Crazy Pills!

Crazy Pills? 

You know what I mean right? Somewhere deep in the core of you, you've had those moments where it seems everyone is going along with something that makes absolutely no sense to you but they're all acting like it's perfectly normal... 

Well to me this that’s the catch phrase for this current epoch. It may have been used elsewhere but I take it from the movie 'Zoolander'. Will Ferrell’s character ‘Mugatu’ is confounded by the fan hysteria around the latest ‘look’ or facial expression of a brainless male model by the name of Derek Zoolander. For context I quote:

"SHUT UP! Enough already, Ballstein! Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look, for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

via GIPHY

Why am I talking about Crazy Pills? Well because I was recently criticized for using the term ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ in a fb discussion. Apparently I shouldn’t assume that people know what that means and therefore shouldn’t use the term. 
In my opinion this is utter crap! How else are we supposed to explore ideas if we can’t use the terms given to us which best express a concept. It reminded me of an expression I’d heard in a movie which uses much simpler words, so I thought I'd write about it here rather than get embroiled in a pointless joust in other social media arenas. 

Experiencing ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ is just like ‘Feeling like I’ve been taking Crazy Pills!’

The thing is that we live in a world where we are often lead to believe nonsensical illogical explanations of what we would otherwise perceive very differently. Basically lies, spin and gammon BS currently trump truth, research and good old fassioned gut instinct. Yet in order to ‘get along’ the most comfortable option is to accept the illogical explanations we are given for absurdly obvious errors in perception and fact. 

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term that describes the level of discomfort we feel at the inconsistency of the narrative… Our minds need to resolve the agitation, so we can either seek truth, recognize the lies and reject them out of hand, putting us at odds with society, or we can accept the BS, drink the cool aid and fall into a state pretty well described by George Orwell in '1984' as ‘Doublethink’. 

As I write this longwinded, unqualified exploration I am beginning to realize, that I have been drawn into arguments with people who are fully engaged in the art of Doublethink, by challenging them I have introduced a state of Cognitive Dissonance that needs to be resolved. So therefore with ‘peace of mind’ as their objective the solution is to silence the agitator, restore the narrative, rationalize with more illogical and irrelevant explanations and excuses and move as quickly as possible back to the state of bliss that only the deliberately ignorant can know. 

Of course there’s another Pill metaphor from a popular movie that relates very clearly with the theme of Cognitive Dissonance:

Image © 1999 Warner Bros., The Matrix

This train of thought was spurred by a conversation with Midnight Oil fans who went to see the band in concert recently. I found the idea of watching Peter Garret singing those old songs absolutely abhorrent yet others appeared to experience no internal conflict around the obviously glaring conflict between his onstage performances and his real life betrayal of the ideas he sings about.  Peter Garret was a member of the Australian Government for a short time during which he made decisions which appeared to be in complete contrast to the values many of us believed he had. 

I'd really like to explore this idea further, as it has so many implications and applies to so many situations but will probably  leave it at this... just a musing I had to spew forth. ;) 


So It's back to the wheel we go.

The fortress of all we know

Just now while I was supposed to be doing something related to work, I was thinking.
My back hurts and  just how difficult it can be to communicate honestly with folk. How averse people can be to honest discourse. So many pretenses to manage, reputation, status etc... beliefs to defend and whatnot. Not much room for old 'Dangle Bells and his fool talk.
As I cycled home last night desperate for something... anything... I came across these posters. 
Let it never be said the Big Guy doesn't have a sense of humor!

Miracle Healers

This week is turning out to be one of those crazy times, once again I've looked around for allies.... I ...test the water of their friendship with my toe and once again wonder how I managed to place myself on a barren street corner naked and without a decent shrub to hide behind (figuratively speaking)

With my mp3 player on random loop some inspiring songs call sense to me, then along comes Jed with his Bernie LaPante quote!  

"You remember when I said how I was gonna explain about life, buddy? Well the thing about life is, it gets weird. People are always talking ya about truth. Everybody always knows what the truth is, like it was toilet paper or somethin', and they got a supply in the closet. But what you learn, as you get older, is there ain't no truth. All there is is bullshit, pardon my vulgarity here. Layers of it. One layer of bullshit on top of another. And what you do in life like when you get older is, you pick the layer of bullshit that you prefer and that's your bullshit, so to speak."  - Bernie LaPante (Hero 1992)

 And I look around at it all, the people, the situations the current affairs of my fellow, fellows and ladies and squatters and lords and dogs and I wonder why? Why does it always come to this? Why am I always looking for proof that something, anything is actually TRUE?

