The conceit of the book is a strange coincidence. Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf have similar names. Additionally, both of them write and speak about political and societal issues. As a result, people often get the two of them confused. Naomi Klein recently wrote a genre-blending memoir and dive into political and popular culture called Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. In it, she writes about how strange and unsettling it is to be regularly mistaken for Naomi Wolf.
It’s one thing to have a doppelganger out there in the world. With 8 billion people on the planet, it happens.
It’s quite another thing to have a doppelganger whose political and ethical ideas are in direct antithesis to your own, and who is broadcasting those ideas widely.
What a predicament!
Incidentally, my brother cracked up when he saw my library copy of the book. He observed that the library did Klein no favors in the placement of its book spine labels. Ha! Very true.
But only a small part of this book is about Klein’s bizarre personal situation. She makes the point that we are all currently living in a doubled world, where opposite ideas are being thrown around as if they are the same. Ideas are getting so mixed up in our various forms of media, and in our conversations with one another, that it’s gotten hard to tell what is reality, and what is a mirrored reality that is actually fake.
“Gradually, it has come to feel as if every idea of any import, every word that might express the magnitude of our moment, has been boobytrapped before it can even be uttered.”
Indeed. Both of the leaders of the major U.S. political parties are now espousing the idea that America is in catastrophic trouble if the other party wins the election. Sure, emotions tend to get heated in election years. But this year is different. It’s different because the warnings are apocalyptically dire this time around.
Also, in the past, most people took politicians’ remarks to be mostly hyperbole. This year, everyone is extremely serious about the extremely serious consequences of the election—and this is true on both the right and the left, and even in the vanishing middle.
So who’s right? Who’s in the real world, and who’s in the mirror world? How can you be sure you are in the real world and not in the mirror world?
I mean, they both can’t be real, can they?
Klein has an interesting answer to this question. She believes that every conspiracy theory arises because of a key truth behind it.
Do you think that the Covid vaccines are deeply harmful, even a plot to control society on a large scale?
Well, it is true that no medicine is 100% safe, and you could be in the .0001% (I just made up that number; I’m not a scientist) of people who take a particular medicine and are harmed by it.
Further, there has indeed been unethical connivance by government officials to neglect the existence and persistence of damaging health issues. One example is the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Just because a conspiracy theory is wrong in its particulars, doesn’t mean it’s not right in its broader fears and concerns.
Doppelganger is full of interesting ideas like this. I can’t share them all, but I’ll leave you with one more. Klein writes:
“Calm is not a replacement for righteous rage or fury at injustice, both of which are powerful drivers for necessary change. But calm is the precondition for focus, for the capacity to prioritize.”
She advises us not to get so worked up about the doubling/mirroring societal situation we’re in that we enter into panic and fear mode. People in panic and fear mode, she explains, can be more easily manipulated into making bad decisions.
By the way, did you catch this shocking viral story? OMG. Check out The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger by Charlotte Cowles, the Cut’s financial-advice columnist. It’s an example of how panic and fear can turn a levelheaded person into someone who can be tricked and scammed.
As you engage with the news and society, Klein says, it’s okay to have feelings. But remember that the most productive, not to mention safest, place to be is within calm and focus.
In spite of, and indeed because of, the swirling craziness all around us.
Are you feeling calm today?
Her advice is good and it’s the lesson a person practicing meditation will learn, just watch the thought and emotions disappear. The calm mind can just notice them and that recognized thought vanishes.
Outside the yogi master world. I guard myself from those who want to see a world that doesn’t exist and never will. They don’t like what they see in front of them
Great points. I feel like being in reality is good for some things and being in fantasy is good for other things. You just have to know the difference, do you know what I mean?