Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently

by Beau Lotto

The great Czech writer Milan Kundera’s first novel, The Joke, is a perfect—and perfectly layered—example of just this. The central character is a young man named Ludvik who makes a joke that turns out to be the wrong one for communist Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, a time in which “fun went over badly.”61 He writes a postcard to a girl he has a crush on, who he doesn’t feel appreciates him. It reads: “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!” She shares his subversive missive with the authorities and this horribly recasts his future, causing him to commit a cruel deed many years later. But at the book’s end, a matured Ludvik reflects on his past, arriving at a deterministic—and perhaps convenient—conclusion. He decides that the effect of the joke he made, as well as other seemingly harmless acts, are the result of historical forces beyond human control (a clear argument against free will): “I suddenly had the feeling that one’s destiny is often complete long before death.”