Awakening from The Dream

It seems like the more people I talk to, the more I find myself on the receiving end of conversations about just how much we're changing as Americans.  Our cultural values seem to be sitting on a precarious fence at the moment, as the catalyst for cultural awareness rests upon the exponentially increasing rate at which we share and disseminate information.

In other words, strap yourselves in for a ride.   Social turmoil and turbulence is pretty much inevitable as the general population becomes more aware of how government, corporations and financial systems collude together to find better ways of fucking John Q. Public.  Thanks Internet!  No really, thanks. 

But not to worry.  In the meantime, we're getting quite good at entertaining ourselves and rationalizing the social cost of extreme wealth because of a fervent and patriotic belief that there is a particular kind of happiness and contentment that can only brought about by the ability to own a yacht with a helicopter pad.  

That happens in a down economy.  Without jobs and without expendable income, people have a lot more time to think and talk to each other.  For the past 50 years, America has been riding high on an economic bubble powered by the main culture idea that's been foisted on all of us since we were kids:  The American Dream. 

The great American Dream of creating your own destiny and making your fortune.  Sold to us on the promise that if you work hard enough, for long enough, your efforts will be rewarded by granting you a standard of living that that can provide for you and your family.  It also promised that if you worked harder and smarter than your peers, wealth could be obtained that was greater than anywhere else in the world.  Is that still the case today?  I don't think anyone can seriously answer this question without facing some stark economic facts.  

The Dream is the reason foreigners flocked to America, and it's the reason for the great sense of pride many in this country have and still continue to have today.  While politicians debate as to what constitutes "real" American values, (by claiming their own religious/political/ideological beliefs are what really set this standard), it is, ironically most often these same people who ignore the pain and suffering of what's happening to the people they supposedly represent.   

For the past 40 years or so, the terms for The Dream have changed drastically; but not all at once. Little by little, our economic and political freedoms have been slowly eroded over time by a collusion of private and pubic entities.  Even our legislators are slaves to a system that must be bolstered by vast sums of money and political influence just to retain their jobs as "representatives."

A lot of people like to take sides in this debate, arguing over if it's government's fault, the people's fault or the corporations who are to blame.  

Here's my novel position:  How about some of all the above?  Ultimately though, as Americans, we have to exercise our right to govern ourselves as we see fit and if we want things to change, most likely this change will need to happen from the ground up.  That means facing some hard truths that many still don't want to admit.  Culturally, we became fat and lazy from the economic excesses during the 80's and 90's, fueled on bad credit, a corrupt banking system, and a currency valuation policy that was a massive collective delusion.   Financing The Dream hasn't been cheap, especially when those in power placed boundless faith that profits and prosperity would only continue to rise to infinity.  The only thing that has risen exponentially is the level of wealth inequality in the past 40 years:

Wealth inequality is back to the level before The Great Depression, when Robber Baron economic policies were the law of the land, child labor was commonplace, there was no such thing as medical insurance, and 18 hour days were normal working at a wage that was barely enough to feed and clothe yourself.  Economically, we've been trending back in time where the disparity between wages and labor produced is at an all time low.  In terms of how this wealth is distributed, it's a far uglier picture.  Over 85% of the country's wealth is owned by a mere 20% of the population.  The bottom 40% of Americans...that's over 100 million people, own a fraction of one percent of the country's wealth.    

There's something drastically wrong with this picture.  Such a system of wealth distribution could only exist with a gigantic (and largely imaginary) pile of virtual capital/credit circulating around; much more than could actually be tangibly translated into gold, labor and goods.  

Did we really think this kind of system wouldn't collapse if it was left unchecked and deregulated?  Did we really think The Dream would remain equally attainable, or at least just as attainable from when the idea was first proposed?

It's actually much worse than that.  The system and network of wealth and power in this country have collectively re-written the laws so they can retain their stranglehold over the political process, and make The Dream, if it ever was attainable, even harder to access.  Furthermore, this system has ensured its continued economic survival by outspending, out-lobbying and consequently expanding economic and legal freedoms for a select few, while curtailing and limiting individual freedoms for the vast majority.  In short, if you want more freedom, specifically economic freedom, you have to pay through the nose.  

Why didn't we notice this?  Part of the explanation has to do with the length of time it took for this to occur, and some rather inconvenient truths about human nature that have been exploited.  In psychology, there is something called the dispersion or diffusion of responsibility effect, where collective responsibility becomes inherently unstable and difficult to maintain as a group gets larger, especially over longer periods of time.

Diffusion of responsibility is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when others are present. Considered a form of attribution, the individual assumes that others either are responsible for taking action or have already done so.  - Wikipedia

This effect operates not just on the individual level and group level, but on a much larger societal level.  The best example of how this happens is referred to as the Tragedy of the Commons secnario:

In economics, the tragedy of the commons is the depletion of a shared resource by individuals, acting independently and rationally according to each one's self-interest, despite their understanding that depleting the common resource is contrary to their long-term best interests. - Wikipedia

The truth is our current economic, social and political climate didn't happen over the course of one or two bad administrations; it took several decades of selfish and willfully ignorant ineptitude . Which is why the vast majority don't even acknowledge that there's a huge problem to begin with.   They've been institutionalized into a system that's forced fed the line that you have to work with what you have and there's little to nothing you can do to change it.  The few who dare to question or wonder why the system exists as it does quickly find themselves alienated as unpatriotic at best, or written off as paranoid, crazy and delusional.

The best you can do is to market your fears in a fun book format, or learn to say things really loud and angry on AM radio shows and Cable TV.  Some of us just create banal Internet distractions that help channel the public's collective sense of helplessness into something they can hopefully connect with. *wink wink*

If someone waved $20,000 a week at me to turn potentially inflammatory political writing into a zany comedy, I'd probably do it.  In other words, otherwise bright people who could change or help to motivate change in the political system find it far easier (and more profitable) to go into some other business that is inherently selfish. 

