Thainen kept talking about various theories explaining what’s really going on in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which prompted the emergence of this one as a long lecture with questions answered along the way and input incorporated into the concept, delivered at the wheel while driving around the city. Might as well write it down.
It only makes any kind of sense to talk about “what’s really going on” if we assume that the text is a more or less faithful eyewitness account of what actually happened, or has, at least, been observed by someone. Without that assumption, literary criticism is rather pointless. However, if we try to treat the Haruhi novels this way, we are faced with numerous problems — they contain various inconsistencies, which either force us to assume that Kyon is an unreliable narrator, which doesn’t really follow from the text itself, or need to be explained away in numerous convoluted plotlines which involve doubting things said by Kyon or other characters.
Meanwhile, the novels were obviously not meant for this sort of scrutiny. They aren’t really deeply intellectual and pose few complex philosophical questions, instead, relying on emotion to drive the point home. This would leave the theory that nothing is really going on a prime contender, however, that would be boring.
Instead, let me describe again what a youkai is, this time in English…
Let’s start with that I use the word ‘youkai’ because I plan to exploit it as a scientific term. I do not mean the mystical creatures that the Japanese call youkai but rather, a specific class of persons,1 which can only be distinguished securely from humans by the way they develop. If we define ‘humans’ as ‘bipedal primates‘, youkai will be human too, and will participate noticeably in all forms of human activity, however, they can be readily distinguished from other ‘humans’, hence the need for a specific term.
Imagine the entirety of material world. Failing that,2 just assume it exists. It consists of individual atoms, quarks, quanta and other subdivisions described so well in conventional physics.
However, “human reality”, the subjective world every single human builds, consists not of these things, but of objects, which are assumed to exist in specific relationships to each other. While every human has their own, because essentially it exists only as an interpretation of physical reality in their heads, humans are capable of communication, interpersonal relationship, and in general, each such model posesses a certain predictive power, without which all these things would be impossible. The individual entities within this model are not atoms, but objects, which have properties, and correspond to various assemblies of real atoms. Artificial intelligence seeks to recreate such a representation which every individual human has. One interesting property of such a model is that not all such objects correspond to actual physical objects3 and in fact, quite a lot do not. These commonly end up more important than ones that do.
Every such model is inherently subjective. However, major parts of such model are shared among the majority of people that live, added onto by generations, and preserved as human culture, in a state called intersubjectivity. The intersubjectivity allows humans to interact, coexist and work together, and thus the requirement of acceptance in “human world” is, in IT terms, sharing the code that makes it work. This collection of assumptions about reality, in essence, is the “human world”.
It is extended by specific professional, national, social realities, which are seen from outside as if they were black boxes, with given input, output, and complete unknown inside, only visible by insiders, however, being institutionalised, they are accepted by human reality to exist. Even when they are treated like voodoo and black magic, like computers or physics often are, they are not doubted, and even when they are in conflict, they are still accepted by humans at large and the practitioners themselves as real.
There’s one important quality that “human world” has, and that is the fact that it does not encompass the entirety of all physical entities, let alone all the feasible and useful4 virtual entities that may exist or already exist. It is inherently incomplete, because the capacity of human brain is finite, even if very large. This we shall call the “Otherside”, a large mass of objects which, while not being exploited or accepted as real by humans, are still grounded in material reality and in some roundabout way exist.
The “human world” is not something that is inborn to all persons. In fact, it is continually shifting, developing and altering, and it is learned and internalised by everyone in the process of socialization. The human reality is consensual, built on joint acceptance of those assumptions and models, and is but one of the myriad possible ways to see the worls. This process of learning and readjusting to the shifing “human world” never stops, and continues throughout life, however, it comes in a few stages, symbolically marked in various cultures with initiation rituals, whether marked and understood as such or not.
It follows that the complete acceptance of the common base that allows everyone to coexist at all, the “human world”, is not universal either. Initiation rituals commonly involve the concept of ritual rebirth as a true member of a specific culture. However, not everybody will be reborn as human. Numerous reasons, most of them tied to psychological trauma,5 may cause inability to accept the “human world” and growth in a completely different direction. In essence, a person is reborn not as a human, but as something entirely different.
Each individual human shares a core of very basic assumptions, skills, and those who cannot share them, cannot coexist with humans and will be branded psychotic and incarcerated, which is the normal way humans deal with disruptive elements. While only those who are completely incapable of interaction with humans are branded psychotic, most of those who are not reborn as humans will grow into youkai.
A youkai shares enough of “human world” with humans to coexist with them, however, while humans develop complex low-level neural structures to process common tasks,6 a youkai might not have such low-level neural structures, or may have developed them very differently. However, this does not invariably mean that youkai are in some way disabled7 — they are very literally ‘differently abled’8 — their personal model of the world contains, beyond the normal assumptions of “human world”, a different set, which the “human world” doesn’t encompass.
