The City & the City by China Miéville: Seeing What We've Been Taught to Unsee

In this episode, we explore The City & the City by China Miéville as a powerful metaphor for cognitive blind spots, social conditioning, and spiritual perception. Drawing on Miéville’s layered, dual-city setting—where citizens are trained to “unsee” an overlapping world—we reflect on what it means to overlook not just people and places, but also inner experiences, spiritual insights, and hidden possibilities.

Using the novel as a lens, we talk about religious experience, social breach, the boundaries of acceptable belief, and the psychological costs of seeing too much. We connect these ideas with contemplative practice, direct experience, and what it might take to re-map not just the world around us, but also the worlds within us.

Episode Highlights

[00:00:49] Awakening to the Unseen

• Jeff and Michael explore uncanny, synchronistic experiences that seem miraculous in the moment but quickly fade into the background of daily life. They discuss the human brain’s tendency to edit out anomalies that challenge societal norms, likening these moments to dreams that vanish upon waking. They introduce the metaphor of “unseeing” and begin discussing the novel The City and the City by China Miéville, which illustrates how perception can be shaped—and limited—by conditioning.

[00:16:40] The Blind Spot: Fiction as Mirror

• They delve deeper into the metaphor from Miéville’s novel, focusing on the internal experience of the protagonist and how individuals are conditioned to ignore—"unsee"—entire layers of reality. This leads to reflections on the psychological and social threats of “breach,” or stepping outside prescribed norms, and how these threats inhibit spiritual or existential transformation. The conversation expands to consider how these cognitive maps affect both societal structures and personal identity.

[00:27:29] Seeing Beyond Perception

• Jeff and Michael question whether the extreme cognitive blind spots depicted in the novel could exist in real life. They explore historical and anecdotal examples, such as the "invisible ships" story and mass UFO sightings, to suggest that human perception is indeed limited and malleable. They discuss “blindsight,” a neurological phenomenon where people can respond to visual stimuli without consciously seeing them, highlighting how we might unconsciously perceive far more than we acknowledge.

[00:35:05] Spatial Resistance and Reclaiming Reality

• Michael brings in The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and the French Situationists, tying in real-world attempts to resist psychological and spatial confinement. They describe how these thinkers used practices like aimless city wandering to reclaim unseen or abandoned spaces. The conversation shifts toward Occupy Wall Street and how these urban, cultural interventions opened up not just physical but inner freedom. They suggest that exploring hidden cityscapes can mirror breaking free of mental constraints.

[00:44:35] The Third City: Mapping the Possible

• They introduce the concept of a third, mythical city—“Orciny”—from Miéville’s novel as a metaphor for hidden potentiality. This city might not be entirely real or imaginary, but it represents possibility itself. They connect this to spiritual traditions like Christianity, where concepts like the Kingdom of Heaven exist both within and without. This third place exists not as a utopia we reach but as a reality we uncover through inner and outer transformation.

[01:00:01] From Unseeing to Collective Vision

• The episode closes with reflections on how spiritual practice can train us to perceive what we have been conditioned to ignore. Jeff and Michael share personal experiences—like wandering city streets in contemplative states or encountering the inexplicable—and note how even profound memories can fade from awareness. They ask how to move from personal awakening to collective transformation, calling on listeners to share their own experiences and join a community of seekers exploring new spiritual frontiers.

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