The pattern that seems to underpin the entire system of human interactions is one of inconsistency. This statement is not a new one, and at first glance it does not seem to be terribly helpful either. If all one can expect from a system is change, then it would appear that this system cannot be predicted. When considering small details in the system this is quite true; however, using the pattern of change it is possible to predict the movements of broader currents in the system.

This concept can be best illustrated by example. Take, for instance, another pattern that permeates the system, the unreal. Human beings do not appear to base their knowledge of the world upon objective realities and truths. Rather, they base their world on the facades that they and others have created, which are based on, yet can exist independently of, reality. In this sense, human relations do not take place in reality, but rather in unreality. For example, person A may believe that person B deserves to be sacked, and may then set out to discredit B at every opportunity. This is the reality. However, A will never admit, even to herself, that this is what she is doing. Therefore, an unreality is created. A is now the conscientious worker who points out potential problems in the workplace in order for the workplace to improve and run more smoothly. This is the unreality. But of course, an unreality cannot exist with only one person; it requires reciprocity.

So, person B bases her knowledge of A on the unreality, because by the laws of unreality, she must not acknowledge the underlying reality. To do that would be considered impolite or antisocial. So B must act towards A as though A is a helpful and conscientious colleague. However, even though B must act and think this way, at the same time B will infer from A's behaviour that A is out to get B fired. Apparently such knowledge is magically acquired with little or no effort required of B. Possibly diffusion is involved. But the point is that both A and B are aware of the reality of the situation, and yet, despite its obvious truth, both prefer to live in accordance with the unreality. Therefore, they are able to accept the truth and a lie at the same time. In this way, they are being inconsistent.

The above example illustrates the tendency of humanity to live almost exclusively in a fantasy land. We can deduce from this that people do not like the truth - it makes them uncomfortable - and that it is therefore a good idea to tell people lies. However, then inconsistency comes into play again. People will never admit that they like being told lies. When asked they will always maintain that they like people to be truthful. But when one tries to do this, one is often labelled insensitive, blunt or tactless. This is because the unreality which stipulates that people must be lied to in fact has its own unreality, let us call it a meta-unreality, which stipulates that people must never admit to themselves that an unreality exists or that they like being lied to: they must act as if they want to be told the truth.

From this we can deduce that there is not just one layer of unreality, but many. There is first the reality: that A wants B to be fired. Then there is the unreality: that A is a helpful colleague with a good eye for detail. Then there is the meta-unreality: that the unreality is in fact the reality. Human relations are, now that I think about it, a little bit like an onion:

But again, inconsistency comes into play, because people refuse to be wholly bound by the laws of unreality. Sometimes, people will temporarily suspend the unreality, and pop back into the terms of reality. For example, B, who knows A wants to get her fired, may confide in C, telling C of her suspicions about A. She is then talking about reality. When you have reached a certain level of familiarity with someone, you are able to pop out of unreality and into reality. You can therefore connect with this person on a deeper level. But this suspension of unreality is only temporary. It is a mistake to assume that just because someone was honest with you once, you can take everything else they say at face value. C must not assume that, because B has confided in her, B will continue to say only what she means. When B says something like, ‘If you have a problem with any of the work, do not hesitate to talk to me about it’, C should not assume that B won’t mind being bothered about every little thing. B will mind; she was only pretending otherwise in order to re-establish the unreality.

       Apart from the occasional pop back into reality (which people will probably deny has ever happened, so pervasive is the layer of unreality to which their thoughts must conform), the actual reality need not really exist. All human actions can be fully accounted for using a series of unrealities, so the reality is, in this sense, superfluous. However, knowledge of the reality – though it may be implicit knowledge only – is still helpful in interpreting unreality; as stated above, it also plays a part in decision making. In this sense reality does exist. But just as the winners in history will write the history books, stating that their actions were not genocide, but the cleansing of the state of an unnecessary and evil subgroup, so the vast majority of people will maintain that the unreality is the reality. And in this case, it is the majority who writes the book of rules, so for practical purposes, reality does not exist. Reality can therefore be described as a theory; like theories of logic or pure mathematics, reality can be applied to the world and can even be beneficial to people, but most people will dismiss it, and deny that they ever use it (although, of course, they do).

