7

 

UNCLE BRIAN EXPLAINS

EVERYTHING (ALMOST)

 

I ARRIVED AT UNCLE BRIAN’S HOUSE A LITTLE AFTER TEN.

The walk took longer than usual as it looked like rain. I had to write the word ‘sun’ on the palm of my left hand to balance that out, then walk part of the way backwards for peace in our time. When Uncle Brian didn’t answer the doorbell I had to arrange five pieces of chalk on his window-sill.

It’s better to be safe than sorry.

He arrived home at sixteen minutes to eleven, which was also 10.44, which was all right by me as my shirt cuffs were unbuttoned. Uncle Brian looked somewhat the worse for wear. A police car dropped him off, well, flung him out. It didn’t stop. Uncle Brian limped up the garden path singing that song with no words. It didn’t look to me as if he wanted anything mentioned. So I didn’t mention anything.

‘What’s red and stands in the corner?’ I asked Uncle Brian.

He shrugged.

‘A naughty bus,’ I told him, as humour sometimes helps to break the ice at parties.

‘You’d better come inside,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘You clearly need a cup of hot sweet tea.’

I couldn’t have argued with that if I’d wanted to.

‘Not your mates, though,’ said Uncle Brian, half turning as he turned the key. ‘They’ll have to stay in the garden.’

‘Sorry, lads,’ I said, dismissing the Kalahari bushmen who so often accompanied me upon my ventures to the interior. ‘Go and play in the park, I’ll see you later!’ But I never did.

Uncle Brian made tea and served it. Then he settled himself onto the box ottoman in the front room and sucked life into his briar. ‘So, son,’ he said, through pale-blue plumes of smoke, ‘what is it you would like to know?’

‘Speak to me of chaos theory,’ I suggested.

‘What, all that stuff about a butterfly flapping its wings in the Indus Valley causing a sweet shop in Huddersfield to catch fire?’

‘That’s the kiddie,’ I told him.

‘Don’t believe a word of it. It’s a sophism.’

‘And what is that?’

‘An argument that is deliberately invalid, specious or misleading. As opposed to a paralogism, which is an argument that is unintentionally invalid, specious or misleading.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Conspiracy,’ he said in a hushed whisper.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘One of those lads, eh?’

‘Would you care for me to explain?’

‘Very much indeed.’

‘You’re all right for tea?’

‘Fine, thank you.’

‘And biscuits?’

‘You didn’t offer me any biscuits.’

‘Because I have no biscuits.’

‘Please explain,’ I said. ‘About the conspiracy.’

‘All right,’ said he. ‘In a nutshell, nothing measurable can ever be proven absolutely.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, well, let me think of a simple example. Something obvious. Ah yes. Suppose you wanted to know the precise temperature of this room, what would you do?’

‘Look at a thermometer?’ I suggested.

‘On the face of it that would seem to be the solution.’

‘But it’s not?’

‘No,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘Because you could not be certain how accurate your thermometer was. In order to find this out you would require a more subtle and sensitive instrument to test the thermometer’s accuracy.

‘Then you’d know for certain,’ I said.

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you would require an even more sensitive piece of apparatus to test the accuracy of the instrument that tested the accuracy of the thermometer.’

‘You’d be certain then,’ I said.

Uncle Brian shook his head. ‘Not until you’d tested the accuracy of that instrument with another, and that one with yet another and so on and so forth until infinity. And you really can’t measure infinity, can you?’

I shook my head. ‘So what is the temperature of this room?’

‘Ultimately nobody knows for certain.

‘Blimey,’ said I.

‘Ultimately,’ said Uncle Brian, ‘nobody knows anything.’

‘Some people must know some things,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Well, people at the top. The Prime Minister, for example.’ Uncle Brian laughed. ‘Not a bit of it,’ he said. ‘The man at the top of the chain of command is constantly being misled by his subordinates. They lie to him all the time, to flatter him, to avoid punishment for their misdeeds, to further their own ends, to curry favour with him. The man at the top has the most distorted view of the world imaginable.’

‘That sounds somewhat cynical,’ I suggested.

‘Never confuse cynicism with scepticism. The two are mutually incompatible. Let us return to the principle of the thermometer. Let us say that the Prime Minister is not being lied to, he is simply being advised by advisors.’

I shrugged. ‘Let’s say that.’

‘So who advises the advisors and who advises the advisors of the advisors and who advises—’

‘I get the picture.’

‘It’s like the police force. Someone has to police the police force and so someone has to police the police that police the police force.

‘But they don’t, there’s no such someones.

‘No, my point exactly. Therefore the Prime Minister receives incorrect advice from his advisors, because there is no ultimate advisor to pass the advice down the infinite chain of advisors to him.’

‘So we all ultimately know nothing.’

‘I would like to say, precisely. But ultimately I don’t know.’

‘But when I originally asked about chaos theory, you said that it was a sophism rather than a paralogism, that we were being deliberately mislead. If ultimately nothing is ultimately knowable, then how can you know that?’

