{"id":29200,"date":"2026-01-16T08:53:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T13:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=29200"},"modified":"2026-01-16T08:53:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T13:53:30","slug":"finding-our-way-out-of-a-corner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/finding-our-way-out-of-a-corner\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Our Way Out of a Corner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

[Image: “‘We’re Trapped!’ (They Cried, Ignoring the Exit),” by John E. Simpson.\u00a0(Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see\u00a0this page<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0<\/em><\/em><\/em>RAMH.)<\/em><\/em>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From whiskey river’s commonplace book<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Henry Miller [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Parallel Reality<\/strong>
(a peculiar notion)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A huge part of the maintenance system for egocentric conditioning is the belief in a parallel reality. This original faulty premise from which people can live their whole lives goes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an alternate, parallel reality that exists simultaneously with this reality, and in that one, everything is as it should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little child is playing and throws a rock at a tree. The rock ricochets and hits his little brother in the head who begins to scream. Mother is frightened by the screams and rushes out of the house, demanding to know what has happened. Little child senses this is not a good situation. He knows the right explanation could save him, doesn’t know what that is, and goes mute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Younger brother yells, “He hit me with a rock!” Mother yells, “What is the matter with you? Why did you hit your brother with a rock?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little child whimpers, “I didn’t mean to. I was aiming at a tree. It bounced off.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does this work? Is the child off the hook?
No way. The response from mother is
the all-time award-winning crazy-maker:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You shouldn’t have done that.
You should know better.<\/strong>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first the child is bewildered. He tries to figure out how he could have known something he didn’t know. He concludes others must be able to do it, and there must be something wrong with him for not being able to. Finally, he just accepts, “That’s right, I should know better.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the birth of the parallel reality myth in which:
I know what I should know
I do what I should do
I feel what I should feel
I look how I should look
I never forget to remember
I always make the right decision
I always say the right thing
and on and on and on…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, in this reality, I should know better but don’t; there, somehow, I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would serve us well to see that the little child who threw the rock could not have known better, that we never know better, that this is an illusion, an imaginary world perpetuated by looking at a moment that has passed and saying, “It should have been different.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Cheri Huber [source: fragments can be viewed at the Internet Archive<\/a> and Google Books<\/a>; the entire passage doesn’t seem to be available for free anywhere online — other than at <\/em>whiskey river’s commonplace book, of course; I could verify the whole thing by purchasing the ebook at Amazon<\/a>; other booksellers offer it in various formats, too<\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From elsewhere:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

A double-bind game is a game with self-contradictory rules, a game doomed to perpetual self-frustration\u2014like trying to invent a perpetual-motion machine in terms of Newtonian mechanics, or trying to trisect any given angle with a straightedge and compass. The social double-bind game can be phrased in several ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first rule of this game is that it is not a game.
Everyone must play.
You must love us.
You must go on living.
Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role.
Control yourself and be natural.
Try to be sincere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certain kinds. Living, loving, being natural or sincere\u2014all these are spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen \u201cof themselves\u201d like digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone deplores\u2014weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith\u2014in life, in other people, and in oneself\u2014is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time. This is, of course, risky because life and other people do not always respond to faith as we might wish. Faith is always a gamble because life itself is a gambling game with what must appear, in the hiding aspect of the game, to be colossal stakes. But to take the gamble out of the game, to try to make winning a dead certainty, is to achieve a certainty which is indeed dead.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Alan Watts [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Proof<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Written for the inauguration of Zohran Mamdani, Jan. 1, 2026, NYC)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have to imagine it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who said you were too dark\/too
Large? Too queer\/too loud?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who said you were too poor\/
Too strange? Too fat?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have to imagine it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who said you must keep quiet?
Who heard your story, then
Rolled their eyes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who tried to change your name
To invisible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve got to imagine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who heard your name
And refused to pronounce it?
Who checked their watch
And said \u201cnot now\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Baldwin wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe place in which I\u2019ll fit
Will not exist
Until I make it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York, city of invention,
Roiling town, refresher
And re-newer,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York, city of the real,
Where the canyons
Whisper in a hundred
Tongues,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York,
Where your lucky self
Waits for your
Arrival,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where there is always soil
For your root.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The taste of us\/the spice of us
The hollers and the rhythms and
The beats of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the echo of our
Ancestors,
Who made certain we know
Who we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

City of Insistence,
City of Resistance,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have to imagine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Army that wins without
Firing a bullet,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A joy that wears down
The rock of no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up from insults,
Up from blocked doors,
Up from trick bags,
Up from fear\/up from shame,
Up from the way it was done before.
You have to imagine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That space they said wasn\u2019t yours.
That time they said you\u2019d never own.
The invisible city lit, on its way.
This moment is our proof.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Cornelius Eady [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “‘We’re Trapped!’ (They Cried, Ignoring the Exit),” by John E. Simpson.\u00a0(Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see\u00a0this page\u00a0at\u00a0RAMH.)] From whiskey river’s commonplace book: Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Cheri Huber, Cornelius Eady, et al.: 'Finding Our Way Out of a Corner'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,247,1393,96,251,4159],"tags":[915,1211,2161,3773,6253,6254,6255,6256],"class_list":{"0":"post-29200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-everyday-life","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-politics-in-the-news","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-hope","14":"tag-alan-watts","15":"tag-henry-miller","16":"tag-cheri-huber","17":"tag-cornelius-eady","18":"tag-moving-forward","19":"tag-double-binds","20":"tag-off-ramps","21":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ignorethecorner_johnesimpson.jpg?fit=1024%2C652&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-7AY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29200"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29224,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29200\/revisions\/29224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}