       Another pattern of interaction which ties in with the pattern of inconsistency and the pattern of unreality is the pattern of connection. People have an odd tendency to talk to each other about the most pointless and trivial things. The main things they talk about are the things they are doing at the time. If they are going to have a cup of tea, they will announce to their colleagues that they are about to do so; if they are going to go to the toilet, they will announce this as well, and so on. They will continue to engage in apparently meaningless communication, telling people what they are about to do, what task they are working on, etc. Nobody actually needs to know these things, and all this excess communication wastes quite a lot of time, yet people engage in it anyway. This is because although the small details of the conversations may be meaningless, the broad pattern behind the details is not meaningless at all: in fact, it plays a vital role in human interactions.

       When person A says to person B, ‘I am going to go to the toilet’, A’s reason for saying this is not to inform B of her bowel movements. In fact, if A were to be more specific about her toilet breaks, B would be quite put off, and accuse A of giving ‘too much information’. But the point is that it is not the content of the communication that is meaningful; what is meaningful is the communication itself. When A tells B that she is going to the toilet, she is using the communication to create a link between herself and B. She is really saying, ‘Hello B. I am here, and you are here, and we are connected’. It doesn’t matter what exact words A uses in her communication with B, because she is always saying the same thing. Every trivial remark, every piece of in-itself-pointless information, in fact, the vast majority of all human interactions, is nothing more than an affirmation of the existence of the people involved and their connection to each other.

       This realisation can actually take a great weight off your mind, because it implies that you don’t actually have to analyse every single word that is spoken to you for meaning. You just have to remember the mantra: ‘I am here; you are here: we are connected’. However, this does not mean that the content of interhuman communications can be ignored altogether: you have to pay some attention to what is said because, firstly, there is a slight chance that someone will say something of importance, and secondly, the pattern of connection requires that reciprocity be involved. When A makes a banal comment to B, B must acknowledge that comment. It only needs to be a brief acknowledgement – a simple agreement with A’s statement or a ‘that’s alright’ will usually suffice. But B must reply, because B must reciprocate the statement of connection. By doing this, the link between A and B becomes a two-way link. B validates A’s initial statement by repeating it and the bond becomes twofold, and therefore more fulfilling for both parties.

Reciprocity is an important part of connection, because the connection is not really valid unless both parties are actively involved. Person A will not feel fulfilled by the connection if it is one-sided: if she makes a statement of connection, and B does not follow it up with her own statement of connection, then A is really left out on a limb. She has extended the hand of connection to B, only to be knocked back. Thus, her sense of self worth takes a knock – it appears as though B does not see the value in connecting with A, ergo, B does not think that A has value as a person. This is why it is vitally important to reciprocate the statement of connection: failure to do so will hurt others, who will then be more inclined to hurt you in return.

Actually, reciprocity is important in the pattern of unreality as well as the pattern of connection. When constructing an unreality, you need the cooperation of at least two parties, otherwise the unreality will not be successful. So unreality requires a connection to be made before it can begin to exist. In this way, the patterns of unreality and connection are inextricably tied up in each other.

       Other parts of the pattern of connection are greetings and eye contact. People like to say hello to each other, and when they do this, they like to make eye contact. Saying hello and looking into a person’s eyes are the initial connecting forces between people. Doing these things establishes a connection between you and the other person, a connection which can be built upon by subsequent banter. Sometimes, greetings or eye contact will be the only connection between two people. Colleagues may pass each other in a corridor, establish a connection, then completely fail to see each other for the rest of the day. This is perfectly acceptable, because the most important part of the connection is its genesis. It is as though, with each new connection, an invisible thread extends from one person to the other, and remains there, joining those people together for the rest of the day, week, or any other appropriate time period. If those two people re-meet during the day, they may strengthen the thread by engaging in further chatter, but even if they don’t see each other again, the thread will remain. And it is the existence of the thread that is most important, rather than the quality of the bond. In this way, the day-to-day interactions of human beings are really more about quantity than quality. This is because, as I have said before, the act of connecting is an end in itself, so it doesn’t matter what type of connection is made; the connection only has to exist to be successful.

       So everyone is connected to everyone else, whether directly or vicariously through their connections to others. It is like a giant web that everyone is an integral part of, because everyone is a source of connection, a meeting of threads. I think people need this web, because they need to be tied to others. Perhaps they think that they will blow away into nothing if they are alone. I think the desire not to be alone plays a big part in human interactions. When people are together, they feel safe. When they are alone, they feel unsafe. When people are alone, they have nothing to ground them; they are left freefalling in a confusing, irregular, hostile environment with nobody to bounce their ideas off, nobody to act as a guide or ally, nobody, in short, to connect to. But when people are connected, it doesn’t matter so much that the world is so confusing and hostile; it doesn’t matter that everyone is in freefall: everyone is freefalling together. That is the key: when people are connected, they are not alone. When people are not alone, they feel safe, and when people feel safe, they have the courage to take the risks that everyday life demands of them.