That different set of beliefs, assumptions and practices is interesting in the way that despite not matching the “human world”, it actually describes objects that are still grounded in material reality, and still have the predictive and explanatory power commonly thought to be reserved to the “human world” and things it accepts as real. While a psychotic simply believes in something that cannot be practically used, and is psychotic specifically because of that, a youkai believes, and is possibly neuromechanically equipped to use, things that normal people cannot use and do not believe.
A youkai has a “human form”, something that is perceptible by others as a normal human, but beyond the objects described by human reality also interacts with other objects which are “anomalously real” — frequently imperceptible by humans at all, but real for this particular youkai, usable meaningfully by this particular youkai, and most importantly, capable of affecting even normal humans as long as that youkai is physically or conceptually present. The ways it can manifest are myriad, just as the “Otherside” is much bigger than “human world”, but the most common would be things that appear to affect probability of events normally considered improbable. While the probability of a die rolling 6 for fifty consecutive rolls is seen in “human world” as improbable, statistically it is just as probable as any other set of fifty consecutive rolls. Various abilities and ways of thinking available to youkai through the virtue of their different world view and internal model of such may be perceived as extrasensory or otherwise mystical, while still not being such in a sense that they don’t really break the laws of physics and don’t even bend them.9 They may appear as completely fantastic while not actually being so, because the perceptual abilities available to the bipedal primates are physically limited and may be affected in numerous ways.
A single youkai, however, is still fundamentally a bipedal primate, and has a finite brain capacity. As such, he is not capable of seeing the entirety of the “Otherside”, just as a human is not capable of acting upon all the professional realities he acknowledges to exist. Youkai are commonly deeply troubled by this, either perceiving themselves as disabled, or the world itself as broken. Since youkai are rather rare10 and similar youkai are not very common either, being a youkai is not particularly easy.
Any youkai, however, has a unique niche in the society, which may take years to find or which might not be found at all, that of enriching the “human world” by parts of the “Otherside” that he can perceive and introduce into human reality for general consumption. This is further facilitated when youkai actually manage to meet, which, with modern communication technologies, is much easier than before.11 It is possible for youkai with very different, but fundamentally compatible worldviews (”youkai worlds”) to join into a social structure, and frequently, these structures crystallize around a single youkai, which, while otherwise possibly appearing a normal human, accepts the reality of their youkai worlds just like a human accepts the reality and practical use of professional realities of science and technology.
With me so far? Here’s how it all maps onto Haruhi Suzumiya.
Haruhi Suzumiya is a youkai of such catalytic type, her worldview, while still grounded in reality, accepts the reality of aliens, time travelers, espers, — or what appears to her as such — as an unshakable truth. It is very possible that Haruhi herself requires reassurance for this worldview to flourish and to leave her “human form”, which Kyon readily provides, willingly or unwillingly, whether being a youkai himself or not. Other principal characters of the novels are other types of youkai, whom the ability of Haruhi to believe all that reassures of their own viability and allows to fully manifest.
As a result, everything that is described in the novels does exist for the characters, and is not merely fiction for them, because it translates to practical real world events, abilities and actions. The characters actually experience everything Kyon describes in first person, and so do the non-youkai innocent bystanders. It can be safely said that Koizumi actually understands, in yet another roundabout way, the theory described above, and actively uses it’s theses to support his own non-human world view, and by extension, those of the other characters. It’s an illusion, which is nevertheless very, very real, just as money is real for everyone else.
However, less of it is real in the sense of physical science — material — than you would think, and individual “youkai worlds” do not have the unshakability of “human world”, which is not only grounded in reality, but also grounded in mutual acceptance by the majority of humans. All the inconsistencies that result are ignored by the characters because their own views of self and the world are still not firmly set.
In a not so distant future, this may well result in Haruhi making major contributions to human culture,12 or may not result in anything, however, the drama and comedy we see in the text are those of youkai getting to grips with the world they actually live in, and the fantastic events are a glimpse into their personal worldviews, as reflected onto others.
Whew.
