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We are all experts at seeing other people’s problems, yet children when seeing our own.
We need community for reciprocal insight.
No matter how gifted and aware you are, somebody else will see more clearly than you, and they will be pained watching you stumble about.
In reverse, when you see someone flounder, remember you are doing the same in another facet of your life.
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The 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.
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In several concerts I have attended, the audience is bombarded with palpable, pummeling sounds, and the lights are shifted from the band members into the audience.
The pulsing retina attack makes the band unobservable, faded to black amidst an after-image glow sliding across your field of vision.
This obscuration of the band’s image in favor of committing soft violence to the audience feels like revenge. And it appears to have taken its toll as the audience stumbles forth from the venue, having paid to be made into twitching, blinking, deaf, and vacant fans.
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There has become a doubling, where once the observer was doing violence to the observed through objectification or judgment.
The observer has always been attacked back: overstimulated with impossible desires and pitched ads. But today the viewer is made aware of their position as objectifiers and consumers, complicit as the cause of celebrity anxiety and depression.
The observer observes themself observing, inflicting damage upon themselves for causing the double-bind of the celebrity who is anxiously unable to fulfill their image or be themself.
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To unsubscribe is to opt out. To be able to exit as quickly as you entered. This frictionless training is casually adapted into our daily lives: we unsubscribe from friends, family, spouses, and life.
Controlling our feed extends to avoid discomfort or boredom: when anything is too much, we drop it.
We can instantly refill our lives with novelty. Still, the process is a simulacrum of control: in the act of perceived agency, we soothe ourselves but hold so loosely that carefree choices shape our character over time.
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What if the model (image) for life-affirming acts is life-negating?
The vacation pictures on social media, the concerts, and the active lifestyle: when you need an escape from living, they orient you away from the reality of life into the unsustainable emotional image of fulfillment. The "image of life" is a peak placebo that, though fun, can capture and invert priorities even when you are aware of the seduction.
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Images sway us more than concepts.It is easier to find emotional resonance with a visual symbol cut free of context because the image does not correct you the way reality would.
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Civilization functions because of impulse control to such a degree that ‘politeness’ is a virtue. Non-reaction is vital, yet this is not non-judgment.
Our society’s value placed upon the visible appearance rather than the internal struggle condemns us to a cycle of schizophrenic repression and angst in the populace. Hence, we have our meltdowns with a smile.
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The little things you do to help yourself often trip you up.
So I won’t forget something, I put it in my pocket, but then it is “out of sight, out of mind” and I walk around looking for it.
It is only by internalizing our system, so that we no longer remember to remember, that we truly help ourselves.
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If the question arises on it’s own: should I do this? Then it is probably the answer. The cue is the context, the question itself is the guide.
