you decide on that one.
Another leveling-up lesson: follow your instincts. As our dependence on intellect has grown exponentially in the last multiple decades, our intuition has atrophied. We barely know it exists, let alone how to access it.
For divine insight to land, you need to make room and get quiet. Truth is like a soft-spoken woman at a nightclub — you probably won’t hear her if you’re packed in with sweaty, shouting-above-the-din drinkers. We’d all do well to find a sweet spot in the shade of an ancient tree and ask her to join us there.
Here’s the last piece of Wanaka wisdom I’ll leave you with.
Attempts to divide us, to funnel us into more and more separate funhouses will ultimately create an equal and opposite reaction. It’s the universe’s way of pushing us toward the greatest Truth of all: that we are, in fact, not separate.
Lonely, and tired of staring into grotesque mirrors of distortion, we’ll be propelled to fling open the door of our personal funhouses to others, even if by doing so we can only agree to disagree.
If all you do is recognize that both of you are mystified by the other, then at least you have found one belief in common. Compassion and understanding can grow from just that one tiny seed.
It’s a start.
And then the fun really begins.
Oh god, did I feel Peter’s despair in that maze! I’ve been there! And forced my sheer will to keep going even though my instinct has been telling me to listen to the divine signs.
At the end of the day, as frustrating as it might be to be stuck in the maze, havent we sometimes looked back at the challenge fondly in some way? In gratitude, perhaps, for letting us feel a bit more alive, even as we struggled?
Terrific piece this Sunday. And a happy Father’s Day to Peter. Love to y’all.
Just the thought of an amusement park automatically depletes me (I'll bet that doesn't surprise you!) but this Puzzle Place looks downright creepy. Mazes freak me out, says the lifelong claustrophobe. But, as always, your analogies are spot-on, Mary. We truly do live in Bizarro World and I find myself retreating more and more into the Trees. It's exhausting thinking about all of these things.
“Aha. This is how our divine guides must feel. Every day, they witness our “earnest striving,” as Rudolf Steiner put it, bumbling around on this crazy planet, unable to see the path from a higher vista and unwilling to ask for help.” Exactly!
Thx for another wonderful essay, Mary. XO