How Trees Relate to West Wing

In Present Shock, Douglas Rushkoff, an acclaimed media theorist, describes how society is slowly becoming disoriented due to the reality are faced with “in the moment.” He asserts that present shock, this state of disorientation, manifests itself in five primary ways: the collapse of narrative, “digiphrenia,” “overwinding,” “fractalnoia,” and “apocalpyto.” The concept of fractalnoia in particular provides an unprecedented link to the episode of West Wing: Isaac and Ishmael. In this episode, which serves an allegory to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, a visiting group of honor students are locked down in the White House due to an internal terrorist threat. During the lockdown, the White House staff members, through discussion, teach the students about terrorist motives and goals, therefore serving as an educational episode to the audience viewing the West Wing in the real world where the events of 9/11 actually did occur.

As detailed by Rushkoff, fractalnoia is when “we engage by relating one thing to another, even when the relationships are forced or imagined.” Recalling a past unit in mathematics, I know that fractals are the collectives of geometric shapes upon geometric shapes formed by recursive equations. Rushkoff offers a similar definition, which does little to bring clarity to the meaning of a fractal. As a result, this remains a rather fuzzy concept for the remainder of the book. This vagueness prompted me to investigate the matter a bit further and led me to conclude that the easiest way to describe a fractal is by looking at the image of one:

The basic tree is therefore an ideal representation of a fractal. The repeating geometric shape in this image could best be described as ‘Y’ – by looking closely enough we see that Y’s upon Y’s forms the entirety of the tree. Rushkoff then argues that fractalnoia arises when we attempt to connect everything to something else, no matter how ridiculous the link. This obsession, in my opinion, is simply a metaphor for the human goal of adding comprehensible meaning to everything. In The End of Education, Neil Postman asserts that the worn-out ‘gods’ of Economic Utility and Consumership provide false meaning in the education of schoolchildren today. Postman would then most likely agree with Rushkoff in the sense that those who cling to these irrelevant narratives are fractalnoids in that they desperately link education to getting a good job and being able to purchase lots of material goods. But these connections are simply imagined, because in the competitive society of today these covenants are no longer realistic.

This concept of the fractal can be taken further in application to the episode of West Wing: Isaac and Ishmael. A White House staff member, Josh Lyman, suggests that the children “accept more than that one idea, [because] it makes them crazy.” Lyman refers directly to the terrorists who he believes come from a very singular culture, not open to connecting to various ideas. In contrast, Lyman advises the children to expand their mindsets and to relate to more than one notion, complicating the fractal that is their identity. As a result, the plethora of connections on the individual’s part will render a pluralist society, spiting those cultures instead focused on single chains of ideas.

Works Cited

"Isaac and Ishmael." The West Wing. N.d. Television.

Postman, Neil. The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School. N.p.: Vintage, 1996. Print.

Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Current, 2013. Print.