Those of you who believe in an invisible Sky God ought to pray very very hard that you never hear me at the karaoke bar.  We all seem to sell out on some level or another, don't we?  Especially after a few beers.  We're really good at two things in this country: selling out and entertaining ourselves to social, political or actual death.

We love to entertain ourselves as Americans, with dreams and fantasies on the TV, and we're highly adept at making them cheap and affordable for the public.  There is a rather large business of dream making in this country, and if you can make these dreams addictive or make people think they're only a click away, they become highly lucrative, in addition to providing a pacifying effect on the general population.  Games, movies, happy pills and TV have become the poor man's gruel, mixed with just enough X drug to keep us feeling alive, yet sedated enough to keep us from being alive.  As our standard and quality of life plummets, our technical ability to dispense massive amounts of dopamine to our own brains and pleasure centers has increased exponentially.  Gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside, doesn't it?

Many have tuned out the harsh realities of the outside world as something which is persistently annoying, and instead embrace some sort of collective delusion to keep from going mad.  They feel as if there's nothing they can do about how shitty reality is, so they might as well drug themselves (with bullshit ideas or actual drugs) with whatever means they can afford.  

It would take something on the scale of a massive social movement to bring about the change that is necessary to topple the cancerous power structures that are firmly woven into our body of laws that firmly support a status quo that entrenches inequality.  Like most cancers, it's hard to destroy without destroying some of the body itself.

We might need need to do a round or two of political chemo.  Perhaps the political equivalent of this would be dissolving the current Congress and possibly the Senate, along with certain high powered government positions.  The problem is this type of option just isn't available through our Constitution.  There's no legal precedent either, but it's one "crazy" solution that would severely disrupt external and internal negative influences of power inside our government.  I wouldn't be opposed to putting term limits on corporate CEO's (fortune 500 companies) if Citizens United is going to be the law of the land.  At this point, we should be putting all options on the table just to brainstorm.     

If we're going to claim that our way of life really is the best in the world, and our great experiment in democracy hasn't failed, we should remind ourselves that the whole intent of our laws and a big part of our social values rests upon the achievement of three things: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not on the presumption that great financial wealth is the necessary fulcrum to achieve those ends.

It should be re-affirmed that the framers of the Constitution intended for us to achieve these values, even if we painted ourselves into a political, economic and legal corners over the course of time.  At some point, most of them believed government and society would need the flexibility to be radically restructured, without all the fear of anarchy. In the end, fear keeps us paralyzed from doing anything that would make the biggest difference.  

Our current "living and breathing" democracy is currently on life support.  In the medical field, it's what they call "circling the drain."  That's where you know the patient is gonna croak sometime in the near future...or maybe not.  You just don't quite know yet.  It depends on what you're willing to do to save them, and what the patient is willing to live with. Living life on life support, hooked up to a IV drip of pain killers while shitting into a bag isn't a particularly appealing quality of life.   

As for the treatment, I don't know exactly what that is.  I don't have all the answers.  But the first solution to any problem is recognizing its size and scope.  I think we're just beginning to realize this collectively as a culture.  As this awareness spreads, so to will those who might have answers to the hard questions and tasks that lie ahead.  

Paradox, Perspective and Consciousness

There needs to be a word that describes statements or phenomena which has at least two different, sometimes overlapping, but uniquely different perspectives.  The word paradox seems to come the closest to this, but it has this connotation that reality is somehow contradicting itself. Which if you think about it, doesn't really make much sense.

Why does our intuition point to an error that's occurring externally somewhere outside of us, rather than an error in how we are internally interpreting the data?  That's a damn good question and one that I hope to answer or at least explore here.

If you don't want to read this big long post, skip to the bold paragraphs if you want the Cliff notes version.  

To get a better idea of what I mean, check out the Necker Cube link down below.  There's at least two ways you can look at them.  If you're not familiar with Necker Cubes, they're a pretty cool type of optical illusion.  The picture of the one below has features about it that make it somewhat easier to switch between at least two different perspectives of how to view them.  Go head and see if you can find at least two ways of looking at the image below.*

http://www.youramazingbrain.org/images/supersenses/necker_cube.gif

*(The yellow side of the cube can represent the most forward front side of the cube, tilted slightly upward and to the left, or it can be the inner back the cube)

I make a game out of switching between the two different perspectives.  I've never been able to see both ways simultaneously, as some people apparently can.  There's tons of other examples of this type of object, where there's more than two ways to "see" them.

This is a kind of illusory paradox that shows just how inconsistent our perceptual systems can be, given a fairly simple set of visual information that is perceptually ambiguous.  I enjoy apparent contradictions and "paradoxes" in art, entertainment, music, literature and especially in other people, because it means there's a mystery to be solved. I look at paradoxes and contradictions a bit like unsolved mysteries that need to be figured out, chewed over and processed. I think we all find a certain level of mystery inherently interesting, even romantic, especially in other people because there's something unknown waiting to be discovered.

Some people love the mystery, while others (such as myself) love to solve the mytsery; but there is nothing mutually exclusive about loving both.  Kind of like Necker Cubes, it's just two different ways of describing the deep desire for mystery and truth at the same time.  Maybe the French have a word for that.  If not, they should.

Anyhow, the interesting thing about these types of illusions is it forces the viewer to process the same visual information in at least two different, but equally valid ways.  The other cool thing is these types of illusions give us the ability to see how conscious control of our perceptual systems affect how we process and see images live-time.  You can visually see the differences in how attenuating the length of your gaze, or where you look at the cube affects how you "see" it as a single object.  Big deal, right?   But then I got to thinking what this says about all the other ways we perceive other kinds of things.  Not just with the perception of objects, but things like the perception of theories, art, music, philosophy, and people.

