On Unicorns

The teacher stood at the front of the class and asked, “Why might some people choose to believe in unicorns?”

“Because they’re crazy,” mumbled the boy.

On what basis is it fair to claim that a person who believes in unicorns is “crazy”?

Not being a believer, I certainly feel as though I can understand where the boy in the classroom might have been coming from. Yet, given the personal experiences of those people who claim to have had contact with unicorns (as popularised by the TV show “Ally McBeal” some years ago), I have to wonder on what basis we get to label those people as “crazy”.

Living In Our Heads

As far as I am aware, the testimony of neuroscience is that we effectively “live inside our heads”; what I mean is that, given the nature of our brain and the way in which we process the information it receives from our senses, we are effectively at the mercy of our subconscious interpretation of what is going on around us as it is processed by our brains.

The practical upshot of “living inside our heads” is that, as Plato suggested, we cannot wholly trust our senses. In other words, what we think we are experiencing may not in fact be an objective reality.

If you’ve ever had a dream that felt “real” to you, then you will know what I am talking about: having been berated by your partner for things that you have never done (but that they experienced in their dreams), we can well understand the fragile state of “reality”.

Unicorns?

Unicorns may or may not exist. It’s hard to be sure, although most of us have never experienced one.

That said, many of us have never experienced many things. We’ve seen pictures of places we’ve never been to, or talked to people who tell us about situations we’ve never directly been in contact with, and we unconsciously accept these things as “real”. Unless, of course, the claims don’t fit into our preconceived expectations about what is “real”.

Unicorns are not part of the consensus of “real” in our society. That said, they used to be so – and there is much in the way of art and literature to suggest that, at one time, people talked about unicorns in a manner similar to how we might talk about other creatures that exist on the fringes of our experience. What is to say that unicorns are not merely a species that has gone the way of the Snow Leopard (until a few years ago thought extinct) or even the Dodo (actually extinct)?

The answer, of course, is that unicorns are considered to be outside of the consensus of what is “real”.

Crazy?

That leads me to ask whether a person who experiences a unicorn, or any other experience deemed to be outside of the consensus of what is “possible”, is actually “crazy”.

As the boy in our story was asked, what right do we have to dismiss another human being’s personal experience as “crazy”? What do we even mean by attaching that label to another person’s experience?

Attaching labels tells me more about the person doing the labelling than it does about the subject under discussion: if you think that unusual experiences are a sign of mental illness, which of course they sometimes are, you also reveal to me the narrowness of your own thought and experience.

The Limits of Real

Psychologists will tell you that we tend to experience that which we expect to experience. In other words, if you don’t believe that something is possible or important, your brain will most likely “edit” your experience of the world around you to not include that item. The practical upshot of this is that people who don’t believe in unicorns (for example) probably won’t experience one… even if it was standing in front of them.

Much hay has been made of the other side of this phenomenon: we do experience what we expect to experience. This argument is used to poo-poo experiences that fall outside of the consensus – such as unicorns, ghosts, and aliens – but, to be honest, it really isn’t a proof of anything. All you are doing is asserting that your beliefs are superior to those of a person who has different beliefs.

Thus, there is a limit to what you perceive to be real; that limit is your belief, your expectation.

How Do We Respond?

Do we live inside our own experience and accept that those people who see things differently are “crazy”? Or do we open our minds to the possibilities and rather view such experiences as simply different?

Personal experiences of “mythic” or “spiritual” beings are not necessarily signs of schizophrenia. They are also termed “religious experiences” in some circles… and the way to respond is to consider the effect on the person experiencing them. If that experience is healthy and positive, who are we to judge?

Certainly such experiences are unusual. They contradict the consensus, after all, so they are bound to seem strange. But then, who decides the consensus anyway?

Let’s be cautious about matters of experience. Afford people a little bit more generosity. Explore what the experience has come to mean to them. Only if matters seem dangerous to their actual health should we risk sticking on the pejorative label of “crazy”.

Who’s to say that there aren’t really unicorns after all?