I want to start off this post with a quote:
"Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility may rest assured that he seeks in vain."
-Hermann von Helmholtz, Academic Discourse (Heidelberg 1862)
Now, I once heard a physics lecture, and the professor pointed out that when he is asked "does this have any practical application" by a student, they usually (implicitly) mean one of two things: a.) "can I make money off this?," or b.) "can this physics be used to kill someone?"
I thought this was a very poignant remark. Oftentimes, throughout one's schooling, the student has the view that this is the preparatory phase, and that later on, they will enter the "real world" - an external, detached realm to which their present studies are largely unwedded to. This is the majority view held by high-schoolers and undergraduates, ever since school became a job factory in the popular mind. However, this neglects two crucial details: a.) to "practice" something is to do, and in fact the words practical and practice are incredibly similar for good reason; b.) there is no "outside world."
In my post entitled "Night Walk," I reflected on how people tend to view misery, cruelty, and ugliness as more "real" or raw than comfort, convenience, and luxury, when they are actually equally real, and in my YouTube video entitled Is it all a Distraction?, I noted that people tend to view certain political topics as "distractions" from the "big issues," when really, those issues are basically distractions in their own right. Here, I want to synthesize these two points of view into one unified claim:
The notion of a "real world" external to one's current experiences is a distraction from the experience itself.
Specifically, when we view our present situation, or the situations of those who live more-or-less "in a bubble" with a lens of unreality, we do two things simultaneously. The first thing we do is reinforce vulgarity by appealing to its centrality, and the second, related thing that happens is that we marginalize real, lived experiences by denying their worth as authentic. By "vulgarity," I mean specifically those topics which possess the most tongues - those which appeal to the "lowest-common-denominator," for lack of a better phrase. Some examples would include the pragmatic aspects of living in a late-stage Capitalist society, or hot-button political issues. Many people tend to think of an experience as "more real" the more it is reified and shared by some vaguely defined notion of a "general public." This breadth-first lens is in direct tension with the other popular connotation of the word "real" as delineating a particularly profound emotional state; for instance, a poem or a novel is "real" to us if it is effective in communicating some emotion in an unusually deep way. The reason why these two usages compete with each other in the first place, is because they consume the same semantic food: resonance, and the horizontal and vertical axes of resonance are treated on equal footing.
I would argue, if I were more skilled at doing so, that we might want to make the distinction between visceral reality and poetic reality, and the core identity frustration arises when what is viscerally real (politics, the economy, etc.) seems to be at odds with our internal, poetic desire for self-actualization. We find ourselves wanting to maximize our internal sense of "truth" (as in the vibes-based sense of "live your truth"), but because we conflate both senses of reality, we end up appealing to our idea of what is "practical," which we are inculcated into constructing from the horizontal axis. Thus, narrative depth is perceived as unsustainable in the face of a rigid status-quo, and when the pursuit of pleasure is compared to this standard, it seems needlessly indulgent and borderline unjustifiable.
The "action button"
For a moment, let's try a little thought experiment. Let's say you have two buttons. When you press the first, it has been designed so that the most impractical possible event will occur; when the other is pressed, the most practical event possible in the entire history of the universe should occur.
Just let your imagination run wild with what these buttons could possibly do, and try to think of reasons why they did or didn't accomplish their goals. Does the "most practical" button increase or decrease the number of future practical events? Does it enable, or disable a condition of absurdity?
On the list of "most practical" events I can think of, I have: a.) the complete elimination of world-hunger, b.) the creation of a new universe, c.) The destruction of the other button. But notice, if world-hunger were eliminated in its entirety, we would have to eliminate every person on Earth's need to feed themselves, or we'd all just get hungry again a few hours later. So at some point, we'd have to either press the button again or solve the issue the normal way, and in either case we are merely prolonging our absurd existence - life itself - which is the complete opposite of death, and please do keep in mind that death is very real under both the populist AND the poetic interpretations of reality. If we were to be a bit grim, we could say that the entire enterprise of life is a fictitious bubble, and a horrible waste of resources. It is altogether impractical.
Conclusion
I really hope no suicidal person reads that, because this is all for the sake of argument, so please do reach out for help if you need it. I just make this point to illustrate the flimsiness of our constructs of practicality and the "real world." The real world does not exist elsewhere but in-and-of-itself, and the "real world" - physical and spiritual reality - has graciously allowed many seemingly pointless, indulgent, beautiful things, as well as many repulsive, frightening, and mundane things. It is this magnificent array of diversity -- variety, the spice of life -- that makes things interesting. That all of these pockets of reality can co-exist, with endless variation, is glorious.
Lastly, I do wish to say that this navel-gazing doesn't mean I don't see the value in using the phrase "well, in the real world..." every once in a while. I'm self-aware enough to know that the results of analyzing something from a distant perspective don't always suit the hot, in-the-moment contexts. So, in an ironic, self-fulfilling sort-of way, declaring some chunk of experience to be the "real world" while relegating others to a "bubble," is simultaneously like pressing both buttons at once.
Relevant
"There is nothing outside the text.
- Jacques Derrida