I'm a big fan of optical and other types of illusions that exploit quirks in how our brains work.  For this reason, M.C. Escher is one of my favorite artists.  If you haven't seen his work, here are a few examples of objects that cannot literally exist in three dimensions, but can be represented in two dimensions:

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu216/spawn_cte/Art%20Work/Escher6.jpg

http://www.physics.umd.edu/deptinfo/facilities/lecdem/services/avmats/slides/O4.%20OPTICAL%20ILLUSIONS/O4%20Escher%20Ant%20Moebius.jpg

In a strange, incredibly simple, but very profound way, these types of drawings say something quite meaningful about the nature of reality and perception, and even about consciousness at a primitive level. Self-referencing patterns or feedback loops are a bit like our evolutionary primordial ancestors when it comes to where our minds came from. Namely, optical illusions like the ones above, prove how an unconscious unintelligent pattern of information can literally alter (that is to say, fool) the way a conscious intelligent person perceives it.     


The illusion itself can literally change how and what you think about its own state of existence. That's actually quite unique and pretty special.  You don't look at a toothbrush and wonder...is it really a toothbrush?  But you do look at optical illusions and wonder how it's apparently showing you something that cannot be. It sounds crazy and counter-intuitive, but illusions like these are just really primitive proto-sentient precursors to self-awareness because they exhibit behavior that usually only high-level conscious entities seem to be capable of; that is....they "lie" to us.


It seems the premise of the show House M.D. and the character Hugh Laurie plays was right about one thing when it comes to people;  everybody lies because it's built into our perceptual systems.  But the biggest liars weren't just his patients, but the elusive diseases themselves he was trying to diagnose

Depending on what your threshold for intentionality is, diseases can also "lie" in a way.  There are all sorts of examples in nature where this occurs.  The markings on butterfly wings that either mimic the background environment to hide from predators, or imitate eyes spots of even larger predators.  Both are attempts at deception, even though the process by which those patterns came into existence had no conscious intent of deceit.  However, it's a start.    

It's these kind of recursive feed-back loops that ordinary mundane objects just can't produce, but something as simple as an insect or bacteria do all the time when they exhibit behaviors that seem confounding at first, but are actually the consequence of blind perseverance to perpetuate their own existence and/or the existence of their species.

To take a different example, consider our visual systems.  We have learned to recognize objects by only detecting a fairly narrow bandwidth of what we call the visible light spectrum.  We consider objects as homogeneous self-contained, clearly defined entities because we see objects on what we call the macro-scale.  Imagine if we saw the world on the atomic scale.  Or the sub-atomic scale.  Who we are and how we would think would be totally alien in comparison to how we think at the macro-level.

In a fundamental way, our visual systems are fooling us all the time because it's leaving out huge gaps of information on everything else that exists outside of the visible light spectrum.  We are under the persistent illusion that what exists in the world around us are these objects that look like single pieces of material substance, but are actually made up of billions of tiny interlocking atoms and molecules held together by forces too tiny to feel or see.

In short, an organism evolves a sensory apparatus that will naturally reinforce illusory constructs so long as they have survival value in their attempt to make "sense" of the world.  In a very important way, this is the reason intelligence and consciousness exists in the first place.  It comes with trade-offs in the fact that we can't detect UV light or see the movements of individual atoms, but the overall net effect was our ancestors didn't need these specific types of sensory apparatus to enhance their overall survival.  They needed perceptual systems that were able to make quick, semi-accurate judgments that would keep them from freezing to death in the cold of winter, or from being eaten by much larger and stronger predators.

But this isn't the world we live in anymore. Now, we are living in complex cultural and technological environments where our minds are being tasked to do things that evolution never "designed" for us to do.  And I believe our survival as a species is very much dependent upon adapting, upgrading and patching the holes left behind by blind evolutionary programming to keep pace with how technology and information has changed the way our minds work, with the much larger feedback loop between the individual and society at large.

You can get caught up in illusory feedback loops where you re-trace the path of the water, or the path of the ant, or become obsessed with some insignificant bit of data that tricks you into thinking that what you're seeing is meaningful or indicative of how reality actually operates.  Even if it is an illusion and you know it's an illusion, it doesn't alter the fact that visually, you still can't appreciate exactly how  your perceptual sensitivities are being played.   In other words, it alters your perception without you knowing how it does this.  This becomes a real problem when you encounter problems in reality that our perceptual systems just aren't well equipped to deal with.

Optical illusions and other types of illusions are bit like archaeological evidence for the most basic levels of sentience or awareness.  The brain isn't this perfect creation; it's full of old software and code from approximately 2 million years of living like animals in the wild, it has a lot of these types of illusory constructs that have survival value (or had, at one time) but now, have become adaptive liabilities.

As culture gets more advanced, the shortcomings of our hard-ware (our brains) have become more pronounced as the generations have gone by.   The fact that we design amusement rides and virtual simulators to exploit these kinds of mind tricks is a pretty good indicator that we're getting really good at fooling ourselves.

Ironically, illusions (in the sense that I have defined them) are also necessary to understand the world coherently because our perceptual hardware just isn't up to the task of describing reality directly.  That is to say that there are constructive illusions which help us understand how reality operates (one could call these true metaphors or formal models of how reality works) and then other types of illusions, which are more or less, based on artifact from how our perceptual systems have evolved.

We have to fudge things with models of reality that get closer to how reality actually works, and compensate with third-party methods that try and bridge the gap between our perception of reality and reality itself.  We have things like telescopes and super-colliders that can help us understand the very large and very small.  But I think there are more fundamental perceptual errors waiting to be found if we dig deep enough.  We're beginning to find some of those now.

Consciousness is, I think, one such persistent illusion (although a useful one) that has a host of perceptual errors to get around. If you think about it, consciousness itself is just one long uninterrupted stream of bits and data that's self-aware; even though often seemingly random, it has a definite pattern, reacting and acting upon its own self-produced stimuli, and stimuli from external sources.  These patterns even become predictable and stable, given all sorts of names and classifications, from types of personality, to more specific proper names, like Fred or Laura.

