Supreme Comprehension

There’s this scientific concept where some things are too large or too horrible for a brain to fully comprehend. I first heard this in conjunction with the brain teaser that a piece of paper folded 42 times will reach the moon. Our brains can’t actually process that data. It can’t imagine a piece of paper being folded ever getting that tall. I imagine a piece of paper reaching the moon every time I think about this administration. I picture it, but I can’t actualize it. I can’t turn the picture into something physical (in the case of the paper, it’s because it’s not physically possible to fold a piece of paper that many times).

We knew it would be bad when Trump got elected. I called my mom at 2:00am the night of the election, asking her what the hell we would do. She assured me we’d be okay and that it wouldn’t be as bad as I was making it out to be. We could not fully comprehend the consequences because there were too many things to think about, that the brain couldn’t make tangible.

This could be one explanation as to why people “tune out” to certain things. We read and consume so much information that our brain can only comprehend so much of it. And the horrible things people are going through we can picture, and we know they are logically true, but we can’t actualize the concept. 

The kids in Parkland have lost the news long ago, yet we never really comprehended their pain because it was something too horrible. We see things like the number of people killed by guns (33,000 a year) and can’t imagine that many people dead. We can’t see a stadium of people who have been shot, because the number is far too big that our brains can’t actualize it.

We can’t actually keep a mental record of the Trump Administration, because it’s too great. There are too many consequences to the election. I think about this supreme court nominee, and I know that logically it’s bad. I know that the person Trump nominated does not want me to exist or walk freely as a queer person, or a person with a uterus. But I genuinely cannot comprehend what that could mean in the coming years and decades. Can you think to what’s going to happen decades from now? Because decades from now, Trump’s appointees will still be there.

Isn’t that terrifying? These people will be able to strip away rights for decades, because of one bad mistake made in 2016. Can you actually comprehend the damage that could do on our country, to minorities and working families? Can you imagine a piece of paper being folded 42 times and touching the moon?