Perception: The Importance of the Illusion

How is it that we have become so deluded into thinking truth is more valuable than illusion?  We say that we want the truth as if we would take it gladly over the illusion but it is not as cut and dry as some would have you believe.  Just because cod liver oil may be more beneficial to your health than a shot of tequila does not mean a person will choose what is healthy.

Think about courting and relationships.  Think about all the energy we put into our perception.  We hold certain things back to maintain our perception, our illusion we are putting forth to be accepted.  You get a girl’s phone number and you wait a few days before calling to avoid being perceived as desperate.  Already your perception has become more valuable than the truth, because the truth may be that you ARE desperate; desperate for that person’s affections and attention.  We may not admit it but many of us would love for someone to desire us, and to desperately covet a deep connection to us.  Seeing such a desire in another person gives us a feeling of being special, of having some sort of importance to other people.  Our egos thrive on such ideas.  But somewhere along the lines we have denied those desires.  We have decided that we are not to be admired, desired or loved until we deem it appropriate.

And so, like all other human expression, love becomes systemic.  We try to build intrigue, sex appeal, intimate connection and even love with this mundane, familiar system and the second one strays from these preconceived steps we have labels for these perceptions.  If one moves too quickly we have creeps or stalkers.  If one moves too slowly we have those who are “afraid of commitment.”  Since moving quickly or slowly is relative to different viewers, the excess or lack of speed exists only in perception.  

Disclaimer: This is not to say that stalkers, creeps or those who are afraid of commitment do not exist.  I am merely saying that it is a perception more so than a reality.

Lets take the concept of cheating.  Infidelity is the number one cause of divorce in the United States.  Why is this problem so pervasive?  In order to understand cheating you have to first understand what goes into it.  Cheating above all things displays a lack of communication between partners.  A big road block of healthy communication is one person’s inability to handle truth and where one cannot handle truth, an illusion will be put forth to prevent a disconnection.  Some people view the connection between two people as more valuable than telling the truth all the time.  The truth may be that, one isn’t showing the other attention, the sex is boring, or that one partner for the rest of one’s life is too much to ask at this point.  These truths cannot always be communicated because when presented to someone who is unprepared for it, it could lead to disconnection.  

In a relationship what is important?  Is it the feelings and ideas shared between one another, the feelings of love and intimacy or is it the fact that the other person only had sex with you?  Believe it or not, just because one cheats does not mean they do not love you.  The only thing it means that the truth cannot be properly communicated, whether it comes from one’s lack of courage to admit the truth or the other’s lack of ability to handle and value the truth.  Before we walk away from someone who hasn’t been “faithful” can we evaluate what is important in the relationship?  Can we value the feelings we felt for a person?  Does a lie make you unfeel those feelings?  What is more important, perception or truth?  Would you be more happy if the person always wanted to cheat but didn’t?  Would you stay with a person who legitimately wanted to have sex with other people?  Is it possible to suspend your perceptions and allow someone to love you passionately and desperately?  

This piece is not intended for people to read and make some sort of life altering change in their lives.  I just want to increase awareness that the truth is not always more valuable than the illusion.  Don’t be one of those people who claims to always want the truth but runs from it whenever it is near.  You can measure the strength of an individual by how much of the truth they can handle but nobody is all powerful.

@anarchyofthemind

You’re wilding out, bro.  But I appreciate the lulz.

I write like Dan Brown

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“
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Ira Glass (via smut-to-go)

(Source: nancylicious)

(Reblogged from loveyourchaos)

'The Egg' by Andy Weir

  • You were on your way home when you died.
  • It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
  • And that’s when you met me.
  • “What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
  • “You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
  • “There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
  • “Yup,” I said.
  • “I… I died?”
  • “Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
  • You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
  • “More or less,” I said.
  • “Are you god?” You asked.
  • “Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
  • “My kids… my wife,” you said.
  • “What about them?”
  • “Will they be all right?”
  • “That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
  • You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
  • “Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
  • “Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
  • “Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
  • “Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
  • “All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
  • You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
  • “Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
  • “So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
  • “Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
  • I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
  • “You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
  • “How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
  • “Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
  • “Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
  • “Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
  • “Where you come from?” You said.
  • “Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
  • “Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
  • “Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
  • “So what’s the point of it all?”
  • “Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
  • “Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
  • I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
  • “You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
  • “No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
  • “Just me? What about everyone else?”
  • “There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
  • You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
  • “All you. Different incarnations of you.”
  • “Wait. I’m everyone!?”
  • “Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
  • “I’m every human being who ever lived?”
  • “Or who will ever live, yes.”
  • “I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
  • “And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
  • “I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
  • “And you’re the millions he killed.”
  • “I’m Jesus?”
  • “And you’re everyone who followed him.”
  • You fell silent.
  • “Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
  • You thought for a long time.
  • “Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
  • “Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
  • “Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
  • “No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
  • “So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
  • “An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
  • And I sent you on your way.

humanpoetry asked: What goes on in your mind and how does it work?

