Mark Vernon on Suspending Disbelief

Ours is an age that wants to know. A train that is just minutes late will enrage us. A politician who confesses the future is uncertain will take a hit in the polls. A scientist who states her research offers only probabilities might lose her funding. We trust clarity, not mystery. Evidence wins every time over ideas. But what have we lost from our black and white world?

Perhaps we would discover something new if we learnt to suspend disbelief, the ability to hold off deciding, refrain from being cynical, being open to the possibility that there are some things – many things – we may never know. The poet John Keats called it the Negative Capability, ‘being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ Coleridge before him celebrated the ‘suspended state’ as the source of any real imagination.

It is an art first named in the West by the ancient philosopher, Pyrrho of Elis. He travelled to India with Alexander the Great, and had an encounter that changed his life. At Taxila, in modern day Pakistan, he met the Gymnosophists, the ‘naked philosophers’. It was not just their literal nakedness that impressed him, but their preparedness to stand naked before the great unknowns of life. The best way to be exposed to them, Pyrrho argued, is to suspend disbelief.

He founded a group that came to be called the Sceptics, though the word then meant almost the opposite of what it means know. In Greek, it means a searcher or inquirer, not a cynic.

A handful of Pyrrho’s sayings survive and they are suggestive of his way of life. Consider one: ‘Nothing really exists.’ It sounds paradoxical, even ridiculous. The temptation is to dismiss it. But suspend disbelief and ask again. Perhaps what it’s saying is like the Buddhist teaching that everything is related, conditioned, caused – and so does not exist on its own account. That would apply to you too, an unsettling thought, like realising you are treading water over unfathomable deeps. Then again, it’s released a side of life that might never have struck you otherwise.

Today, there are a few places in which we still know how to suspend disbelief. The cinema is one, when we enter into the story displayed on the big screen. So we could learn that practice elsewhere. And amidst the greys and uncertainties, a deeper story of life might emerge as a result.

Mark Vernon is the author of Plato’s Podcasts: The Ancients’ Guide to Modern Living (Oneworld).  He will be leading 'How To Fill The God-Shaped Hole' on 22 September at The School of Life.  For more information, click here.

Comments

[Drew Byrne]

Relying on the principle of having the right to be obstreperous, I find this mini-essay upon the lack of believability unbelievably hard to get on with, or even believe in on principle; perhaps it is not “suspension of disbelief” here that is at issue, but one’s basic right to believe what one wants when one wants to wherever and whenever that may be, and however ridiculous, unproven, or unpopular that is, and then to do it anyway. Of course, my general right to say this, unbelievably, can be brought into question whatever I believe to be the case, once stated; but luckily, that will not stop it being posted here in the School of Life’s blog at least. However, suspending the non-belief that belief can be suspended is quite within the realms of possibility. As there nothing is certain, and if nothing is certain why not believe what you want? At least for a minute or two: it couldn’t hurt. Or not hurt you except that you did something stupid while doing so, in which case, you shouldn’t do it, either in the cinema or elsewhere. But, after all is said and done, it is not sure that amid the dull uncertainties and grey hues of thought that occur in the mind perused and pursued while committing the positive action of even trying to suspend disbelief, a deeper understanding of the story of life may not so easily resolve itself in reality – too bad, or not, whatever may be the case.

[Margaret Gallagher]

I agree also - and it was a joy to see this article in the ES on Friday. It is refreshing to discover more of us who are happy to be visible in this climate of fear of being wrong.
It is is the source of ultimate freedom to be unafraid of uncertainty; understanding the absolute necessity for it - seeing both the promise and the grace of that most beautiful, creative and peaceful of states.

[Paul Lemmon]

I whole-heartedly agree with this, although I don't think it's necessary to conflate the desire for facts eg in science, crime investigation, truths about history with a lack of imagination or ability to accept ambiguity and mystery about existence. Though I suppose one has an affect on the other.

I have to say I blame the likes of Richard Dawkins for this growing trend. The idea that absolutely everything has to be provable and evidence based has the potential for draining the colour out of life. Particle physicist Brian Cox is getting dangerously close to this too with his latest and most infamous assertions, implying that religious faith is unintelligent and anyone who thinks the Hadron Collider will create a black hole is a 'twat'. I found it fun to imagine the create of a black hole in Switzerland. I love Cox's work, but it's telling that he was the science advisor on Danny Boyle's Sunshine, which was, as a film and work of artistic vision, a resounding bore - lacking in flair, poetry or richness of imagination.

Careful, Big Dawkins is watching you.