The Kipple

The science fiction author Philip K. Dick wrote about something he called “the kipple.” He describes it as the tendency fo junk to accumulate and propagate itself, like a force of physics. He wrote of things like junk mail or gum wrappers, the kind of litter that just tends to accumulate and conquer space despite semiserious efforts to combat it. Like gravity or aging, it’s something you can perhaps slow or stall for a time, but it will ultimately win out. Like the expansion of the universe in the wake of the Big Bang, its advance is inexorable.

Dick suffered from schizophrenia, a mental state characterized by ego collapse. The walls constructed so as to constitute the “self” crumble away, leaving the mind vulnerable to rapid and debilitating accumulations of material that an intact ego might otherwise ward off. Lord knows what kind of “kipple” Dick let accumulate in his waking life. His life was one of chaos, fueled by amphetamines that stripped him of sleep.

But perhaps his understanding of this concept relates to his keen eye for pattern continuation. What some might see as the striking “prophecy” in his writing is really obsessive extrapolation of trends and movements. These may be arrested for a time but the forward movement remains the same. The stone ball in Minority Report rolls toward the edge of the table. A character stops it from falling off. Says the future cop who arrests murderers before they commit murder, “The fact that you stopped it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen.”

One thing grows, and one thing shrinks. One force grows stronger, and the other fades and dies. Movement is constant, and as Dick often illustrated in his work, perceived stasis or detente is an inability to see on a broad enough time scale. A failure of imagination.