Volatile chemical and spiritual reactions occurring without my conscious knowing and my desires to understand those reactions are reflected in my writing and my music.

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"An ocean without a Shore...": Chronicles of Brevity: Facebook

feralnostalgia:

theironlion:

The power of networking is nothing to be taken lightly. The information age definitely has lubricated the networking process simply by making individuals more available. I believe each network has its place but no network has managed to do what facebook has in the last ten years.

I’ve had some very intriguing philosophical conversations on facebook.  is tumblr not really interacting because we aren’t doing it in person?  what about snail-mail letters?  interaction via new media isn’t necessarily any less real than before.  maybe the ease of use puts people off (as ever, we’re inclined to assign value to things through their relative scarcity…if communication is suddenly cheap, it’s less valuable), but that doesn’t mean what’s happening is automatically inferior to its analog equivalent.

I’ve assumed that insistence on old fashioned methods of communication was a technophobic thing, or some function of resistance to change, but I wonder how much of it may actually be related to the abundance = devaluation thing?

Maybe I was unclear, but IM’s of course count as real interactions as do emails.  My point was that status updates and comments don’t really connect you to anything.

(Reblogged from feralnostalgia)

Chronicles of Brevity: Facebook

The power of networking is nothing to be taken lightly.  The information age definitely has lubricated the networking process simply by making individuals more available.  I believe each network has its place but no network has managed to do what facebook has in the last ten years.

Facebook is so pervasive that people are often gawked at for not having an account.  It has become a large part of our interaction with other human beings and has changed the way socializing works.  A key talking point when marketing a new cell phone is its ability to connect you to facebook and other networks.  We are told to “stay connected” to what is going on in our circles by always having facebook available but in actuality no connection is ever really made on facebook.

Barring its instant messaging ability facebook does not really inform you of what is going on in a given “friend’s” life.  Apart from seeing what song he or she is listening to or what small goal they have in mind for the day, you’re not really going to get much insight on a person’s life. 

For example.  If you see someone post something like “Life is so loathesome.  I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” you have reason to believe a couple of things about this post.

  1. The person is not really depressed and doing this for attention, because someone who is truly downtrodden would not seek the sympathy comments that will follow.  This will be confirmed if you see “thanks for the kind comments, guys!  I needed it!” in future statuses.
  2. If the person is feeling depressed they’re telling the wrong people about it.

This is true because nothing real ever happens on facebook.  The only way to truly connect with an individual is to actually contact them.  Comments are usually just a weak currency of attention.

Here’s a second example.  My birthday is today.  I log onto facebook and see forty happy birthday posts on my wall. 

What has happened here?  Nothing. 

Most of the people who wished you a happy birthday were only reminded to do so because of facebook’s convenient birthday reminder feature.  There’s nothing wrong with using this functionality to remember your friend’s birthdays, (I use it all the time) but when you combine that feature with an obligatory happy birthday post things become a little murky.  Am I to feel like these people actually cared to wish me a happy birthday?  Its too hard to say. 

I told a friend that if I got a bunch of happy birthday posts on my wall I’m not going to post the traditional “thanks for all the birthday wishes” status thereafter.  I told him that I would only thank those who made an effort to contact me either through email, telephone or instant message (and those who put effort into their wall posts).  That way everyone who deserved to be thanked would be thanked and those who were just doing their birthday rounds would be forced to contact me if they’re seeking acknowledgement.  

Now you may say I’m looking to far into this, and believe me a lot of people have told me I am, but allow me to finish my thought.  If I don’t post a “thank you for the birthday wishes” status what is going to happen?  Is someone going to feel unappreciated and call me to give me a piece of their mind?  How crazy would they look for doing that?  And on the other hand, how many people who didn’t care to call, IM, text or email are going to be paying that much attention to my statuses to even notice that I didn’t do the thank you post?  The answer is zero.  And that is so because nothing real ever happens on facebook.  That is the reality. 

People are getting into fights, relationships are becoming rocky, and every 30 seconds an argument is occurring over facebook.  Facebook can only allow you to connect superficially to a large amount of people.  Connect too deeply to the superficial and it allows for petty, shallow confrontations with people who may not even matter to you.

Networking is one of the most powerful things in life.  It is more important that you make quality connections rather than a large quantity of comments, and likes.

This is a more in depth look at something I began in a piece I wrote called A Generation of Brevity.  Read here if you’re interested on the background.

http://theironlion.tumblr.com/post/974245867/a-generation-of-brevity