While jotting down a new idea, it began to seem familiar. Was I unwittingly plagiarizing the work of an author or speaker whose message had sunk into my subconscious? Was I just recalling an earlier idea of my own that I had forgotten? Both are possible but it could be neither. It could be déjà vu. Remembering something that has yet to or may never have happened is a unique and strange ability. Perhaps it is something we want to happen but are unaware of the desire. The déjà vu (already seen) phenomenon is more accurately described in that case as jamais vu (never seen) or even more accurately as jamais vu mais imaginé (…but imagined).
In thinking about déjà vu, we reach what can be called a branch point. Our considerations going forward could follow two apparently disparate paths. “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” is quite useful in this context. Yogi Berra’s directions produced this Yogi-ism because taking either the left or the right side of the fork led one expeditiously to his home.[1] Our choices are between the rather serious electroencephalographic evidence that déjà vu is a symptom of epilepsy and a more uplifting interpretation, without evidence, that it is essentially an epiphany, a recognition of the deeper meaning of the never-seen scene or person or object that seems so familiar. We can accept both. People who are not epileptic experience the phenomenon too. All we need to know is that it is a factually errant signal sent from one part of the brain to another.
Let’s extrapolate
Some events seem familiar because either we or our history books have “seen” something similar. In this case, already seen is literally correct. The admonition that “history repeats itself” must have resulted from just this circumstance. In fact, the notion of historic recurrence has itself been a recurring theme of philosophers and others.[2] When accusations and denials between nations reach a boiling point, armed conflict may result. The rise of authoritarianism after a body politic has suffered through war or economic depression is also a familiar pattern. Time scales vary widely. The fall of empires occurs over centuries. Given our comparatively minuscule attention span, it is no wonder that as myriad symptoms of an impending fall arise, our vague and unspecific memory of the last one can only be mistaken for déjà vu.
Today’s unavoidable example is the attractiveness of a fascistic governance alternative to many in the 1930s and again to many in 2024. The question is, “Is the same consequence of that attraction unavoidable?” I suppose that depends on which historic recurrence will recur: A long-lasting dictatorial government with little internal resistance; an aggressive hegemonic regime that ignites a world war; an Arab Spring [3] echo that births a fragile democracy; or preemptive rejection of the recurrence that avoids déjà vu all over again. [1]
I prefer that last option. Justifiable pessimism aside, we know common sense and a desire to live an unfettered life is ubiquitous. Some lessons from the past are neither easily accessed nor comfortably digested. But they are there and deliverable.
Rewinding
Let’s go back to the notion that déjà vu is a factually errant signal sent from one part of the brain to another. We have wondered if instead of errant, it is a correctly learned but largely forgotten example of historic recurrence. A step further would be that it was not learned by us but by an ancestor and coded into our DNA, either as inherited activity of various genes or as an actual reordering of DNA’s A, C, G, and T bases. In other words, could it be genetic memory?[4] I believe the science concerning genetic memory is unsettled. We do know that our species does adapt to new environments over eons of evolution. However, acclimating to a new climate or food source is quite a distance from genetically recording a specific event for the benefit of progeny.
The origin of the recollection, real or imagined, is immaterial. I don’t much care if it’s delivered from a long-gone uncle during a séance, or if it comes from a more concrete source. Once we have it, what do we do with it?
Irreversibility
Some physical processes are Irreversible. If they are dissipative, like heating, burning, or mixing, they can’t be undone. The well-known fate of the anthropomorphic egg, Humpty Dumpty, who could not be reconstituted after his great fall from that wall, is a perfect example of our point.[5] There comes a time when all the king's horses and all the king's men are an inadequate and ineffective response to the catastrophe after the fact. However, were even one of the king’s men there to catch Mr. Dumpty before he impacted the ground, all might not have been lost. Better yet would be having a concerned citizen, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice [6], talk him down from the wall before gravity’s grip prevailed.
You are not experiencing déjà vu when you notice that we are once again careening into the issue of communication with the body politic, a challenge raised in many prior posts.
If we are blindly sliding toward an authoritarian future, we need an ‘Alice’ before irreversibility sets in. Our Alice will need a rather strong megaphone because our ‘Humptys’ are spread countrywide. So far, Alice pretenders have not fared well. They’ve been ostracized by their former in-group once their warnings have sounded. They try to alert those who yearn for change, any change, to the likelihood that it may be the final change of their lifetime. The message is not getting through.
Reversibility
A little realistic optimism is possible. One more Yogi-ism applies here. “It ain't over till it's over” worked for Yogi and can work for us.[7] A million Alice’s can save ten million Humptys with the right messages and delivery systems. The underdog may rally, an upset may be in the offing, the odds can be beaten, or a turn-around late in the game has happened before and can happen again. For the sake of our eponymous egg, we will not subscribe to on ne saurait faire d’omelette sans casser des œufs (you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs). We not only want the targets of our Alice campaign to remain unbroken, but we also want them to remain distinct as individuals, not whipped together as the barely distinguishable ingredients of an omelette. That means reaching folks where they live, where they work, where they indulge in leisure activities, and where they are free to express their opinions and digest alternatives to the extant negative mantras of the day.
We can agree with Lewis Carroll’s Alice when she said, “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”
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[1] See Yogi Berra, “The Yogi Book: ‘I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said’" (Workman Publishing Company, New York, 1998) and Allen Barra, “Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee” (Quote Page XXXV), (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2009). The Yogi-ism, “It’s déjà vu all over again,” seems strangely familiar and relevant to our topic as well.
[2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_recurrence
[3] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
[4] Find an interesting discussion at https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/genetic-memory-how-we-know-things-we-never-learned/
[5] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty
[6] Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (Macmillan & Co., London, 1871)
[7] See for example, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34324865.
Nota Bene: Others may ruminate differently. But be warned: In my case, seeing or hearing something quite trivial -- a saying, a store clerk’s mannerisms, or bad grammar on a food product’s label – triggers a stream-of-consciousness extrapolation toward grander notions and generalizations. That is what often happens in these posts. ADDENDUM: Those subscribers who have been here for a while will have noticed that at times ruminations have veered into diatribes. I make no apology. I just want my readers to know that it’s quite intentional. When events come close to making the ‘blood boil,’ that discontent bubbles up here. *The Alice frying an egg with Humpty in the Window image was composed with the help of OpenAI’s DALL-E image generator.
Disclaimer: Any and all opinions expressed here are my own at the time of writing with no expectation that they will hold beyond my next review of this article. Opinions are like a river, winding hither and yon, encountering obstacles and rapids, and suffering turbulent mixing of silts from its depths and detritus from its banks. But just as a river has its clear headwaters and a fertile delta, so do opinions, notwithstanding any intervening missteps and uncertainties.
Reminder: You can visit the Cycloid Fathom Technical Publishing website at cycloid-fathom.com and the gallery at cycloid-fathom.com/gallery.
Forthcoming posts (unless life intervenes)
Science
…what it is and is not
Sched 4/1/2024
If a tree falls…
…objective versus subjective reality
Sched 4/8/2024