- By which term I will from here on designate everyone, all those who can speak and think, whether they call themselves human or not.↩
- Most people can’t seriously imagine infinity, and I wouldn’t consider this a handicap really↩
- For example, money, especially fiat money, are quite virtual.↩
- That is, those that posess predictive power and can be used for meaningful structuring of physical entities.↩
- But there are numerous others, from genetic predisposition to brain damage.↩
- For example, facial recognition, a well-studied area.↩
- Although some are.↩
- I’d be damned if I ever use political correctness, but here these words has real meaning.↩
- The biggest achievement of physical science is the knowledge of laws of the material world that will always result in very specific predictions when the situation is rigorously controlled. However, real world situations are rarely, almost never in fact, controlled quite as rigorously.↩
- Commonly, no more than one child in fifty results a youkai.↩
- It can also produce a highly malicious behavioral antipattern called a ‘metaphorical hole’, which I will describe some other time, since it’s a lecture just about as long as this one.↩
- See, for example, book 8, where she starts on this path herself and actually drives most of the school to participate.↩
6 Comments
I don’t get it. I understand the concept of youkais, but how does that bear with the sightings of all of these paranormal events in “MHS”? Take, for instance, the world-changing phenomenon from the fourth book. Have it occured only inside the youkai quintet’s minds? If so, then how it’s that all the other people were acting different through these four days when the world was all omgwtf’s? Imagine Kyon asking somebody, be it Taniguchi or whoever, does the Haruhi girl study in this school anymore; what would Taniguchi remember of this? He’s not youkai, so his world projection should not have been altered much from the “normal” people POV. So I guess the only option is that he answers “Haruhi’s here, sitting right behind you”, but Kyon ignores that and fantasizes about Haruhi being gone.
But then that means that world view inside of the Kyon’s head lives it’s own life and does not relate to the “real” world anymore. Two things matter: this “inside world” is different, first, and consistent, second. This means no action from the inside or the outside can possibly bring this imaginary world down, leaving Kyon to deal with the “real” one. It’s always there.
But in this case what’s the point of having that “real world” abstraction? We, looking at the story through Kyon’s eyes, can only define “real” world as the world we see around us; in Kyon’s case it’s the “altered” world with aliens et cetera. One can suggest the concept of some other “real” or “unaltered” world behind the curtains of altered one, but since there are no methods of proving or deflating this hypothesis, it’s the same as with the idea that our whole world is running on a simulation computer in some “outside” world - be it true or not, this means nothing to us.
Not “only inside” but at least partially within their minds, yes. Like every action occurs partially in physical reality and partially in human minds — if I show you a red ID book and tell you it’s government ID, in your mind it will look like it is, and it may be so in my own, too, while in fact it can be just an SRR membership card. Physical actions that objectively happen may have wildly different meanings and interpretations depending on the point of view and the way a particular youkai’s world works. Take for example the incident with a student I described earlier. I did not remember that student, and I did not receive her email with a written work. A bureaucratic screwup caused her to be missing from the student list. And yet she remembered visiting my lectures, sending me an email, and seeing her name on that list. I sorted this out later, but it was too late.
To an outside observer, this incident with Taniguchi would be simply Taniguchi mishearing the name while he was thinking about something else completely and answering not that “Haruhi is here right behind you” but something he felt at the moment was the right answer to a question he actually heard. This is a highly simplistic explanation, naturally, in practice, youkai can cause a much more complex mess just by not acting according to normal social assumptions.
The key point here is that there is some ‘real world’, something physical that actually happens, but multiple ‘observable worlds’ that assign meaning and attributes to these events, and result in different conclusions by the participants.
Like, assume that you see a chessboard with chess pieces on it. Their positions are objective, both players see both black and white pieces. But they can’t stop each other from making moves however they see fit, and play according to a set of chess rules in their heads. If both players are human, they are, essentially, both playing chess, and their ability to win is determined by how well they plan their further actions, limited by the moves allowed in chess.
Youkai, on the other hand, see the exact same board, but with extra off-map squares, have invisible pieces in their heads that move according to some other kind of rules, or even simply play checkers instead with those same pieces, against those same human players who still think about the board as if their opponent is also playing chess.
Even if you think the chessboard is larger than 64 cells, you can’t actually use these additional cells. You can make unreasonable moves based on the wrong assumption about the number of cells, but in the end all of these moves must be within the real world’s constraints.
Still, I accept this explanation. I’d say it’s too much of a coincidence having all of the people around Kyon randomly saying something that can be interpreted in a way that complies with the Kyon’s world perception, but well, let’s say it’s possible.
But the thing that’s unclear to me still remains unclear: what’s the point of having this youkai hypothesis in a world where we can’t check what’s “real”?
I mean, “the explanation” or “the theory” is something what connects the known facts together, allowing us to predict to the certain extent what will happen next. This is exactly how do we check the hypothesis: we predict what will happen next, then wait for it to happen and if it’s like in our prediction, then the theory have been proved true - for a moment. If the evidence contradicts the theory, then the theory needs to be adjusted or even replaced altogether to include new evidences.
The concept of youkais works well in theory, but look at it from the point of view of the observer. By definition, youkai is somebody, whose perception of the world is significantly different from the perception of the majority of people.
It’s all good and clear while we’re talking about subjective things such as being good or bad, beautiful or ugly. The youkai himself could easily check on the other people’s tastes or opinions and decide “OK, I’m the minority so I’m youkai”.
