WHAT YOU STARE AT IS ALL THAT MATTERS. It’s part of my decoupling from the manufactured world they want us to live in, vs just staring at beautiful things like water and rolling hills. =) I think that’s from being born in Carmel and seeing all those Portuguese fishermen (well, I’m not that old but they’re still out there!) on the water, living a simple life. Tranquil, hard work, no glowing rectangular screens to be found.
Mental health, in this day and age, is a luxury and privilege you have to fight tooth and nail for. I think I need to start a cult or write a book at least, but it’s not about me versus my perspective. At 50, I think I’ve finally arrived at a healthy waypoint, for the time being, and my goodness it feels lighter and other people may appreciate something of that nature.
I feel like I’ve melted away *my* bicameral mind, in that it was PRETTY FUCKING INTENSE UP IN THERE for a long time, but I’ve annihilated my historic self into something new, simpler, and more understanding. I can hear the “musica universalis”, the harmony of the spheres. At least for now. I’m past a lot of worries and concerns, I’m not white knuckling life, I don’t live in anticipation of a boot dropping, nor spend energy on anticipatory anxiety. It’s sort of that Alan Watt’s “trust the universe stuff”, and namely, being present, calm, proactive, and skeptical as curiosity vs cynicism. I’m listening to myself, instead of doubting myself out of self-worth issues. It makes me feel strong like empathy. I am countering old anxieties, and getting a better understanding of reality vs my reality. I’m not just treading water, friend I AM FUCKING SWIMMING.
Not drowning, waving.
There’s so many lessons, but I think the one thing is finding your way to truly being present. And part of that understanding death, accepting it. Memento Mori.
“When you have accepted your own death in the midst of life, it means that you’ve let go of yourself, and you are therefore free.” – Alan Watts
Being present in the moment will reduce anxiety because you won’t live in your past, & don’t project yourself into a future that hasn’t happened.
“We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.” – Alan Watts
…And? I’m trying to unlearn all the constructs they built for us. So this is me, banging the walls inside this digital simulacrum that in no way represents the reality we are letting pass us by… here we go trying to unlearn this filter bubbled attention economy of lies:
“A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily” – Alan Watts
Reality isn’t real, man. It’s wild to figure that out. Hear me out… mass media, politics, talking heads. Reality is this massively expansive thing, and we poked a pin prick in it, which we stare through like a keyhole, and consume all this media and news and junk as if it were actually reality. Now we’re in this doom spiral of thinking reality is all that horseshit, and making this degenerative self fulfilling prophecy of mimicking that tiny black hole of .01% of actual reality, and allowing it to consume all of our beautiful, marvelous, awesome actual existence in the “really real world”. 100 years ago, the event horizon of your reality was your wife in your house, a neighbor, the seasons, work, maybe a main street somewhere. Now, it’s hyper-reality and increasing at a clip. We’ll be here soon:
So I think what happened, after 40 years of being online, I get that it is now monetized into a weapon and a drug. I still am on some social, mostly memes, but anytime the news of anxiety, panic, fear, hate of any sort hits me, I kneejerk ask “how does this effect me?”, and it is so astonishing just how many times it simply doesn’t impact or effect me in the slightest, yet that world of news and information in this attention economy makes it the entirety of reality, and we’re all immersed in it.
It doesn’t effect you, but it’s built to affect you.
It’s cruel. Humans don’t have the bandwidth, we’re powerless against the tools of tech, built to hack us, and it’s mentally crippling us. It’s also a waste of our lives and energies, and ESPECIALLY… our time. I don’t even worry about money, future, world, and maybe it’s a coping mechanism, but the only thing we won’t get back is time. If you pay attention and strip away both the artifice and simulacrum (Baudrillard would be fucking REAL BIG MAD at how correct he was and major “I told you so” vibes), *wow* the world is amazing *and simple*. We manufacture complexity to ignore that we’re gonna die, and holy shit we don’t want to talk about it.
Actually, it’s wild, but Baudrillard stated that the “Map” (simulation of reality) now precedes “The Territory” (reality). Our symbols and constructed images of reality have replaced it. Look out your window… it’s probably, statistically, totally fine. I used to hate Mark Zuckerberg. I still do, but I used to too! (Thanks Mitch Hedberg). But a line he said years ago, that infuriated me, I sort of understand in a different way, in relation to this “simulation” we’ve decided to live in:
“A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa”.
