Bakemonogatari — The Curse of Your Reality
Modern political talk can’t seem to go on for too long before the concept of a “post-truth society” comes up. Post-truth is the notion that objective facts are less influential than appeals to emotion or something that adheres to our personal biases. The concept isn’t new but its newfound popularity in the wider political space tends to cause its full implications from being considered.
Objective facts are statements and information that remains true regardless of personal feelings or opinions. If someone falls and hits the floor, they’ve fallen. It’s not something that’s up to subjectivity. At least that’s the hope. The only difference between subjective and objective statements are simply the perception that one is made without the influence of personal feelings or emotions. As humans, it’s incredibly difficult for us to make objective statements or see situations objectively. The lens by which we experience our lives is painted by our personal and shared emotions.
Bakemonogatari is a series centered around the worlds characters create for themselves. There are normal characters that exist like Araragi Koyomi, Senjougahara Hitagi, and Oshino Meme but there are also Apparitions. Apparitions/Oddities are different monsters that cause different effects on individuals who encounter them. However, most of these beings can only exist so long as people believe in them. In the case of vampires, they frequently have to attack humans, not for the need of sustenance, but to perpetuate humanity’s fear of them in order to ensure their own existence. These oddities don’t even need a large quantity of people to believe them in order to exist. One person’s feelings and emotions can cause an Oddity to be brought into the world.
Most of the Oddities are connected to traditional folklore but there are others that are far more personal to individual characters. The most dangerous aspect about Oddities is that you don’t need to believe them in order to be impacted by one. One’s own personal feelings can manifest into a dangerous Oddity and cause harm to someone else. That very same Oddity could also focus on their creator and seek to harm them if their feelings harbor self-resentment as well. An individual’s feelings can bring these monsters into reality by sheer virtue of them being believed. Much akin to one’s very own personal truths.
Personal truths largely exist and carry on through sheer human faith. Many resort to science as being something that is safe to believe because there is “evidence” that statements made through it about how the world works are substantiated. Yet many scientific revelations were born from the discrediting of previously widely held beliefs. Newton’s gravitational theory, and Copernicus’ heliocentric model being the most widely taught. The simple truth is that humanity’s truths are far more malleable than many would like to admit. Despite scientific evidence pointing towards life beginning in the Fertile Crescent and many phenomena being understood and explained through scientific theory, many creationist religions still exist.
Our truths shape a person’s beliefs more than any provided truth from another. The only time people are willing to accept a new truth is to replace one that they are ready to give up anyways. It’s not done out of maliciousness or ignorance but a survival instinct. We can’t survive if we are constantly unsure of what to believe so we craft our world by a set of beliefs that make us secure in who we are and the very world we exist in as well. We all live in our own version of the world simultaneously alongside others.
The person who is always in the greatest danger of these worlds we craft is always going to be the individual themselves. Anxiety and depression are often (not always) caused by the creation of realities that viciously harm the individual. The self-created truth that things are always a few steps from catastrophe or that things will only continue to spiral until they get worse. Mental illnesses don’t operate on “objectivity” or facts. Much like our emotions. Many are strung together based on associations that we make for ourselves or from truths that we adopt from others.
Many disagreements stem from conflicting truths. Regardless of what either side of an argument decides to base their truth on, unless one individual is open to having their truth changed, then the argument becomes little more than both people asserting their different truths to one another. When most people have been inside for well over the last year and likely (directly or indirectly) found a place that shares their truths, they become less likely to be persuaded or changed when they have a core group of people to fall back to who confirm their pre-established biases. Unless that group destabilizes or changes, then any member of that groups is unlikely to change whatever their shared belief is. Any argument with a person who doesn’t share their truth becomes an attempt to “enlighten” or impose their truths onto that designated other. Which is something that has long since been apart of human history.
What can be done if this natural process seems to shape the very world we interact with? The same thing that can be done when faced with any problem: acknowledge it and work against it. When it comes to the very grounds of our own personal realities, the balance between holding what is true to you while being open to those truths changing is an extremely difficult thing to do. It often requires learning more about who you are as an individual when it comes to both your best and worst aspects. It also means leaving yourself vulnerable to bad faith actors or potential manipulators. A closed off world is often easier to live in but it’s unsustainable for yourself since your worst aspects shape it as well.
You have the ability to shape a world that is always bright and beautiful to yourself but could very well be hell to you (or others) without knowing it. Believing something is good for you doesn’t mean it actually is. The inverse can be true as well. We live in a place with an unfathomable amount of knowns and unknowns both in relation to how we live as well as aspects of our inner selves. So what do we do when we can design a world where we supposedly know everything there is to know?
There are three characters in Bakemonogatari that have a sort of catchphrase about knowledge. One character states that they know “everything”, another says “I don’t know everything. I just know what I know”, and the last says “I only know what you know”. All three are framed as highly intelligent and are often relied on by other members of the cast as a type of intellectual guide. One character asserts their will upon the world by eliminating what they do not know. This often leaves them ostracized by others around them and seen unfavorably as they tend to be the most grim when it comes to certain circumstances. Acting in a very utilitarian world view. The character that admits their limits is depicted as more compassionate and understanding. Knowing the limits of their own knowledge and open to admitting it while still acting with faith in their abilities.
The character that says “I only know what you know” is underhanded. Prying information from others and using their own knowledge to validate their statements. It’s akin to a spider making a web along a path that their prey needs to walk down. It’s the exposing of weaknesses with little in the way of acting to comfort those vulnerabilities being exposed. Yet it’s not an invalid way of obtaining knowledge. Allowing it to come to you while poking holes in it as the presenter speaks causes them to think more about what it is that they’re saying and catch flaws they otherwise hadn’t noticed.
These three aren’t the only ones with this phrase though. A much later character is brought in who slightly denounces all three statements. “Knowing doesn’t matter since anything you don’t know, you can simply guess. What matters is understanding.” They posit that there’s little value in seeking knowledge if one can’t truly understand it. Knowledge and information are building blocks that we share with one another as a means to live together. So understanding the source of that information does you leagues more than just focusing on the information itself.
In a world where everyone lives in their own version of reality, and we can’t seem to find common ground in anything we used to deem “objective”, the only thing people can do is understand one another. Understanding another is as difficult (if not more so) than understanding just yourself. Imposing our truths onto one another isn’t going to solve anything since many of us aren’t likely to give up on the worlds we’ve created so readily.
Nobody can save us from ourselves. Only we can do that. People can only save themselves from themselves once they’ve opened up to the idea that their worlds are their own creation. We create our own demons and monsters through our attempts to create what’s comfortable for us and based on the knowledge we allow ourselves to believe. Those personal tortures then go on to harm others as well because we failed to address our own shortcomings.
The least we can do for ourselves is to try to understand. Not only ourselves but others around us. Understand what makes someone anxious, fearful, angry, resentful, or happy. Try to glimpse into their world and see how they think about things. You can know everything there is to know about someone but still fail to understand them. The information age is flooded with knowledge but that doesn’t make us more understanding of one another, ourselves, or the world we all share. No amount of collected knowledge can make you understand yourself or someone else. But when we have nothing remaining that we can all mutually believe in, it’s the very least we can do.