Basically, people need to share their experiences. They do not want to think that private experiences are totally unique and cannot be fully shared, because this implies that they cannot be fully understood by others. But I think that our experiences are unique, because we each understand the world in a slightly different way; we all think differently. This can be explained better if I talk in terms of language.

       Language is an unreality. By this I mean that language is symbolic of reality: it takes its cue from reality, and then deviates into a world all of its own. Language is a system of symbols (both verbal and physical – body language is a language just like any spoken tongue) that can be applied to reality to make it easier to communicate. For example, if I see a painting, it may occur to me that the word ‘painting’ can apply to what I am seeing. But clearly the word ‘painting’ is not in itself a painting – it is only a symbol that I may apply to a group of similar things in order to code reality into something that my brain can communicate to others. This symbolic world is an unreality, which usually runs parallel to reality. If I describe a painting to someone, I am describing to them an unreality, because I am transforming my experience of the painting into words, in order to communicate my thoughts about the painting to them. The words are not the painting itself, so the description that reaches the person’s ears is an unreality.

       You can guarantee that the idea of the painting that I have in my head is different to the one that the other person builds from my description of it. This is because although our languages are similar, they are not exactly the same. My experiences of red, for example, have been slightly different to anyone else’s experiences of red. And each experience of red builds on the previous experience, making it more and more complicated and harder and harder to replicate, so that when I eventually come to describe a particular painting as red, my concept of the painting – the things that the redness makes me think or makes me feel – could be markedly different to the other person’s concept of the painting. So we are talking about the same thing, and we may even appear to understand each other, but the things we are experiencing in our heads are quite dissimilar to each other. In this way, language is unreal. It is unreal because it is an abstract construct which exists only in people’s minds, but it is its very abstractness that allows it to connect people to each other.

       Take, again, the example of the painting. One way of describing a painting to another person would be to copy it exactly and then show it to them. But this is an imperfect way, because the things I think of when I see the painting will not be exactly the same as the things someone else thinks of when they see the painting. Our ‘idea-paintings’ will be different, although we are experiencing the same painting in reality. In any case, creating a replica of the painting is not usually possible or convenient, so we turn to language in order to communicate the idea of the painting. In fact, when it comes to communicating our ideas about the painting it is better to use language than it is to simply be looking at the same painting. This is because our ideas are not explicitly present in the painting itself; our ideas are a kind of unreality that comes from the act of looking at the painting. So we need a medium other than painting to express these ideas. This is when we turn to language, and this is how language connects people.

       Because, although we cannot perfectly communicate our ideas to someone else, we can use language to create an unreality which can then be accessed by others and interpreted into an approximation of our original thoughts. So, I experience a painting, and have particular thoughts about that painting. This is the reality. I then convert these thoughts into language based on my prior experiences of paintings and language. This language-painting is an unreality. The person I am talking to hears what I have said (or sees what I have written, as you, dear reader, are doing now) and, based on her experiences of paintings and language, creates in her mind a picture of what I have been describing and an idea of the thoughts I have been having. This is also an unreality, in fact, it is an unreality that has been twice removed from reality, but, importantly, it is an unreality that approaches reality, because it is communicating the thoughts that I was having in a way that simply looking at the same painting could never do.

       So language is clearly not a perfect system – to really understand someone you have to do more than simply speak the same language as them; you have to study them, learning their own personal dialect (or idiolect) and learning more about what goes on inside their head. But if language were a perfect system it could never work – because my idea of a painting is not exactly the same as anyone else’s idea of a painting, in a perfect system we would all have slightly different words for ‘painting’, because having the same word would cause a doubling up on meanings to occur, which would introduce differences of opinion into the interpretation of the word, which would cause the language to become imperfect again. And if we all had our own private words for painting and everything else we might want to describe or analyse, then we would not be able to understand each other at all, and we would have no way of communicating with each other or knowing how other people experienced the world. It would be just like having no language at all.

       Therefore language is, by definition, an imperfect system. But it is kind of perfect in its imperfection, if that makes any sense. The imperfection of language means that you can never communicate your thoughts exactly – you can only give an approximation. So in some ways we are all a little bit trapped in our own worlds, because there will always be some aspect of those worlds that is incommunicable. The point I am trying to make here is that because language is an unreality, the notion that we can fully connect to each other is also an unreality – we cannot transfer our thoughts exactly to other people, because we must rely on the imperfections of language in order to make the connections in the first place. So the pattern of connection is actually based on a phenomenon that can be described using the pattern of unreality. This is a further demonstration of the interdependence which the patterns of unreality and connection have on each other.