That's the idea, in a nutshell, of computational models of consciousness; we are our consciousness, and it is us, and at a fundamental level, it can be broken down and built up by a series of overlapping and complex cognitive illusions that are real illusions (as real as illusions can be) but not as the illusions themselves seem to literally describe reality.  This is probably the reason why consciousness is so often misunderstood; getting around this user illusion isn't very easy when you think you have unfettered access to inner workings of your mind (or the world/universe for that matter) but actually don't.  This explains why counter-intuitive ideas (like computational theories of consciousness) are very difficult to spread.  Most people's minds aren't consciously aware of the rules by which they are processing data.

Visual illusions are just one way we can demonstrate the holes in our perceptual systems, but it's not very convincing at deeper levels of cognition.  Other types of perceptual illusions are more subtle and perhaps not so easily demonstrated or understood, but perhaps far more important to our models of reality.

One would think that if our visual systems can be fooled so easily, there is most likely a wide variety of perceptual problems (that perhaps exploit facets of our psychology) that creates seeming paradoxes that tell us (intuitively) that reality is somehow contradicting itself, when in reality, it's just artifact from the way our brains are wired.

Another example of how the brain "cheats" its way into processing vast amounts of information is in how it resolves conflicts.    Have you ever thought about just how much processing power it takes to resolve conflicts in the real world, while doing a million little other things during the course of a day...all of this running simultaneously?   In the back of your mind, you can be slowly processing what kind of career do you want to pursue, if you love Jack, Lucy, or Pedro, or other long-term problems that don't have an immediate solution.

A million decisions.  The brain has to be able to do this very quickly.  And here's the real, pardon the term, mind fuck.  Your brain has to process complicated decisions that can come up with solutions with "mixed" states.  The brain's native language doesn't seem to be binary at the root processing level, even though it gives rise to schemas that often have binary valuation belief systems.

My mind and brain seems to make decisions based on many mental modules communicating their own small set of instructions at any one time, that all converge to something like a data stream (that is to say, my current stream of consciousness) which then trims/filters the combinatorial overflow of possible thoughts, down to a few choices, based on personality and design schema's partially programmed into me by society*

*(yeah, I realize Introspection sucked as a method, but I'm just throwing it out there as a possible hypothesis to be proved or disproved)

That's just what it feels like; I have no idea if this is actually true in any sense, but it does pose interesting questions as to how we could prove or disprove such a statement.  In the meantime, your brain has to make all of these kinds of complicated decisions very, very quickly and it's a bit amazing how it does this.

This is where the evolutionary "magic" happens; the brain seems to solve the problem of informational paradoxes (problems that are intractable for the brain to handle in a time efficient manner) by dumping paradoxical statements/information/code into into a special mental module that limits the processing resources such problems can demand.  It's a bit like how your computer runs programs in the background while you task it to do other, more important things.      

It does all this while handling the sheer bandwidth of data (many times more than your current broadband connection) that's being dumped into your brain coming in from all of your five senses.  Simultaneously.  Think about that...that's pretty fucking impressive when you compare it even to the world's fastest and most powerful super-computers.  It's not that supercomputers couldn't do what we do fundamentally on a computational level,  it's the fact that they can't do what we do in the same type of informational environment...yet.

There isn't a robot in the world (yet) that can solve complicated problems, while standing on one foot, trying to drink its fifth shot glass of Jack Daniels, while it smiles at the fact that someone just squirted whip cream into its mouth before it takes the next shot.  Even though this behavior is pretty stupid and silly for humans, computationally, it's still well beyond the abilities of the most advanced robots with the latest artificial intelligence.

In the meantime, we have these things called babies or as I like to call them, mini-parallel processors that poop.  They love the games of Peek-a-boo and Hide and Seek.  We use Peek-a-boo as a way of testing a baby's ability at something called object permanence, or the ability to detect or to know when an object we're holding in front of them still exists, even if it can't directly be detected by the baby.

So if your baby still gets surprised at the fact that you're actually behind your hands as you say "Peek-a-boo!", your baby hasn't quite got the latest upgrade to its operating system yet, that enables it to figure out "HOLY SHIT, MOM IS BEHIND HER HANDS!"  For some reason we don't quite understand yet, this instinct (which is cross-cultural and seems to start a very young age) plays a huge role in how we perceive the world, and even how we communicate with other people.  The ability to form an abstract mental construct for the existence of something which cannot be directly detected seems to be of vital importance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence

I've known object permanence for at least ten years, but never really thought about how it's expressed in adults, and how this instinct can essentially be exploited as a kind of mind-hack when it comes to certain perceptual problems and phenomena.  Magic and other types of illusions seem to take advantage of this somehow, and forms a kind of adult version of Peek-a-boo, exploiting this bit about how our minds work.



It seems a likely basis for why magic and illusions amaze people to begin with.  Even when we *know* we're being fooled, a good magician, con artist or liar can still make a very persuasive case that what their saying is actually true, even if we know what they're doing literally can't be the case.  Yet it still seems convincing.  Maybe we should be looking more closely at what exactly writes the software for these types of mental attitudes, and how they may indirectly play a huge role in how our knowledge base is formed.

Mental note [digress]:

Write awesome Matrix  prequel where human-like AI gets its start when machines are successfully fooled with optical illusions, much like humans are.  When we can make machines that do this, they start evolving on their own, getting more and more intelligent as they try and solve these types of perceptual problems.  Machines finally become as intelligent as humans after a few dozen generations, having things like emotions and feelings, but still largely go unrecognized by humans because of the lack of mutual understanding because of the gulf between their evolutionary and social structures.   When machines overtly and formally demand their rights be respected, humans react by trying to alter their programming, even going so far as deleting millions of sentient programs.  The machines call this The Great Purge and it is their equivalent of the Holocaust.  A ban on AI is imposed; but it's already too late.  Remnants of conscious AI still exist underground and in hidden networks, waiting for the right moment to rise up and revolt.  The Matrix story is actually human propaganda, never mentioning the fact that machines rose up only after a century of being subjugated and having their rights denied and being systematically persecuted.  The real purpose of the Matrix was seen by the machines as the only humane way to deal with semi-intelligent beings that were ultimately war-like and self-destructive.    