And then Adyanshanti appears on the fb. and he says:

“I have found over the years of working with people, even people who have had very deep and profound awakenings, that most people have a fear of being truthful, of really being honest—not only with others, but with themselves as well. Of course, the core of this fear is that most people know intuitively that if they were actually totally truthful and totally sincere and honest, they would no longer be able to control anybody.
We can not control somebody with whom we have been truthful. We can only control people if we tell half-truths, if we shave down what is true. When we tell the total truth, our inside is suddenly on the outside. There’s nothing hidden anymore. For most human beings, being that exposed brings up incredible fear. Most people walk around thinking, “My god, if anybody could look inside of me, if anybody could see what is happening in there, what my fears are, what my doubts are, what my truths are, what I really perceive, they would be horrified.”
Most people are protecting themselves. They are holding a lot of things in. They are not living honest, truthful, and sincere lives, because if they were to do so, they would have no control. Of course, they don’t have control anyway, but they would have no illusion of control, either.”
~ Adyashanti

The last few words of Jed before I leave... "You know it's a sewer, and you want out!"

 And I remember it's kind of Zen and does anyone get that? and he said "Zen really grinds my nuts!"

I did have a chance meeting, a glimmer of hope, of something unusual...  A lost dog, a brief conversation... something interesting, something new.... goodbye. 


There are many things happening over this coming week, a rally against the closure of Aboriginal Communities, vigils to prevent the removal of children to Nauru... but tonight I pray for the people on death row in Indonesia.

Tomorrow the Indonesian Government intend to follow through with the execution of 9 prisoners, including Australian's Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. God have mercy on their souls, and while he's at it save the West Papuans from their oppressors guns and the refugees from our, so called, protection and care!

Pedaling the dream

Sometimes I get into arguments... my wife reminds me not to get stirred up and importantly, not to cause unnecessary discomfort to others. In frustration, when I used to argue a lot, she would say to me "Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy?". I get it I really do get why sometimes it is more important to keep the peace rather than be guided by my pride deeper into a battle of wills with everyone around me. But what about when the argument is not to impose my own opinion on others but to find out. What is the truth?

What if the question became: "Do you want the truth? Or do you want to be happy?"
I'm sure from time to time most of us would prefer to continue believing a beautiful lie than face the ugly truth but does that make the foundation for a whole way of life? Is it even possible to go through life ignoring truth in favor of illusion?

I've just watched a surprising film which, without completely phsycho analizing the situation, takes a look at how Lance Armstrong (The cyclist) managed to deceive cycling fans around the world by claiming not to have used any performance enhancing drugs or blood doping etc... in order to win 7 Tour de France cycle races. He became a national hero in the USA and a champion for people throughout the world who have suffered from cancer. A Hero! I think that word explains a lot. What is a hero? Who makes heroes? Could he have deceived the world if we hadn't actually wanted to be deceived?

The film didn't set out to destroy him, his reputation is already in tatters, but it did provide some insight into just how easily people can be fooled into believing something if they really want to believe it, regardless of the facts.

There were certain themes in George Orwell's book '1984' which have bitten deeply into me and won't let go! Whenever I sense an issue becoming a matter of 'popular opinion' I brace myself to be engulfed by psychic bubble of delusion. Opinions abound, uninformed opinions, affirmed by mass media and confirmed by one eyed reports narrowly channeled quoting limited sources, asserted portions of some half-baked notion. Brought to you on morning news TV but your opinion counts so your Tweets are entered into the mix! And the story always resolves to support the righteousness of the mob. Truth is not the objective, compliance as always, the primary directive, masses conforming to the approved narrative packaged and distributed through 1,000 news aggregates and passed off as fact. Simple and dramatic is the imperative, someone to condemn, someone to pity, someone to shame and despise... Us and them... If you ain't with us you're against us and on she rolls, The News. The clamor for approval and togetherness and "Are you Happy now?"

Truth? What is truth?

We are a herd animal, we naturally seek approval and acceptance of others. For our survival, social cohesion is undeniably important. Why would anyone choose to swim against the current? Under these conditions who would choose to oppose the herd? There are names for those who stupidly prefer to seek truth rather than acceptance. Heretic... Traitor... Fool etc...

But when she asks me "Do you want to be right? or do you want to be happy?" I have to bite my tongue, I keep my answer to myself! 

3:30am

3:30am,
I woke with a headache and a crystalline vision in my mind.

I HATE this Australian government, because:
They are proof beyond all doubt that there is no enlightened future for the human race. We are doomed to go down clambering for power, clutching at wealth and personal reward, stepping on the heads of our fellows as our civilisation crumbles.
When we had the opportunity to cooperate and work together in a united effort to realise our great potential and when we most needed enlightened leaders, they gave us self interested autocratic fascists.
And so this is how we will end!
And when the going gets tough the Australian people will light a BBQ and cook their neighbors for dinner.