But once we enter the realm of physical matters, it’s not that easy anymore. How can youkai determine if he’s youkai or not? He can’t, because in his youkai world his world perception is the one which everybody shares. From his youkai point of view he’s not youkai, but rather a normal human; instead, he considers some other people youkais - maybe those, who have the most incompatible world perception for him.
So, for every youkai he’s the normal one, and the youkai ones are his most incompatible neighbours. Like this, we can’t really define who’s youkai and who’s not, because being youkai is already subjective thing. That in turn is because the perception of the majority’s world views is subjective by itself.
You’ll say there are objective world and objective youkais, and this seems like a reasonable statement until we realize there are no objective things in this world. Why is that?
Well, take Kyon, for example. Let’s say he’s youkai, and the “real world” does not contain any of the aliens et cetera phenomena. Now, what does this matter to Kyon? His senses tell him there are aliens, his mind is acting like there are aliens, he’s experiencing everything like there were aliens, so how comes this is not the “real world”? How could we know if this is the real world or just the distorted perception of some other world? What’s the difference between these two cases?
In other words, which evidence could we possibly check for compliance with our theory?
Lol, the avatar is not mine. Also OpenID does not work for whatever reason.
Normal people think that the chessboard is limited by the black line around the standard 8×8 field. Youkai think that the wide borders with those funny letters on them are just a few more black squares, or that rooks also move like knights when they feel like it. There’s no judge to decide which move is legal, just the board and the pieces, while the rules and winning conditions are a product of agreement which youkai haven’t signed up for.
A youkai can readily determine whether he is a youkai or not, this starts as soon as he tries to communicate his experiences, and finds that it may glaringly mismatch what people see. That is how youkai know they’re different at all, actually, this is why they are commonly unhappy with their lot. A youkai may assume that everyone shares this world perception, people have ways of convincing him of the contrary.
Physics, however, is a more complex matter. Ordinary physics states that at given conditions X, Y must happen inevitably. The problem is that given conditions X are often laboratory conditions which don’t really exist in a real world. For example, one youkai claimed to be able to originate a cellphone call in a basement where the tower signal normally can’t reach. Normally. What probably happened is that the peculiarities of radio signal propagation, which, at cellphone frequencies, may depend on a myriad unknown factors, from weather to the way a crane at the building site a kilometer away was turned at the time, flashed the signal in for long enough to make the call — it doesn’t need that much conductive surface to reflect from. To an outside observer, an objective event (cellphone call) that is normally considered impossible, has happened. To a youkai, he willed that call into happening without knowing how. To an unreachable objective observer, it’s a complex coincidence with a probability that is very hard to calculate, and would a rigorous experiment be arranged, a youkai wouldn’t be able to replicate the effect.
While that objective observer does not really exist, mentally this position is reachable, even though it takes more time and effort to prove it’s truth than can be reasonably spared in all cases where youkai are involved.
Similarly, to Kyon it does not matter at all. To his mind, aliens and time travelers and espers exist, and this is how he sees that ‘real world’. Should, however, he manage to set up a rigorously controlled experiment where he would attempt to acquire positive, presentable proof of such, sufficiently strong to overturn a determined skeptic, he would fail, because what objectively happens is not what he thinks does — it just behaves exactly as what he thinks it is would, with discrepancies low enough to be ignored. Being, apparently, a kind of a youkai himself, however, he does not see the need to doubt and does not doubt — life is just as possible and practical for him as if what he sees really are aliens, espers and time travelers.
Evidence we could possibly check for compliance with this theory is impossible in a narrative retelling of the events until Kyon actively doubts and starts offering alternative explanations to the events, more in agreement with the general consensus, which he is reluctant to do. If we were to be present at the scene ourselves, we would not have problems finding such evidence, but Kyon and company would disregard it readily.
P.S. Relogin the OpenID? It started killing cookies for some reason.
So you do limit the youkai “perception” thing to the subjective matters. Makes sense. If I got it right, then it’s like that: youkai invents the explanation for what he sees based on his assumptions about the real world. So when Kyon hears Taniguchi saying “Haruhi ga inai”, he assumes Haruhi to be gone rather than just ill or visiting the restroom. But theoretically it’s possible to force things clear so that Kyon ends up realising he’s mistaken (and readjusting his world views).
It nevertheless seems unrealistic to me that things could develop to the point of Asakura/Nagato battles or hidden dimensions without Kyon noticing something’s not right with the world, but well… it’s all dirty sci-fi anyways, it’s not like it’s too realistic the other way I guess ;)
I’ll include this hypothesis, if it’s all right with you, but since I’m not too sure if I’m getting this right, it’d be good if you could write a short description in a paragraph or two and list the things you consider to be primary proofs for this hypothesis. I’ll link it to this page for more details.
p.s. “We were unable to authenticate your OpenID”. Cleared cookies, no changes.
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