Now, he said that in relation to the filter bubble and algorithmic personalization, but obviously on the flip side he’s talking about a curated simulation of reality that we are fully immersed in like a dipped soft serve cone. I think the most concise way I can relate this is using the local news. News reports outlier events. That is almost always a tragedy, violence, trauma, chaos, or problems. If there’s not enough tragedy in your immediate vicinity, they lead with a kid who was kidnapped three states over, or an officer involved shooting in a different place. There’s always bad news to report, even if there isn’t.
If news is reporting on only outlier events that constantly seem to be bad, the “survivorship bias” (see below) means we’re not seeing the good. And, almost all of it is good, great, wonderful, beautiful. We’ve the privilege of not having war on our doorstep, so if 95% of all Americans walk out a door right now, it’s probably okay, neighborly, kind… so all we’re feeding off of is this tiny pin brick of a black hole of chaos, and we’re extrapolating that out to be all of reality. But that sort of categorically and objectively prove we’re not witnessing actual reality, but a simulacrum of one through mass media, news, and tech. It’s BONKERS. Maybe it’s the sudden realization that makes me feel like a teenager just discovering very simple concepts. So much of this manufactured simulacrum is about the data we’re not seeing: the kindness, the peacefulness, the calm. I often forget that many, MANY people are not online and happy and healthy. They’re just not there to spread the gospel of not being online.
Mass media and the news (I do not mean journalism) is like this… we aren’t see the real data of what reality is really like, because we’ve this myopia of only seeing outlier events, not representative of the whole of reality.
So… I’m not “there” yet. For one, you never arrive, and brain health is a continuum and not a race to win or a trophy at the top of the stairs. But I’ve got ahold of something new, simpler, more dialed in, and even with my mom or other of life’s tragedies, I’ve a lot of grace and gratitude (and now you know I certainly am an over-therapied Marinite). I sort of “get” it, and don’t take anything for granted, and am just thankful for the time I have, and will navigate things with real flow, and being able to be available and supportive to all.
The only thing, really, is being present. I think it’s the one truth most philosophical and thinking people arrive at, and the entirety of reality has been manufactured to make us everywhere but here. Eckhart Tolle had this thing about “Joy Ease and Lightness” regarding the “Joy of Being” aware, essentially:
“To alert you that you have allowed yourself to be taken over by psychological time, you can use a simple criterion. ASK YOURSELF: Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing? If there isn’t, then time is covering up the present moment, and life is perceived as a burden or a struggle”.
Essentially, just being aware and present is that simplicity and awakening back into the “really real world”, by making sure you don’t mindlessly become resentful of just existing without awareness.
So yeah… not “there” *yet*, but I’m stepping through a portal back into the natural, real world, and I think I’ll live here for awhile.
I stepped through the window. I’m in the really real world.
And then Colombo’s “One More Thing”, as I turn back from walking out the door
A postscript, in that it’s easy to step back into “reality” vs the mass media and digital attention economy one, when you realize how absolutely insanely disturbingly awful it is.
Understanding there is a global elite apolitical and amoral group of country-less, craven, disgusting wealthy who run the world with blackmail on everyone, as a shadow government that controls global order, governments, and economies? Yeah, that somewhat helped to wake me up to the fact that reality is just fully manufactured. I’d say they’re manufacturing consent, but Noam Chomsky was great friends with Epstein. JFC
Essentially, we’re at the stage of this alternate reality where billionaires have run out of dopamine and serotonin and are absolutely miserable. They want that new hit of feel-good-brain-juice. Money don’t do it. Drugs don’t do it. So what do you do? You do what people tell you that you can’t do, which is breaking laws. Hopefully this all comes crashing down. But if you want to invest some time in understanding how this all became “normal”…
There’s a documentary from a Adam Curtis at the BBC that’s 3 hours, and it’s sort of a companion to Baudrillard, and you may like it. He’s more into the political mechanics of how reality got from the 1970s to here. He’s also more of that skeptical-curious if we can get back to some form of “truth” or “reality”. A lot of that work, I’ve realized, is personal heavy lifting. Beadrilliard, basically, figured there was no longer truth to get back to. I find that hard to believe, but part of it is de-engineering the way the simulacrum, technology, filter bubble, and the attention economy took over our lives.
To wrap up, I do think it’s going to take personal action to get an eventual tidal wave going.
Setup to the doc:
Our world is strange, and often fake and corrupt, but how did we get here?
We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks. And those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed – they have no idea what to do.
This film is the epic story of how we got to this strange place. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening – but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.
It shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West – not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves – have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal.
But there is another world outside. Forces that politicians tried to forget and bury forty years ago – that then festered and mutated – but which are now turning on us with a vengeful fury. Piercing though the wall of our fake world.