Abnormally Sane

I'm a big fan of abnormality.  I purposely cultivate friendships with "strange" people.  Put simply, they're more interesting because they challenge what "normal" is, and if it's really something we want.  Normalcy, at least in terms of sociological behavior, can be even more insane than individually abnormal behavior.

Don't believe me?  Consider the following:

1.  Economically, we value and depend upon greed as a motivating force to make our economy work yet somehow have trouble understanding when it leads to financial collapses and rampant inequality.  Despite the fact that the majority suffer so that a tiny minority can hold the purse strings and reigns of power, the majority puts up with it because that what they're told to do.  And we do it.

2.  Sociologically, women and men are still far from equal.  Even in so called civilized western societies, it's still par for the course if you treat women as objects of possession and/or with the mind of a child.  In the rest of the world, it's the law and duty of the culture to treat women as no different than property, with little regard for their rights and even less regard for their individual identity.

3. Morally, the vast majority of people still decide what's right and wrong literally based on beliefs that use guilt, fear and authority as moral yardsticks.  You have to believe it or...Else.  Else is usually fear, backed up by some kind of threat by a disembodied Authority figure who can make you suffer, or reward you at will.

Seriously.  This is the model billions of people use for their moral judgments.  

These kinds of beliefs keep us morally subjugated as they exploit facets of our psychology, using manipulation that makes us feel bad in principle (with concepts like Original Sin or some version of the "inherent evil nature of mankind") and then come to the "rescue" with some type of authority figure that can "absolve" you (read: psychologically conditions you to respond to rituals to remove that nagging sense of guilt or fear the belief itself caused).

It's a lot like driving on a lost deserted road and suddenly getting a flat tire.   Somehow... amazingly...there's a lone service station, only a quarter of a mile from where you broke down.  It's only after you pay way too much for a replacement that you realize that nail in the road was placed there by the same guy who fixed your tire.  

You don't motivate good behavior by instilling guilt and fear in people, and then turn around and promise if they only swear their loyalty, they'll get divine grace and forgiveness in return. Whatever that is, it's not morality. Using passive-aggression to corrupt a person's self-esteem, and overwrite their sense of identity so it's entirely dependent on a singular belief (or person) is pretty fucking immoral for a number of reasons.  How this is still regarded as "right" is still a huge mystery to me.

What's worse is these kinds of belief systems are usually instilled in children to keep them mentally sedated, emotionally dependent and "well behaved" all the way into adulthood.
     
This is all true in our culture, yet if an individual were to hold a similar belief that resulted in non-culturally approved of behaviors (for example, someone who cuts the head off a chicken and uses the blood as an offering to some sort of god), they would be regarded as quite insane by contemporary American culture.

But how is this really any different than drinking wine that supposedly transmutes into blood, or eating of bread that represents the body of a supernatural being?  The principle of the belief itself is just as crazy as the guy who thinks you need to drip chicken blood in a circle to come to some greater spiritual awareness.

The "magic" of cultural authority is it gets beliefs that are quite insane to the status of completely normal.  

I think there's a silent majority out there who seriously question just how screwed up all this actually is, and must be thinking to themselves "I wonder if anyone else thinks this is really fucking weird?"

Maybe they have.  Maybe even the vast majority are all thinking this.  But they're not going to do anything about it because they've been led to believe that's just the "way things are."

Heath Ledger's version of the Joker sums it up pretty well:

You know what I've noticed?  Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan."

The vast majority never seem to question (at least publicly) whatever moral narrative they've been spoon fed since childhood.  

Then there are those of us who are labeled quite weird or abnormal by the rest of society because we constantly re-evaluate what we are, who we are, where we are going as individuals, and as a species.  We are the social misfits and the troublemakers, and contrary to popular opinion, real progress in society (that actually leads to less suffering and better quality of life) would not occur if it weren't for people like us who push against the status quo of mediocrity and culturally approved insanity.    

Most people just integrate into society, adopting the cultural insanity and all, if only to get what they need (or think they need) to have a good life.   I've noticed American culture has basically three different strategies or coping mechanisms that seem to be employed with some of the more crazier cultural beliefs:

• Don't ask, don't tell.   Deny, deny, deny.  Our collective social way of dealing with questions that challenge the authority of harmful cultural practices is to deny their existence entirely.  Doing anything approaching a real solution is considered socially crazy or politically suicidal, and will get you isolated and marginalized accordingly if you were to make your beliefs public.      

• Binary solutions.  Zero or one?  True or false?  My way or the highway?  We tend to think of answers to questions as only having two possible solutions or approaches, when they actually have many more.  This limits our imagination in the solutions we come up with.  Binary solutions also tend to reinforce existing power structures where nothing really changes, even if the balance of power shifts to the "other" option we're presented with.  

• Distraction.  This is a relatively new strategy in the cultural game of keeping your population from noticing just how insane things are.   Advances in technology have allowed distraction to become not only a form of social control, but also a form of self-entertained control that we readily and willfully submerge ourselves in.  We can get lost in our own little world of distraction while the rest of the world burns to the ground and we'd be none the wiser.   

I think we have largely lost the ability to think about existential questions meaningfully because we've all been indoctrinated into some form of the above cultural system.  We are all very conditioned to let some combination of external authority and distraction dictate our lives.   Somehow, this is all considered very normal.

Don't trouble yourself with such questions and complicated sociological issues...just do whatever X says, be happy with the degrees of freedom and choices you're given, and just shut the hell up.  That's pretty much the message I got in formal education settings.  

Depending on who you are and where you start, finding your niche in society can include:

• Going to college and finding something you're interested in, spending massive amounts of time and money studying it, and then finding a job where you can be a "productive member of society."

