We tend to map our reality, values, and principles onto our situations. We project onto others what we wish, which often blinds us to the fact that a person, business, or politician has operating principles of their own. We actively deceive ourselves into living in the world we wish: this can be beautiful and dangerous.
Tag: authenticity
- Theme: Self
the master manipulator archetype
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1–2 minutesDirectors, like Christopher Nolan, use the master manipulator as the protagonist. This "hero" sells illusions within illusions for their own ends, be they benign or catastrophic.
Blockbuster directors not only reflect society but shape it. They function as "cultural engineers" equivalent to industrial engineers building highways or spreading electricity.
The heavy work undertaken is to sell the vision of values (propaganda) that supposes a deeper reality than the shallow, vapid, consumerism we encounter daily.
Anyone who can provide depth, even if illusory, offers vitality to an otherwise flattened reality: sans-God we still crave a deeper order, even if it is conspiracy-laden, tech-fueled nonsense.
- Theme: Self
Separating shock from reality
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1–2 minutesEven after a brutal realization, you don’t have to live in it; you can hold it and realize everything that was previously fine is still.
We tend to retroactively extend trauma into the past while manifesting it into our future, but what if we recognize our discomfort as merely a fleeting, subjective, emotional shock?Such insight can prevent us from shaping the world and our relations to fit our moods.
- Theme: Self
help us not
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1–2 minutesThe things designed to help us get in the way.
Concepts, tutorials, or punishment: they are the thing that keeps us from perceiving reality.They are programs that train us not to see clearly but to align and obey, most often for someone else’s benefit, and this normalization destroys clear perception, and we must work hard late in life to dissolve them.
- Theme: Self
Authentic you isn’t
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1–2 minutesPerhaps the “true you” does not exist: what if finding yourself is an impossible dream and an excellent marketing ploy?
You can indeed “lose yourself,” in fact our society thrives on your lost blunderings, benefitting many therapists, gurus, and spas.
However, we are all shaped by society and culture to develop preferences, meaning that your most authentic self is adapted to the self-pleasures/pressures promoted by our society: including your subversive pleasure in thinking you are unique.
- Theme: Growth
“when you gotta go, you gotta go”
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1–2 minutesAn older man said this to me as we peed, side-by-side in the Home Depot bathroom. He then walked over to the sink, slicked back his white hair and mustache without washing his hands, hitched up his pants, and sauntered out.
This type of interaction is worth consideration: the statement is unnecessary but not meaningless. It is not an apology for biological imperative, but a cool guy’s crass excuse as a means to put forward (and seek affirmation for) a way to move through the world.
More problematic is posturing for a man who is peeing.
- Theme: Growth
Bad assumptions, bad predictions
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1–2 minutesOur reasoning is sound: given this then that. But if our given assumption is not real then a myth has been propagated, and our prediction will be wrong.
Examples: Does congress serve the people? Do jobs really want talented hard workers? In both cases the answer is no, which should change your predictive calculus.
- Theme: Self
When sincerity disappears
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1–2 minutesWhen you doubt sincerity, words become merely a performative script: an aesthetic affect played as a game.
When sincerity disappears, so does trust. The byproduct of acidic cynicism dissolves communal bonds, isolating individuals into performative identities donned as costumes, and swapped just as quickly. - Theme: Systems
nature is too real
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1–2 minutesEver since the reasoning mind was granted dominance, our war against nature has increasingly mirrored a split from reality.
Since we can predict a narrow point of progress and achieve it, we have lost -in direct proportion- our ability to comprehend and sustain broader symbiotic relationships.
(inspired by Calvin and Hobbes and Bataille)