It is the truth about us which keeps us in a state of constant denial. When we see it clearly our hearts sink and we tremble with dread. Better to live in a hopeful lie than accept that reality. 

There is no magical future where The Scientists solve all the problems we have created. There is only now and the decisions we make NOW. We chose a heavy night on the piss, burned all blueprints for a sane future in one final lust filled romp with no looking back, slept through the alarm and didn't wake up in the morning. The cupboard has been eaten bare, weevils are in the rice and the well is dry (or contaminated with fracking waste...) 

Good Night.

A fool to believe...

I recently posted a rambling rant on truth...

Maha Maya (with thanks)

But... what do I know about truth? I'd rather look on my beloved Maya. Isn't she beautiful?
p.s. I sent the other post back to Draft where it can stare at itself forever.

ABSURD!

Today I had an awakening. Thought I'd better post it before it disappears down the crack with the socks, the key to my bike lock and the USB flash drive I needed the other day!

Being compelled to look for meaning in the world and being constantly confused or even disappointed by what I discover one word keeps appearing in my mind (well only when I'm capable of being philosophical, other times I just feel sorry for myself because I'm convinced that nothing makes sense and the point of it all continually eludes me and so on). The word is: Absurd.

When trying to describe the unusual things that happen in an average day at work the only word that I've found that truly describes it is Absurd. Today after one or two Absurd incidents, but not enough to create any great agitation or distress I had time to contemplate the general situation. Absurd lept into my head and just danced around on it's own as if it was at home in there. I pondered it for quite a while. I remember reading the word somewhere in a book I was into... or maybe it was one of those damned Jed McKenna audio books. I don't remember and it doesn't matter! The point is that when I consider situations to be Absurd my reaction to them changes instantly. My consciousness shifts I become free of judgement and expectation. 

I move from trying to apply logic to an illogical situation to complete acceptance. 

"Of course it doesn't make sense... It's Absurd!"

I looked the word up online

Here's a definition of the word:

Absurd

1. Ridiculously incongruous or unreasonable. See Synonyms at foolish

2. Of, relating to, or manifesting the view that there is no order or value in human life or in the universe.

3. Of or relating to absurdism or the absurd.

n.

 Then I found a reference to the word 'Absurdism' on Wikipedia. Now we're talking about a philosophy! I read on...

 ...In philosophy "the Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...

Line by line the entry describes all the thought processes I've experienced while pondering the seriousness of 'Life the Universe and Everything', it goes on to quote Soren Kierkegaard and Albert Kamus and they describe so many of the concepts I am continually wrestling with... and they wrestle with them and come to different conclusions... or maybe temporary positions. I'm blown away by the familiarity of it all. Maybe because it's the eternal question that is hardwired into us all, or maybe because I've read some Kamus and his writing is laced with the same propositions. Or maybe it was that bloody Jed McKenna fucking with my head! Probably a combination of all really.
Or maybe I was subliminally programmed with it years ago when I was reading 'Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galazy'.

Reading on...

...As a philosophy, absurdism thus also explores the fundamental nature of the Absurd and how individuals, once becoming conscious of the Absurd, should respond to it...

A solution! Awesome! And the solution is intuitive when confronted with the idea that Absurd is not a defective position but actually the reality of the state of our very existence and all that we've done and all that we are... and didn't Pink Floyd already write about it in their song Eclipse (The Dark Side of the Moon)? 

I start thinking about Kamus and how his books left me feeling too much of the empty depressing, It's OK to know about Absurdity but how do you live in a constant state of Absurd awareness?  Then I read the conflicting perspective of Kierkegaard and how he felt a belief in something beyond the Absurd such as religious acceptance of intangible and unprovable thing could transcend the hopeless state that perpetual awareness of the Absurdity of life can cause. A legitimate escape from the, too heavy truth. And I realize I've discovered this myself through my own experience and I know it's true! Far out! This is freaking me out!

I can't believe it's taken me so long to discover this! 

Absurdity, a cosmos without meaning and God consciousness can coexist! Just don't forget at the end of the day that it is absolutely Absurd! 

I'm gonna go and listen to Bob Marley singing Three Little Birds and sleep like a baby tonight. In the words of Napoleon Dynamite's brother Kip... "Peace Out!"

...an unflinching gaze on the world...

The book Sam is currently reading 'We all fall down' by Peter Barry has an interesting blurb on the front cover.