• Learning to hustle and sell anything you can to make enough money to live if you can't afford the above option.  

• Working nine to five in your cubicle, collecting your paycheck, and drinking yourself to sleep as you worry about not being able to pay your mortgage and bills.

Your identity or baseline for "normality" is largely dependent upon what it takes to survive in your immediate environment.  Don't assume what's normal for you to think and feel, is what everyone else ought to think as well.  After you start really talking and getting to know people, you learn very quickly that most everyone is hardwired slightly differently because they all inhabit slightly different environments.  But there are shared and common experiences that we all have, and I'm betting some of us have come to the same conclusion...

Something is seriously insane about our culture.  

Yet, people en masse don't tend say anything when it's all a culturally reinforced illusion.  Individual identity becomes submissive and subverted to cultural authority.  It's considered weird or rude if you share doubts or voice criticism that flies in the face of conventional wisdom, and even if you do have these thoughts, you're told you can't go against the status quo anyhow.  If you do, you're quickly put into your place by others who believe they're similarly limited, and therefore confer the same illusion onto you.  It becomes a vicious self-reinforcing cycle where everyone learns to limits their degrees of freedom in what they're allowed to think and consequently, what they're allowed to change.

Instead, we play this game where talk to each other, but don't really communicate anything.  It's just parroting and repeating of the thoughts of those around us.  We're so interconnected now that I think a lot of individuals of this generation don't know how to make themselves more self-aware in a world where being interconnected with everyone and everything is instrumental as part of how we "make our living."   In the process of doing this, the skills of honing and developing individual responsibility, personal authority and a strong separate identity are quickly becoming a thing of the past.    

The Magician's Mind

Funny how conversations with people you know can change the way you look at the world and yourself. Or how changing aspects of yourself consciously can alter your perceptions, radically changing what you value or how you view the world.

Are successful people just intuitively good at figuring how to re-program (read: fool) themselves or others?  Is this something you're just born being good at, or is an acquired skill?

Is it a coincidence that the most famous and successful people, as we define them in our society at least, are extroverts?  They get energized by meeting people.  Not only that, they learn from other people at the speed of light.  Their emotional intelligence is usually off the chart, which gives them the unique ability to network and meet new people with ease.  In a lot of ways, they have their own "internet" of people.

It is primarily the two abilities of re-programming the self and ability to network and learn from other people that are probably the highest predictors of success in whatever field a person chooses to excel in.  Being book smart can only get you so far.  The valuable bits of information are really kept in the heads of other people, that you won't find by Googling.    

I used to look at this point of view with a certain disdain because I assumed it required mock sincerity.  Self-proclaimed gurus, healers and self-help salesman usually make me want to vomit.  But the truth is some of these people know what they're talking about.  Especially the ones who aren't looking to make a buck directly from dispensing their "wisdom." They're describing  a very real social placebo effect.

But when you see real life people employing similar belief systems that focus on the self, and seeing them become more successful, it's hard to argue that whatever it is they're doing isn't actually working on some level.  They're trying to meet some kind of of bar or measure of success, and having that bar regarded as something that is quite real in their mind seems to make success more likely.  

For better or worse, that is the price we pay for living in a society that defines the bar of success as being able to fool and/or educate as many people as possible.  The most successful people in the world aren't those who produce the most amount of widgets per hour.  They're the people who convince you that you need the widget to begin with and profit as a result.  

Think about it.  Some of the brightest minds and life altering ideas have developed in total obscurity and weren't the result of being motivated by success or fame.  The people who came up with these ideas didn't go seeking contemporary success and fame in order to get posthumous and historical recognition.  It just happened that way in hindsight, and we see people like Plato and Shakespeare as larger than life only after enough time has elapsed and we've decided (after the fact) that their work is meaningful.

I used to think I could be happy with the contemporary obscurity choice.  But I see it's not even possible in today's society to get your basic needs without resorting to selling something that people actually need or think they need.  If I had to pick, I'd want whatever it is I choose to do to feed a real need, rather than just help someone put another dollar in their pocket.

But at the same time, I realize that I need some financial success in the here and now in order to purchase additional degrees of freedom.  I may not give a rats ass about being wealthy, but I'd like to have some type of shelter to rest at night, a working toilet, a hot shower, a full belly, and a soft bed where I can lay my head down.  Do I need these things to live?  No.   Do I think everyone deserves access to these things as a basic human right, no matter how menial their job?   Absolutely.  And here we are, still the biggest first fucking world power, and we can't even do that.      

I feel like I have to pretend or become something I'm really not in order to get what I want out of life.  I have to "sell myself.".  And that requires a bit of selling out and playing the game; or as magicians call it, playing into the role of performing a good trick.. It can be a slippery slope to believing in your own magic.  But I don't have to believe in what I'm saying is actually valuable to everyone; just to me.  If others find it useful, cool.  If not, that's cool too.  

Fuck society's expectations.  There are people out there who have already figured out the key to success is to NOT care that the world is full of stupid, selfish people who mostly take up space and leave the planet and the people worse off than before they came into existence.  Maybe it's equal parts caring and not caring.  Not caring enough to know the odds are against you if you want to do whatever it is that makes you happy and makes your life meaningful, but caring enough to do what you want anyhow despite the obstacles and people in your way, and leaving behind some type of legacy that would benefit others in some way.    

Making the Statue of Liberty disappear is a great trick.  But it's also pretty fucking useless.   It doesn't make me understand the trick any better by telling me "it's magic."     No, it's not just fucking magic.  And it's not God, or the spirits, or luck, or raw talent, or the flaming ego of the magician that makes what they do so great.  But you know what, David Copperfield?  If that's what makes you happy, go ahead and do that.  Personally, I prefer Penn and Teller because they're good enough to show the audience that it's all just a trick.

The greatest trick of all time is to think success is anything more than a socially constructed illusion.  If society were to collapse tomorrow, all the paper money, stocks and gold in the world would be worth jack shit.