Somewhat paradoxically, I think the unreality of connection might be why people are so determined to connect with others in the first place. People know that they are somewhat trapped in their own worlds by language, and they do not like this fact. It is as if they think that their experiences cannot be proved to be real unless someone else can verify their existence by affirming that they have also had those same experiences. So people take the reality of their experiences and from that create an unreality that can be communicated. Thus people interact on the level of unreality. Because unreal experiences are communicable: they take place on the level of language. And this is why unreality is so important – it allows people to connect. And when people connect, they affirm each other’s reality. People need to be reassured that they are real – without someone else’s recognition of their reality, they cannot be sure that they really exist. It may seem strange for people to demonstrate their reality via an unreality, but it cannot be done any other way. People can only connect in unrealities.

       All this talk of reality and unreality kind of implies that there is an absolute truth out there which we can have knowledge of. This is a problem, because I am not sure that I agree with that. Or, to be more precise, I’m not sure that I agree that you can ever know that something is real. Everything we know about the world ultimately comes to us through our senses (well, I think it does. You can disagree with me if you like, but I’m not going to argue the point because the manner in which we acquire knowledge of the world is not the purpose of this essay), which are very subjective and imperfect things. And of course, our brains process the information we receive, and our brains are also extremely imperfect, individual entities. So information has to pass through two flawed mechanisms in order to become understandable to us. This is not the most accurate or efficient way of procuring information, but unless (until?) humans manage to break free of the physical confines of mortality and learn to exist in a purely, fluidly conceptual manner, we’ll all just have to get over our imperfections and do the best we can with what we’ve found ourselves with.

       Anyway, the point is that I don’t think we can ever know what objective reality is (if it exists at all). This may seem to be at odds with all my prior talk of reality and unreality. What I need to do now (in fact, what I should have done at the beginning of this essay) is explain my definition of reality.

       When I talk about reality, what I am really talking about is subjective reality. By this, I mean a kind of base level idea, the thing that is the most real. Take, for example, this picture of an orange.

fig. two: an orange (use your imagination)

Imagine that this picture of an orange is, in fact, and orange, and not simply a picture of one. The signals that reach your brain through your senses when you see an orange are an example of subjective reality. You cannot get any closer to reality than this stream of information about reality. When you process the information, and think about the orange that you are seeing, you are entering unreality – you have applied thought to subjective reality. The thought-orange is an unreality, whilst the impact that the actual orange has on your senses is a subjective reality. But you are not actually looking at an orange at this moment (well, you might be, if you happen to have one handy, but let us assume for the moment that you do not), you are looking at a picture of an orange. So this orange that you are looking at is also an unreality – the orange itself is not actually there (at least, your senses tell you it is not there). But if you take the picture-of-an-orange as an object itself then you are looking at a subjective reality – the picture exists as an object. This demonstrates that a thing can exist in both reality and unreality at the same time. It just depends on how you look at it. In fact, language can be experienced as a subjective reality too: when someone says to me, “I think you have a fixation with oranges” I experience those words as sounds – a reality coming in through my ears. I then apply thought to them in order to understand them; my understanding of the words is an unreality, but the words themselves are real.

       As you can see (and as I have briefly mentioned before) there are many different types of unreality: there is the unreality of thought, which may be directly related to reality or may be purely abstract; there is the unreality of language, which is directly related to reality because it exists for the purpose of ordering reality; there is the unreality of intention, the alternate motives and reasons we invent in order to avoid recognising the truth; and there is the meta-unreality, that is, the unreality about unreality. These four unrealities seem to me to be the most common ones, but doubtless there are many more. The point is that unreality can exist in multiple forms, forms which interact with each other, creating not so much layers of unreality, but rather a web of unreality.

       Often, we mistake the unreality of language for the reality itself, because our understanding of the world is partly linked to language-use. But the two things are not quite the same. B may think ‘A is out to get me fired’ and she is right, but her realisation of a piece of reality is not the same as the reality itself; the moment she puts it into words (or thoughts, which are not necessarily the same things as words), it becomes an unreality, albeit one that comes extremely close to the truth.

