This is not meant as a polemic but more as a collection of my personal observations regarding the subject of perception.
I want to use the trapped monkey metaphor, you know, the one where the monkey puts his hand into the bottle to get a goodie and because he cannot withdraw his hand with the goodie, he is trapped.
In Korea they call a thirty year old living at home a “Kangaroo.” Life seems a calliope. Even the horse rider has a different view than the zebra view.
History is the easiest subject to study because the truth never changes. Yes, the facts of the past can be clouded but they cannot be altered by anything save cultural perception or intentional manipulation.
In our effort to disregard the immutable fact that cultural change is indelible in our perceivable existence, we have created an insular world where our various cultures do not permit change. Morality has become the corpse of this kind of thinking in that every culture feigns altruism in the name of their superior morality weighed against their neighbors’ infidelity.
My experience is shaped by my ability or inability to perceive the world around me and the subsequent energy that I expend as well as the energy that comes at me from all sides.
The Mandelbrot Set* is and interesting graphic depiction of what all our energy creates.
SO:
My premise is; our perceptions are hobbled by our point of view as well as the access that we have to the truth, or should I say, to its manipulated version. Our individual experience is like a boat out of sight of land; what we can see coming is limited by our point of view as well as the information that we have knowledge of.
For the most part we have been taught to use culturally based emotional antenna to develop our understanding of the world.
IT IS IMPORTANT TO ASK, which forces are observable, and therefore valid in the current make up of our culture?
Because I have studied to identify the factors that shape our current cultural perception and I can discuss this subject using broadly observable facts, I have found myself in a small minority. As a result of my studies, I have come to the conclusion that our culture is not based on observable information at all.
The strength of human society’s cognitive dissonance with regards to the available information base acts as a metaphorical chain in a contemporary cave. We use phrases like, “how do you feel about that,” and “what do you believe?” Facts become frightening strangers unless they can be manipulated to fit the cultural paradigm that we identify with. WE use popular consensus to glean and vet reality. Facts or, the truth have come to be held in suspicion unless they fit with that consensus, regardless of whether or not they are based on an objective observation.
In the allegory of the cave used by Plato in his work, ”The Republic” he develops a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother, Glaucon.
In the dialogue, Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.
It is important to understand that the chains that bind our captive were not born to them, “the chains were placed on him by others.”
Of course Plato wrote The Republic twenty-five hundred years ago so it would be fair to ask, “What does this have to do with my ability to perceive the world around me today” or, what element of the age of Plato’s idea makes the allegory untrue in the paradigm of today? The link below is meant as a bit of comedy relief and speaks to the question posed here in parody. (Enjoy)
Rap News: Rumsfeld
We humans are not great neighbors. There are a bunch of creatures that live here on the earth as well as us human beings. Most of them we either make pets of, or eat, or kill, or ignore unless they irritate us then we kill them too.
We as human beings are coming closer to the center of the fulcrum of our survival which is balanced on our ability to internalize the notion of "living with the planet" not "living on" the planet and the quantitative ability of putting that information into practice. One evidentiary observation of mine is; there is no religion, politics, corporations for a dolphin to join, invest in or revolt against, however it appears that dolphins are more successful than we are in thriving on our little ball of water in the sky.
My dear friend Paul Waite asked me to discuss urgency with him. I believe his question is grounded in our emerging suspicion that the idea of human exceptionalism is entirely a human construct. Our species behaves as if its’ survival is paramount for survival of the very planet.
Because of the dominance of our cultural exceptionalism approach to our organic origin, human beings have mounted an effort to save the world from nature.
Faith has been holding our ability for critical thinking hostage and the results has proven abysmal. We have tools at our disposal and yet we do not use them, as if the human race is freezing to death in a warehouse full of matches.
We have let these chains be placed on our wrists and ankles. We have accepted the paradoxical syllogism:
If: endless growth is a good thing. A
Then: change is a bad thing. B
This concept is a logically valid argument as long as both statements are valid and there are no observable facts that contradict either of the premises.
Simple observation will however reveal that this is not the case because change is constant and endless growth does not exist anywhere in the universe. On the contrary, all growth at the point of maturity gives way to entropy and that makes way for the pace of change.