Which brings us to:Ontology & Paranoia

In a comment-thread from a couple of days ago, Rose asked:

I'm really interested in your argument about ontology, now that I can go back and really read what you said. There was a scene when Buddy and Grant are talking in which Grant, for no apparent reason, kicks a stone into the water, which gave me two impressions:

1. He's being motivated by an external agent to do things. This action is a mimetic support to his argument, not that he needs to make a good argument when he literally 'controls the discourse' anyway.

or

2. He's secretly saying, "I refute you thus!" I think it would be a good allusion under the circumstances, but in some sense Grant is contra Samuel Johnson, because he's not kicking a real stone and so his action doesn't prove anything at all. It proves, by loose analogy, that the world is not real at all.

Thoughts?

How can I resist an invitation like that?

The incident in question occurs on page 9 of Animal Man #26... "Grant" doesn't kick the rock, he throws it--but that doesn't mean we can't think about who made him do it! Unfortunately, this way, we don't get as perfect a segue to Doctor Johnson, but since we've got the interpretive conch at the moment, what say we just pretend he kicked it, hunh Rose?

Alright then! Where is the ontological ground of "reality" in Animal Man? For my money, it's in the lettercol... In issue #26, "Grant" tells Buddy: "Of course you're real! We wouldn't be here talking if you weren't real. You existed long before I wrote about you and, if you're lucky, you'll still be young when I'm old and dead... You're more real than I am."

What does he mean by that? Well, presumably that Buddy's continued existence is made possible by the readers. "Reality" is consensual... There is no first cause. If people stop caring, he's gone! That's a precarious situation, certainly--but what other options are there? When you're alone (I don't mean for a day or a week, I mean ALONE), you might as well be dead, no? That's why we invented "God" in the first place. So you never have to be alone. It's in all of the brochures...

But it's not enough just to meet up with God. It doesn't become "real" until you make the encounter known to others. Their belief ratifies your experience. That's why the Puritans made such a big deal of their conversion narratives. Anyone can go off into the woods hopped up on zeal and have themselves a "Yahweh" old time! The hard part is convincing others that it actually happened--if you do, then it did...it's as simple as that.

Of course, no one likes to be so dependent upon empirical Others, but it can't be helped. And it's no accident that those religions which place the greatest emphasis upon the individual's personal knowledge of the Divine are also the most evangelically-inclined! Catholics can afford to be more chill about this stuff, because the faith is grounded upon baptismal certificates, not ravishment by Grace... in either case though, the principle is the same--if I believe you are a member of the true Church, then you win a trip to Heaven!