In Veritate Victoria

 

In 1492 Columbus did not sail the ocean blue. At least, that is, not according to a group called the International Flat Earth Society.  Consisting of 3,500 members who live all around our allegedly disc-shaped planet, the Flat Earth Society exists to "promote and initiate discussion of Flat Earth Theory and provide a venue for free thinking and debate."  That's right, there's actually a group of individuals whose personal mission it is to convince other people that the Earth is flat and that we've all been duped into thinking it's round.  May I invite you to sip on kool-aid cocktail? You're in for a real ride. 

In a small town on Lake Michigan in the mid 1800s, a Christian fundamentalist decided that the only correct interpretation of certain passages of the Bible made it impossible to believe the Earth is round. An ugly step-child of the Second Great Awakening, what started as an apostolic church became a society whose contemporary members no longer know which passages of scripture were in question, but who faithfully promote the society's major tenants nonetheless. Their website is so serious that it seemed possible it's merely satire, but with extensive descriptions of perspective, physics, high altitude photographs, and one highly questionable definition of modern scientific theory, I'm forced to take them seriously (insofar as I know they're seriously insane). What intrigues me about the group is how seriously it takes itself and the extent to which it stubbornly refuses to believe anything that the last 500 years of science has taught us. There's poetry in their story, and wisdom to be found in their utterly nut-job beliefs.

Consider this illustration: a depiction of the Earth as the Society sees it, you'll notice the North Pole at the center of a ring of continents, with an "Ice Wall" around the perimeter.  They claim that the reason ships never fall off the earth, as was assumed by the ancients, is because the pull of the North Pole and magnetic north necessitates that all directions are circular around a central axis.  Thus, if one is sailing east, one will always sail in a circle around a fixed point. In my continual struggle to figure out how to be a grown-up, this got me thinking on two levels. Aren't we all sailing around a fixed point? And aren't we all a member of our own one-man society that occasionally rejects rational explanations in favor of holding on tightly to some desirable belief?

To be even more melodramatic (bear with me), the metaphor continues: the world according to the above paradigm rotates around and is hemmed in by ice where nothing grows, nothing changes, nothing moves. The society's own illustration is a microcosm of the way they view the world and rational, scientific thought: remain in the past, stay safe behind a 50 meter wall of ice that protects us from what's outside, stay fixed as ice in an anonymous ocean. 

If I've learned anything over the last three years since I graduated/died, it's that I have a definite defensive shield, a picture of the world that looks much like this one, a metaphorical wall of immovable matter protecting me from anything new or unfamiliar. The icy axis I seem to rotate around is the belief that I'll inevitably end up like my parents, and that I should pull away from love before it has a chance to trap me. Nearly every decision I've made throughout my life speaks to this "truth" I've held onto. I was a huge flirt who wanted attention from men, but who never committed to a relationship.  When I finally started a relationship, I'd always find a reason to get out of it. Now that I'm 25 and have found someone worth having, it makes me nervous to the point of incapacity because even his sweet blue eyes remind me that my father had his own frigid, immovable quality.  

But I have to make a choice. I have to keep making a choice about the kind of person I want to be. I can be afraid forever and I can, like the Flat Earth Society, go on ranting into the night with circular logic and photoshopped visions of truth. Or, I can keep choosing to hope for a three dimensional picture of reality, one that includes love and hard work and sacrifice for the sake of staying together happily.  I don't know how to do that, and I'm terrified.

What are you keeping out or sailing around? Despite their insanity, the society's motto rings true, "In Veritate Victoria," in truth there is victory. We get to decide what will be true for us,  how many dimensions we want to inhabit, and what victory we're brave enough to achieve.