A long time ago, I realized my fears, fantasies, and perceptions of content were just as real to my brain as the actual world. I became able to be my conscious self while dreaming, and noted how I (a sort of 'dreammaster' me, separate from the conscious me I remembered being) intentionally crafted my dreams, and how I reacted to them in my sleep.
I admit, this is kind of strange, and I'm not really sure how I managed it, except that I was having nightmares about harm coming to my children, and I refused to allow that harm so fiercely that I somehow consciously seized control of my nightmares.
What I learned from these dream fugues was that my brain was just as afraid of imaginary demons as it would have been of the real thing.
How could it tell the difference?
Accordingly, I changed. Like many, I had felt that merely imaginary exercises had no actual reality, other than amusing myself. I now essay to simply think wholesome thoughts, avoid reveling in masturbatory fantasy, and never watch the squawking status-guru box (TV).
Research now confirms my deductive assumption. An accomplished pianist was wired up to an electroencephalogram and asked to play a piece of music, while their neuronal responses were recorded. Afterwards, they were asked to play the same piece, with the sound turned off on the keyboard.
Practically the same neuronal firings were recorded, showing that the brain acted upon imaginary information essentially the same way as it did upon sensory input.
"This is the first time a study has demonstrated that when we imagine music in our heads, the auditory cortex and other parts of the brain process auditory information, such as high and low frequencies, in the same way as they do when stimulated by real sound. "
This may be a difficult pill to swallow for many, particularly those that live a rich interior life. However, there are consequences to living through events, and acclimating our responses to stimuli is one of them. This may also have implications for those of us that have phobias, as strong fears of certain things, say spiders, may be caused by imagining horrible attacks - that never happened, can't happen, and cause us to be rendered incapacitated by little bugs that are easily ignored - if we live in the real world.
While your own fantasy life might be cherished, it will do you no harm to seriously consider if you are willing to be a person that has actually lived through the kinds of events you may imagine, as you are, whether the events are real or imaginary.
This has very real effects in the very real world, where a generation of American boys and girls have been raised on porn. Teenagers are having a LOT less sex today than past generations did, and go about it, and value it, much differently.
"The average teen now has had sex for the first time by the spring of 11th grade, a full year later than the average Gen Xer. Fewer teens having sex has contributed to what many see as one of the most positive youth trends in recent years: The teen birth rate hit an all-time low in 2016..."
Regardless of how you feel about teen pregnancy, and promiscuity, you will surely acknowledge that sex is amongst the most primal of motivations for teens. Changes in how they act sexually are deeply affective, and practically beyond control. Decades of sex education, centuries of bundling, chaperones, and various draconian institutional controls, has failed to achieve what access to hardcore porn online has done in only a few short years, since 2012.
Is the world these kids are living in, of hardcore, kinky, even horribly perverse, pornography, more wholesome than just schtupping each other? It is hard to imagine how this will impact their lives, and particularly their parenting.
How can Bobby Blueballs, or Rosie Rottencrotch, compete with Brazzers? Their peers simply can't compete with their fantasies.
In his series of books (part of which actually constituted his doctoral thesis in anthropology, despite being fiction) Carlos Castaneda related that Don Juan, a Yaqui indian 'sorcerer', explained that 'a man of knowledge' chose his folly. The title I most remember from the series was 'The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge'(free PDF), but there are several books that fully explore this metaphysical world view.
When you choose your reality, you are really become the creator of the world you live in. There are consequences to being God. How can one retain humanity as God - or whatever we imagine - or are taught to be?
Also importantly, denial of reality, self-delusion, and pretense of 'normality' in circumstances that are less than ideal, can prevent us from developing strategies that can surmount difficult situations, and perpetuate our suffering through realities, living instead in fantasies of a better world. Consider, for a moment, how this potentially affects not only ourselves, our children, and families, but our communities, nation, and world, when reasonable and necessary reactions to corruption, violence, and degradation aren't undertaken by dopamine addicted joy-poppers, because they live in denial.
Yeah, maybe I mean you. I certainly meant me, once.
Terry Gilliam's masterpiece of bureaucratic comedic horror, 'Brazil', clearly reveals this reality in the very end of the movie. I cannot recommend any movie more highly, and will offer no spoilers (although you can find a couple here).
It's been said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. Sadly, denial may not only be a river in Egypt, it may be a current that sweeps the freedom and prosperity of our communities and peoples down the drain with us, as well.
I feared the deep, dark woods once. As a child, the prospect of being torn to bits by bears, particularly, kept me up when camping with my folks, in Alaska. I found that by not letting my imagination run away with me, I no longer suffer from fear.
Don't get me wrong, the idea of being eaten by a bear is still frightening, but not worrying unduly has dramatically changed how I feel in the dark, wild places of the world. There is still fear. I still wonder what caused a stick to snap, or if that undulating susurration might be a ravenous bear, sniffing my tasty flesh, but rather than suffering from it, by not indulging in excessive fantasies of terror, I find fear to have become a welcome friend.
Fear adds an element of awareness, a qualitative increase in my experience of living, in environs and through events that aren't necessarily completely safe. I am more alive when my friend, fear, keeps me on my toes than either when I ignore stimuli in a safe place, or dwell in terror caused by my imaginary rending.
The advent of AR (augmented reality), and VR (Virtual Reality), particularly in games like Pokemon Go, take on new significance when this incapacity to differentiate between fantasy and reality by our brains is considered. Is the Matrix less than real to those fully immersed in it? What will such technology do to your kids? What are 'rights' in view of such potential to control what people perceive, experience, and truly believe is real?
Life is better than we imagine.
Really live.
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