But I digress. So. Saying hello to people, making eye contact with them, and so forth, equals ‘good’, to most people. But inconsistency comes into play again. Sometimes, when you greet someone, they act as if they just wanted to be left alone, and sometimes, when you make eye contact with someone, they think that you are staring at them, which is generally considered to be a bad thing. It is important to get just the right balance between talking and not talking, looking and not looking. I don’t know the exact rules that determine exactly when you should try to connect with people and when you should refrain from doing so. I think that they are so complicated and full of exceptions that you can’t really apply any set of rules to them and expect all situations to just follow the lines you have set out – you just have to know instinctively when to connect and when not to connect. However, I think that the reason behind people’s inconsistency can be explained by the pattern of similarity.

The pattern of similarity is quite simple. It shows that people like the things that make up their lives to be fairly similar to each other. Take, for example, eye contact. People do not like you to make a lot of eye contact with them, nor do they like you to make very little. This is because if you did either of these things, the amount of eye contact you made would be dissimilar to the average amount of eye contact that they have experienced prior to their meeting with you. When something is dissimilar to the average, this unsettles people, because they were not expecting something dissimilar. People use their prior experiences to predict their future experiences, so the thing they were expecting is always going to be just about the average of the sum of their prior experiences. Because people make their future predictions based on an average, their expectations for the future are often quite middle-of-the-road, i.e., they don’t expect any deviation from the norm. When the deviation eventually occurs, people may become uneasy or upset, because the existence of the deviation signifies that their system for predicting the future is not perfect, that the so-called reality that they have in their minds that tells them about the future is not really a reality at all, but is in fact an unreality. And the meta-unreality states that their unreality is actually the reality, which is directly contradicted by the existence of the deviation. This destabilises people’s entire system of reality and unreality, because it forces them to admit that they do not quite live in the real world.

So, most people do not like to encounter non-similarity. Additionally, most people do not like to be the source of non-similarity. People (most of them, at least; there will always be a few individuals who like to mess with other people’s heads) do not like to act in such a way as to call into question someone else’s predictions about the future, because if they were to do this they would be calling into question the entire system of unreality that has been built up around them. Again, you can see that reciprocity is necessary for this pattern to exist – people must cooperate to maintain the similarity, which maintains the unreality, which enables connection, which validates each person’s individual reality. The point is that most people conform to the pattern of similarity because it is in their interest to do so. People may say that they want an interesting life, one full of change and adventure, and on a macro level this may be true. People may well enjoy having lots of exciting adventures and doing outrageous things. But on a micro level, most people are inherently conservative. People may like taking risks and doing new things, but despite this they will continue to meet people’s eyes when they talk to them, they will carry on with banal conversations, they will even make up unrealities and tell lies to back those unrealities up. This is because it is exponentially more risky to alter these seemingly minor points of behaviour than it is to jump out of aeroplanes, annoy biker gangs, or start wars. These grand gestures of risk and transgression are only surface actions; the small gestures are more important because they hold up the fabric of unreality itself.

fig. four: eye contact over time and expected eye contact

So, sometimes, connecting with people is the wrong thing to do, because too much connection disrupts the pattern of similarity. Sometimes people expect a lot of connection, sometimes they expect a little. They are inconsistent. But if you can prepare for this inconsistency, then it is possible to predict the general flow of human interactions. Sometimes people tell the truth; often they don’t, yet claim that they applaud truthfulness. This is inconsistent. But this inconsistency is part of a pattern of unreality, which follows certain rules, which can be learned and applied to a situation in order to better understand it. People think that their communications with others are important, yet the things they actually say are totally pointless. This is also inconsistent. But, again, this inconsistency can be explained by the pattern of connection, which explains the purpose of all those seemingly useless communications. People want connection, but the level of connection they seek is not consistent. This can be explained by the pattern of similarity. So, all of the inconsistencies of human behaviour are actually part of broader, interconnected patterns in the system, patterns which can be applied to reality in order to understand what to do. When B starts talking to C about A’s attempts to get her fired, C can now deduce that B is suspending unreality, and can then predict that this will not continue indefinitely. C can then prepare for the time when B reverts back into unreality, and will therefore be less confused by B’s behaviour.

       Finally, here is a question for you:

       This essay is a communication. It is a way for me to connect to you, the reader. This means that it is an unreality, because if it were real I would not be able to communicate it to you. Are the patterns discussed in it, then, a part of reality, or are they simply another unreality that I have created in order to make my own life easier, my own world safer and more understandable? In short, is the existence of unreality in itself a reality? Or not?

       I’ll leave the answer up to you.

       Jean Cloisson, October 2008.