‘You’re catching on,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘I know that because I’m the man who invented chaos theory in the first place.’

My thoughts turned to my non-uncle Felix, the Alpha Man theory and the Ministry of Serendipity. ‘You thought up chaos theory?’ I said.

‘It was a joke, I thought it up for a laugh and sent it off as a thesis under an assumed name to an American scientific journal. I didn’t expect them to take it seriously. Although thinking about it, I should have. After all the art world took Picasso seriously and he was only puffing their legs.’

‘So chaos theory is just a wind-up?’

‘Not as good as the ones Einstein came up with, but not a bad one, I think you’ll agree.

‘So none of it’s true? In fact nothing is true.’

‘There are no ultimate truths.’

‘But what about me?’

‘What about you?’

‘I have this gift, or curse, or something. I compensate, all the time, I’m the butterfly in reverse, big events reflect upon me, I balance them with small events. I’m doing it now.’

And I was. To compensate for the angle of the sunlight coming in through the front room window I had placed my saucer over my tea cup and orientated my armchair three degrees towards the north.

‘Ah,’ said my uncle. ‘Well, you’re different. You’re as different as it’s possible to be.’

‘But what does it really mean? Why do I do it?’

‘We all do it to a certain extent. We all try to impose order upon chaos. In universal terms, order out of chaos may be nothing more than a passing fad, but in human terms, we all prefer order to its dire alternative. For the most part people don’t take risks, risks incur the possibility of chaos. For the most part people are unambitious, ambition leads to all manner of chaos. For the most part people do not question what they are told, be it by their “superiors” at work, or by the media, or by politicians or by priests. To question orthodoxy is to risk chaos. The status quo exists to maintain order, those who create chaos within it are dealt with severely.’

‘And who determines this status quo, who decides what order should be and what should be defined as chaos?’

‘That, my boy, is the big conspiracy. Is it a who? Is it a what? Maybe it’s God.’

‘I don’t think it’s God,’ I said.

‘Nor do I. After all, God is the divine creator, but which divine creator created that divine creator, and who is the divine creator who created the creator of the divine creator and—’

‘All right then, it’s not God. But I’m as baffled now as when I came in here. Possibly more so. You still haven’t explained to me why I do the things I do.’

‘You do them because you’re different. That’s it. That’s the reason. Each person is more than just the sum of their inherited genes. Each person is an individual, unique. Except possibly for identical twins. All right, so some people get a bad deal. They’re the bottom feeders in the gene pool, but others, my oh my, others have enormous potential. Potential to change the status quo, possibly even to come up with a minor truth or two. Possibly you do the things you do because you are one of these. Or possibly you do it out of nothing more than a personal need to impose order upon chaos. You don’t actually compensate, or reflect, or balance, you just think that you do.’

‘So which is it?’ I asked.

‘Probably the latter,’ said my uncle. ‘You always were a bit of a weirdo.’

‘You haven’t actually been the slightest help to me at all,’ I said, rising to take my leave.

‘Only winding you up,’ said Uncle Brian, gesturing me back into my chair. ‘You are different and you have enormous potential. You could do great things, wonderful things. You do have a gift, but it is chaotic, it’s all over the place. You’re at least two degrees out on the orientation of the armchair and this is a Friday, so why aren’t you wearing a red hat?’

‘Thursday is a red hat, Friday is one black sock.’

‘Just testing,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘You seem to know your stuff.’

So you do understand why I do these things?’

‘I have explained that we all do them to a certain extent in an attempt to impose order on chaos. You do them to a major extent and actually impose order on chaos. It’s cause and effect. The cause filters down to you and you produce the effect. The buck stops with you. Without you to stop it, it might go on and on and we would have chaos.’

‘You might have explained this earlier,’ I suggested. ‘To save time.’

‘What, and had you miss out on all that esoteric wisdom?’

‘Well, it was certainly esoteric, as I’m the only one here.’

‘You have thought about trying to reverse the process, of course?’

‘It has been mooted. I only became aware of this last night.’

‘Well, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. We might experiment. If you were to put yourself totally in my hands, let me personally manage your career, as it were, there’s no telling what might be achieved. The potential is there, have you considered just what you might do with it?’

I shrugged in a casual manner. ‘Aid mankind, end wars, feed the hungry, that kind of thing.’

‘Hm,’ went my uncle, thoughtfully. He looked unconvinced.

‘Is that not a happening thing?’

My uncle shrugged, even more casually than I had. ‘Perhaps a tad ambitious,’ he said, ‘something you could work up to.’

‘My thoughts entirely.’

‘Ah,’ said my uncle. ‘Go on.’

‘Show business,’ I said. ‘I’ve always fancied show business.’ ‘Yes,’ said my uncle. ‘Show business, right.’

‘That’s why I really came to you.

‘What?’ went my uncle. ‘Not for all the esoteric wisdom?’

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I recognized you in The Flying Swan, you were the mystery contestant on talent night. I want you to teach me how to do those back flips.’