Two-World Syndrome: explained!

You will be neither surprised nor delighted.

Once upon a time, the Original Mentor gave us a commandment: Do what you say you’re going to do. We have embraced that directive, all to the good, it having a powerful effect not just on what we do, but on what we say we are going to do.

So, it was a little headlong of us to promise, in a previous post, that we would attempt to unpack the concept of Two-World Syndrome. We can’t help but think back to a difficult moment, in the now distant past, when we attempted to explain exactly this to the founder of a hot beverage company we found ourselves working for. He was skeptical. No, that’s not accurate. He was unmoved. He shook it off in an instant, whether because he believed it to be false or, perhaps, because he saw how it conflicted with his plans—very much the same thing, in the end.

At any rate, progress has conspired to make the concepts we struggled to lay out back then so self-evident today that you will be forgiven for dismissing this as obvious. We may well be about to explain water to a fish. But even a fish can use a recap now and then.

Enough preamble.

There are two worlds. There’s the one you live in. It contains, first and foremost, the air that you breathe. There may be a dog at your feet. There may be a loved one across the room doing something that annoys you. Breathe deep and recognize the annoyance for what it is—a common mixture of love and fear perhaps? Then, because clearly this feeling is in you, in your chemistry, in your muscles, breathe it out and let it go. The sun streams in the window. The rain patters against the roof. There’s yardwork to be done. A child needs help with homework. You feel thirst. You drink. Hunger? You eat.

That’s your world. Oversimplified, of course. In practice, it is as rich and complex and challenging as anything you will ever encounter. And you share it with a vast cast of characters who love you or like you or don’t think of you at all. It isn’t small—it expands without limit. And it isn’t insular. Just reach out to that shelf there and suddenly you are in conversation:

You: Oh, what’s to become of us? What are we doing with our lives?

Dante: Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.

You: Thank you, Dante. Let me get on that.

Now, the second world: We won’t belabor this… much. The big difference is how it comes at you. Here is a fit young man with wrap-around shades explaining how he unlocked a seven-figure income with little effort. Here is a simple, affordable product that solves that problem you’ve been having. Here is a serial sex offender with a drinking problem poised to take nominal control of the most powerful military force in history. Here is an improbably attractive person telling you why you’re not happy. Here is what seems to be an army of ignorance, intolerance and cruelty rejoicing in the destruction of what, just yesterday, appeared to be the common good.

You get it. Your algorithm is different from ours, of course—fewer slick woodworking tips, perhaps—but it is the same powerful drip, drip, drip. Yes it tastes like poison but how can it be bad when we are so very thirsty for it?

So, those are the two worlds. And the difficult part is that they are both entirely real. The political outrages are reality based. The young man telling you how to change your life is real, as well, in that he is really lying to you, really trying to mislead you. Even the AI-generated footage of rats flooding a famous European capital is real in that it really exists and will not go away. The wars that kill strangers. The fires that sweep through places we thought were charmed. The kids shooting other kids. The casual, systemic cruelty that will rage at unpredictable moments and lead kind-hearted people to wonder how to progress. It’s all pretty real, #amirite?

So, that’s it: that’s Two-World Syndrome… Oh, were you hoping for a solution? Some sort of mitigation strategy? Well, we said we’d explain, not that we’d fix it, and, having done what we said we’d do, we can look the Original Mentor in the eye and move on.

But we’ll offer this: the answer can’t be to simply shut out world #2. We were formed to follow knowledge, after all. (Granted, getting knowledge from the Internet is like getting grain from horseshit—it’s in there, probably, but it’s tough to pick it out with any efficiency.) Maybe, like so many things, it’s a question of balance. Be informed, be engaged, be skeptical. Figure out what you can actually do to make your world better. Then, you know, do it.

Meanwhile, should you ever need a mitigation strategy, Wendell Berry’s got one for you after all. If you can’t find a wood drake, a squirrel is a very good substitute.

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.