Altered Reality

I am completely convinced that life is not as we see it. Our perception has been skewed by money, media,religion and the government This is serious, we have been indoctrinated, whats next?

 

nature

 

Social constructs do shape the way in which we live. They provide a sense of structure and order to our social lives that is not necessarily universal.

Most people who contemplate on such subjects, I think can see that they are indeed just constructs.

Are you convinced that life is universally a certain way which we appear to be denying ourselves with social constructs?

 

Thefutureawaits, the future awaits. Voluntary slavedom beyond what it is even now is next. Most people will willingly permenently plug themselves into a virtual reality machine.

 

It IS as we see it. Thing is, some of don't like what we see. Lack of evolutionary progress promises 'much fun' as we continue the headlong rush into chaos. The earth will abide. At least until the sun reduces us to cinders scattered throughout.

 

Our senses are where perception originates. Perception can vary greatly in quality. The best criterion for determining the quality of one's perceptions is through one's ability to thrive or to amass power. But, to say reality is skewed would be to imply that our senses were what limits are access to reality rather than the only thing that enables us access.

Contructs in general don't nessessarily skew our perception either. If one lives within a contruct, then the perception of that contruct is accurate. Often the reality outside of that contruct is obscured, but that would be expected for those insulated within a contruct, being that they'd lack the need to bother perceiving outside reality. But, keep in mind if a contruct is real, then it is reality.

Often one can assume to live within a contruct for which one actually doesn't, and that is definetly a skewing of reality. The poor use of symbols, such as words, is often, responsible for such skewing. Words are meant to clarify ever changing reality, not to try to permently freeze it. When one uses a word as an absolute, the word quickly loses it's relivence, while reality, always changing, leaves it behind. Furthermore, as one gets used to using word with little relation to reality, it becomes easy to be fooled, or to fool oneself, into believing in delusional contructs.

 

The world is not the same the world over.We live in an environment of competing realities,which is compounded by people's subjective experience of these nodal points.The world has been built over millennia through culture,technology and knowledge by social and material reality constructors up and into the point we are at now.The ideological state apparatus such as religion,mass media and government actors contribute to this on another level,further colouring our experience of how the physical reality is experience.

All this means that reality is continually augmented and literally transformed throughout history so that we actually begin to think and act differently.The look,feel and vibe of our realities undergone continual modulations as we negotiate social,public and material space.For me one of the biggest factors are computer graphics as they are used in film and advertising,and the evolution of design of cars and architecture.The world is a physical construct with which we play with in our minds,but that is not to say my experience is the same as yours.To some extent we can choose what we allow into our subjective realities,on another level part of succeeding in this fast changing world is the ability to maintain a functional shared reality that is essential for a relatively sane traversing of the system where the of the really real is often hard to grasp.It is a question of trying to deal with how all this enters and and affects the personal and collective social sensorium.

 

We're indoctrinated from a very young age to believe the things we do and fall into the consensus reality. It begins with our parents who themselves were indoctrinated by the system and believe the world is exactly as it's presented to them. A couple years into one's life, the education system and media begins to mold a person's mind as they prepare to enter the "adult" world

Nothing in this world is as it is perceived at face value. NOTHING!

So our perceptions have not been skewed, they've been molded. It begins at birth essentially.

There are very few people in the world who have cut through the matrix, much less care to or even acknowledge it exists.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

 

Primal people often live with few delusions. As for modern westerners, the propoganda affecting most of them still generally doesn't cover the vast majority of the world. For example, when one perceives what is considered wild nature, propoganda has little effect.

What you say about the matrix is correct. But, in that the matrix is insulated, those living within it aren't nessesarily failing to correctly see reality, they simply nessessarily have a simplistic perspective on it relative to those within who see through it or those who live outside it. Basically, when a simplistic modern westerner lives a typical modern life, without even attempting to think beyond his daily horizon, he's not failing to see reality, he's simply seeing reality in an unsophisticated manner. But, should he concern himself with things such as state or global affairs, religion or even humanistic ideologies then he's likely seeing reality as it isn't, which makes him not onlyunsophisticated, but also actually delusional.

 

Who is to say who has the ultimate grasp on reality.Is this the game we are all playing? How about a deaf dumb kid.Represents a totally different reality we couldn't possible access,although some scientists are finding ways to open up their worlds through technology.

There are certainly definite truths,partial differential truths and outright lies.The world of altered states is an holistic synarky in which we are sometimes required to behave as social actors in the "Real" world within a life where we also,if we are fortunate,able to find down time where we can truly be ourselves,and create the Zone where we can try to be free of indoctrination,manipulation and coercion.

Some try to intensify altered states through psychedelics and music.Others such as Buddhists seek to find the one true transcendental reality.Many such as working families with kids have different prerogatives to deal with.

My point is that no one reality is any more real than any other,as a human being's sentient experience is just as valid to themselves as anyone elses.I think it is arrogant to assume you have seen through everything and lay claim to see through every lie and that it lacks wisdom to suggest their are no verifiable truths.That to me just seems like a game of clownmasters.

 

Take your shoes off and drop a rock on your foot.

Money paid for the shoes, media provided this forum to enable me to tell you to drop a rock on your foot. Religion made you pray it wouldn't hurt much. Government made it illegal for me to cause you to injure yourself.

But none of them made the rock, none of them made your foot, and none of them made gravity.

 

For those unfamiliar with blind spots..

 

I've posted this quote a few times over the years on these forums, this seems like a fitting place to post it again

We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.” -Terrence McKenna

 

also, what moonglow said. Nature is reality, everything else is manufactured by humans

 

Does this imply that humans are somehow not a part of nature?

 

But humans are part of nature,and nature produced humans.It is how we manage this responsibility that is of utmost importance.

 

I like the quote, it's essentially suggesting to place precedent of direct experience over whatever cultural icons, ideas, concepts and memes popular culture are suggesting to emulate or be concerned with.

However, I think it could be taken in a way similar to Leary's message of "Drop Out" and not necessarily be pratical or productive for the individual(s) who still wants to find their place in society.