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Your symbolic existence is your identity. When our truth or life purpose is threatened we react as though death is imminent.
To kill my illusions is to kill my identity, the “I”.
This is an act of murder in which humans gleefully participate to “reveal the truth.”
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We can turn on auto-pilot when walking familiar terrain, but when even one condition changes, the common becomes doubly treacherous due to assumed familiarity.
Upon recognition of one variable askew, slow down, engage the novel, and do not berate yourself for caution.
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Some situations are like having a pimple inside your nose.
They are painful, your nose turns red, and you either look like you have a cold or you’re an alcoholic. You randomly sneeze or have snot dripping down your enflamed proboscis, and you suffer it.
Eventually, it takes care of itself, and there is such sweet relief in returning to normal.
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If your attention is captured, you cannot choose what to focus on. Without focus, without awareness, you cannot prioritize.
Others control you, blown about by distractions, prodded into place by manipulations.
This is not yourself. To know yourself (your values), you must recognize the impulses: of me, not of me, which takes focus.
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Some people can’t help but tell you what you want to hear, feeding your worldview.
It is not until you have confidently walked out onto the plank that you turn to find they have retreated to their safety.
You wanted the world to be a certain way, and in your passion (with your supposed allies), you forgot how the world works.
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The promise of utopia is based on more happiness. But, the master planner’s conception of happiness is an abstract wish in the distant future.
Instead of focusing on the potential positives, Karl Popper suggests we look to falsification to prove and solve problems we have today concretely.
It is not as glamorous as a holistic sweeping change, but it avoids today’s idealistic hubris for steady improvement.
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To clarify we attempt language.
The attempt of intimate transparency transmutes under excessive discourse, shrouding situational reality with obscuring vagaries, shades of intent. Under this web of words we form camouflage and shield. Under the method of communion we not only can hide, but can learn to attack.
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Once established as an authority something becomes elitist, and through it’s inaccessibility it invokes a top-down pressure of wisdom and virtuousness.
One reaction is to affirm the structure, aligning yourself with its importance. Another is to contrarily declaim the authority, assigning yourself as a pure individual outside the sway of an existing narrative.
What is taxing is that these social stances (conformity or rebellion) choose to attack or support the minute something achieves beyond the norm: it’s achievement potential threatens the notion before it can fully mature.
Thus we must hide ideas with benefit, garbing them under the guise of non-negotiable banners, such as individuality.
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Confrontation is alright, when done with respect and love, but it still fuels aggression rather than openness.
Confrontation takes twice as long, with three times the energy, to wear down somebody down to the point they will hear you. Alternatively, you could land one well placed, well timed, insightful question and unravel the illusion of separation and difference, of ego and identity.
Be a master martial artist, not a flailing slap fight.