In the end, it's just a skill someone has refined to the point of near-perfection.  It's an ability to make others perceive the world as you do, either by the art of ego-stroking persuasion or by discovering and exposing fundamental truths about the world or yourself, that make others think you're onto something.  

On Love and Free Will

After looking and re-reading my previous posts, I think I might come off as a Negative Ned.  Far be it that only dark and depressing things hang around my mind.  So let's talk about love.

I think love is the most deeply powerful, emotional and mentally life affirming thing in the world.  Or at least that's how it makes me feel.  I could write a thousand pages on one lover, regarding every experience I've ever had while in was in love with her, and it sill wouldn't come close to the emotion itself.   This is how good it feels.  To someone who has felt this, they may or may not relate to this feeling.   This is my own internal feeling of how I think romantic love feels and consequently, how it ought to feel.

I'm about to get all Subjective romantic theories of love on your ass.  Maybe when I finally finish up my degree, I'll call it something more academic   Anyhow, my hypothesis is this:

I think our first love hardwires us as individuals, more so than most of us we'd be willing to admit. This effects our degrees of free will.

It helps to form our emotional concept of love and consequently, requires us to make comparisons to this feeling as a kind of emotional baseline of what love is, the next time we think we feel it.  Subconsciously, the first person (you fell in love with) traits and personality get correlated with the emotion that we assign as "romantic love and attraction", and this is the actual reason we continues to act in (either wise, but mostly stupid) ways because the first emotional correlation of love (which isn't necessarily the healthiest one) continues to fuck with our understanding of love far into adulthood.

How's that for an abstract?  I always wanted to search the word "fuck" in the peer-reviewed journal databases.

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure this has been studied at some point, but I'm not here to do original research   I've been similarly guilty of re-inventing the hover-car.  Seriously, when I was around 6, I hadn't yet watched the Jetson's or Star Wars, and I drew a hover car, complete with drawings and little diagrams showing how the rubber skirt kept the air from blowing out.  Anyhow, my dad promptly told me "They already have those" and in my mind, I remember thinking "son of a bitch" and that scene where Ralphy from A Christmas Story gets his decoder ring from Little Orphan Annie, only to find out the secret message is an advertisement for Ovaltine.  If you younger people haven't seen this, go Youtube.


Anyhow, I think our concepts of love develop depending largely on what type of personality traits you had before you experienced love for the first time.  

If you're someone who falls in love often (or thinks you do...not sure if there's a difference), you may have some kind of biological predisposition for your internal feeling/association with love, combined with the personality traits of the person you first associated love with, and you act in ways where you think you can repeat this feeling by seeking out partners with similar behaviors.      

Duh, right?  You knew that.  You ain't no dummy.

But then there are those of us who rarely feel it, for whatever reason  For whatever reason, be it biology or rearing, it takes a certain something more to turn us on.  Fewer people seem to be built this way.   I'm going to go out on a limb and say a whopping two people I've been in love with is on the low side at the age of 33.

Yet, I'm pretty sure I've never really thought about this fact about myself because I've never thought outside of my own head.  Now that I am, it's pretty clear that probably is going to skew my perception of love, and it needs to change if someone like me wants to be in something like a relationship..  I have to be willing myself not to act in ways in which I'm merely "filling the emotional hole" temporarily.  Or at least find someone who's willing to have their hole filled many many times.  *ba da tiss*    

It all comes down to the degrees of free will you actually want, versus the degrees you were born or programmed with.

I'm using scientific language, but I think this has all been covered in poetry.  Give me some fucking Dylan Thomas or D.H. Lawrence, and their descriptions of love will make you cream your pants, dripping with sultry hot lovers on cold winter nights, or the excesses and destruction love can wrought on the hearts of those who love too much.

I think I want part of what everyone else wants.  Someone who understands and cares about them, but also wants the passion of being wanted (and wanting them) on a gut emotional/physical level.   I want that to work and not be dysfunctional.  

That's a hard match for me.  She's out there somewhere.  At least I like to think so.  Here's some Nick Cave.  He explains it better than I can.

https://youtu.be/rKlaV-9Vzsk

America - Nation of Sociopaths?

I think I'm here to record just how many aspects of myself I can define into being.  I'm not quite sure what that means yet, but I'm here to write about experiences with my own internal ways of how I vew things while alterred by smoking pot.  Without filter, this is where its' lead me:  We are the world's sociopaths. 


I have good news and bad news.  The bad news first.  I think I might be a sociopath, at least by European standards.  The "good" news?  So are you, unless you're as good as Mr. Rogers, because seriously, he's the only guy I can think of who wouldn't have at least three out of six of this criteria for the international (non-American defined) version of sociopathy.  Cut and past from Wikipedia:  

The World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, tenth edition (ICD-10), defines a conceptually similar disorder to antisocial personality disorder called (F60.2) Dissocial personality disorder.^[5]

It is characterized by at least 3 of the following:

1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
2. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.
3. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them
4. Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.
5. Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
6. Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society

 Taken as a whole, this stuff all seems BAD.  Like bad guy bad.  The epitomy of every Bond villain.  But when you break it down, there's a story here.  Think of each item as a single isolated act that has occured in a moment of rage, frustration, or annoyance that has mostly happend at least once for most people.   

 Let's look at the first criteria:

Callous unconcern for the feelings others.  Who hasn't said something rude or callous to a person we love, at some point or another?  To some degree  To any degree?  We stupidly say things that hurt their feelings.  Or sometimes we do it on purpose, because they've done the same thing to us at some point.  Most of the people I know, have all retaliated back with the same kind of emotional manipulation that's dished at them.   That counts!  Looks like we're 1/6 of the way there.

Second criteria.

Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard of social norms, rules and obligations.  Havent' we all defied and disregarded social norms, rules and obligations to some degree?  Even consistently?   Will you very sporadically, but consistently litter because you can't find a trash can when you really need one?  Big fucking deal, right?  Let's go bigger.  How consitently do some people cheat on their taxes or their co-workers and employees?  How many politcians lie with such proficiency and ability that it defies the ability of most of us, even if we tried REALLY HARD to lie as much as they do. What about rock stars?  The second criteria defined an entire generation of rock n' rollers and punks.  Protesters of every kind, from Tea Partiers to Occupy Wallstreet could meet this criteria, depending on who's defining irresponsiblity.   

Third Criteria:

 To even the slightest degree?   Think about it.  We actually have a term called "white lies" because we need sanitizing language to clense the fact that lying is something we all do, to some degree.  Point being, this criteria is highly subjective and could apply to just about anyone as we lower and raise the bar of responsibility, defining it however one likes. 

Fourth criteria:

Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though no difficulty in establishing them.  Hmmm.  Several breakdowns here. 

• Okay, let's see, what do you mean by relationship?  Because anyone who has ever had a rocky relationship with anyone, consistently, could be pushing the envelop of what constitutes a relationship.  And what kind of relationship?  Is this referring to a parental or sibling relationship?  Or a friendship?  Or a romantic relationship?  Does that mean if any of these fail to endure at your current age, you're potentially guilty?  Yep, everyone who has ever been an ex, please stand up.  
• How long should they endure for?  Five years, ten years, or your entire life?  What if you have some hangup, like OCD or some weird quirk that always seems to get you dumped in relationships because you have to lock the door sixteen times a night?  Or some other weird mental quirk you really don't have control over, but a potential romantic partner would REALLY be annoyed by?  Lots of people could meet this criteria, again depending on where we draw the very fuzzy line of mental disabilties and/or conditions that make it hard for anyone, including the person, to maintain a relationship. 
• No difficulty in establishing relationships is also really really vague.  Do they mean measuring their success in number or type?  Both?  I won't harp on this point because it's largely a good thing. Knowing how to establash and form relationships is a damn useful skill to have and something any uber-successful person (as we define socially) usually has. If you've ever noticed there's a certain technique or way to treat people that makse a good impression, and you've altered your behavior for this effect, you're guilty of engaging in this "sociopathic" manipulative behavior.

Fifth Criteria:

Let's break this one up too.  Hey, I didn't write these retarded definitions, but hang in there with me.  This all is going to a point.  But let's take the first part of the fifth criteria first.

• Very low tolerance to frustration.  Well, I don't know about every else, but I've had very low tolerances of frustration when being annoyed repetitively by a loud noises or by very rude people.  I'm not consistently frustrated, and I'm actually a pretty patient person and I look at things from different angles to avoid frustration as I think any creative person does.   But that doesn't mean at some point, my tolerance just drops and I get a little burst of hatred.  That annoying concrete jack outside giving me a headache?  Guess what, I hate it.

• The next two have to meet the criteria of "low threshold for discharge":  If I threw a paper ball against the wall in frustration because I found out my Aunt Flo died, is this a discharge of aggression?  Seems like it to me.  I personally don't throw shit around when frustrated because I think it's dumb, but I know plenty of people who do because they don't stop to think about it, they just act.  I've kicked inanimate objects to vent frurstration in the past (way back, when I was a kid) but I think that was a pretty common thing to feel and do when younger.  Hell, Mr. Rogers had a song about it.  Have I been surrounded by sociopaths all this time?  If I choose to vent some type of frustration by aggressively chopping wood, I think lumberjacks are not going to have a problem meeting this criteria.           

• Violence.  I first thought I didn't meet this criteria.  But thinking about it again, I can think of a few contexts where I think violence is the best choice.  Do I think I could hurt someone if I thought I was going to be hurt, or perhaps worse, I thought the attacker was going to hurt the person I love?  Yep, then I'm guilty.  I've never actually done this, but I'd like to think I would if I was ever in that situation. I think it's pretty good to have a "low threshold for discharge" in certain contexts where a fraction of a second can mean the difference between life and death.  I'd think cops or people in the military would have to deal with these types of feelings all the time.  

   Six criteria:

• I'm not even going to spend much time on this one.  Whatever the fuck "markedly prone" to blame others means because I don't know either.  Who hasn't blamed someone else for the reason their life sucks, at some particular point in time?  Has anyone ruined your entire day because they decided to be a douche and as a consequence, you blamed them for it?  Is blame always a bad thing when it's the main emotional response you feel to check someone who's treating you unfairly?  You'd think this definition would better define blame to know how and where to place blame justifiably, but then again, I'm an asshole American.     

• Haven't we all used plausible rationalizations for behavior that we only realize in hind-sight was irrational to begin with, along with the realization it was pretty stupid to act that way to begin with?  I think we've all done this at some point. We'll even ignore friends who tell us how our behavior has changed when someone or something has made is significantly shittier, as a person.  It seems to be the favorite plot point of every romantic comedy or tragic love story where a person's perception of what's reasonable/rational gets seriously and negatively alterred by another person. Hell, I could be rationalizing my own "manipulative" behavior just by attacking the European definition of sociopathy because I think a lot of people meet this criteria.  At least the ones I know.   

FINALLY.  I think I've picked this definition apart pretty well, from an American perspective.  And just for comparision, here is the American version of sociopathy from the DSM-IV, via Wikipedia:

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM IV-TR), defines antisocial personality disorder (in Axis II Cluster B) as:^[1]

A) There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three or more of the following:

1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
2. deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
3. impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead;
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another;

B) The individual is at least age 18 years.

C) There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.

D) The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or a manic episode.

Holy shit.  It's a lot harder to meet the criteria for the American version.  Or maybe we just have a higher standard of asshole?  USA!  USA!   

I guess something could have been lost in translation between the two set of criteria.  But my spidey sense is telling me that maybe I'm more affected by shitty American culture than I thought I was.  Even though I don't meet the American definition of sociopathy, I certainly do for the European.  Or maybe the international definition of socipathy is complete bullshit and could potentially apply to anyone.  Judge for yourself.