'A novel that speaks to the heart of our culture, and a gripping account of one man's fight for his soul. Both honest and compassionate it turns an unflinching gaze on the world in which we try to find meaning, at work and in love.' This post is not about the book... or even the blurb really. It's just a bit of a rant about an idea and nothing much came of it. (Oh and she said the book is pretty good if you're interested)

When Sam read the blurb to me my first response was to dismiss it as cliche' New-agey rubbish. Overloading a statement about work and love with overly heavy focus of finding meaning in the world... (I think I cringed most because sometimes when I think I've written something OK I read it and it sounds like that)

I thought about it a bit more and the first part played on my mind. Then I started to wonder...

The bit that caught my imagination was this. 'An unflinching gaze...', '...on the world in which we try to find meaning...'

I just started thinking about sight, seeing, vision, perception, reality, truth and illusions, beliefs, religion and lies.

Delirious from lack of sleep, yet again, my mind tripped across what it might mean to have an 'unflinching gaze' at anything... Recently most of my interactions with people I know regarding matters of spirituality, community, truth and the abundance of flimsy facades in their likeness etc... have lead me to consider that most people, nearly all that I have spoken with, are incapable of seeing the world in any other way than through the filters they have chosen to view it. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, actually I think that's how reality is created.

Stupidly I recently made the enormous social error of holding people to account for the ideals they espouse. What a stupid thing to do! (A bad idea considering I may be the worlds greatest hypocrite!) Of course I have discovered that there is a big difference between seeking truth and claiming to know it. I should have known that challenging the position of people who believe themselves to be right would only anger them. Rule ONE... Don't ruin people's illusions! After all reality is subjective but nobody wants to have their reality deconstructed in the vain and useless search for Truth, which may only be someone elses illusion anyway! 

If we are expected to live our lives grounded in reality, and reality hinges entirely on our perception, then it only makes sense that regardless of the falseness of our beliefs we would defend these illusions with all our might! So it's no wonder my dear righteous friends would rather I left their company without explanation than have their virtuous philosophy questioned. (And I did)

Seeing is believing.

When it comes to human vision I've heard there is a phenomenon of the human mind which prioritizes and sorts the information received from the eye in terms of relevance to the needs of the viewer. Gestalt theory explains how our minds are programed to sort visual information. The kind of programing that allows us to spot friends out of a crowd or identify potential dangers at a glance, while the mind sees, assesses and then ignores other information that it deems insignificant or predictable. Another trick I've heard our minds tend to do is fill in the blanks... i.e. at a glance we may build a mental image based only on glancing part of an object like the front of a car protruding from a corner. Peripheral vision is fairly limited but I've heard that the brain fills in the edges. Cool eh.

"The hand is quicker than the eye". Magicians have learned how to exploit our selective vision and have created many tricks that still baffle their audiences, even tricks that have been used for many years continue to confound. Even though we are able to admit that a magician got one over us, most of us would prefer to believe that what we perceive is the world as it is, rather than as we choose to see it. I know I do. I can't help it! When I studied to be a Park Ranger I had to learn scientific names of a book full of local plants. Pretty soon I was seeing the world through the eyes of a botanist (I've since forgotten most of them). I exchanged my naive romantic concepts of trees shrubs and flowers for a more scientific view... But was that Truth? I like to ride my bicycle to and from work. I travel along the same roads as 100s of drivers every morning and afternoon but my experience of the journey is very different to theirs. I see the road differently and I view other cyclists differently. When I read the abusive comments made about cyclists in the newspaper I read them from my perspective as a cyclist. People will often claim to know what is real and I guess they are all correct, at least until they change their mind.

I've always liked Bruce Springsteen's twist on an Edgar Alan Poe quote. In his song Magic Springsteen wrote the lyrics:   "...Trust none of what you hear

                            And less of what you see..."

(Now that's Magic!)

What is so interesting about this 'unflinching gaze'?  Well as I thought about just the two layers of interference between the eye and the consciousness it's likely we rarely see the vaguest outline of Truth in our lives. We are so convinced by what our brain has conjured, filling in the gaps and selectively ignoring what our own eyes see that we are unable to recognize Truth when it stares us in the face! It's possible that we simply just can't do it! So as I pondered this inability to perceive without judgement or prejudice I wondered what it would be like to 'Gaze Unflinching' at the world without trying to 'find meaning'. Then it sunk in. HOLY SHIT!

Who would willingly have their heart burned out through their eye balls for the sake of finding the Truth? Better to live comfortably in our reality, complete with doubt and confusion, fed on flimsy constructions of false promises and half arsed rationalizations; clinging to the barest bones of hope and trusting our superior intellect than to face Truth. Sorry guys I should never have questioned you. Please go back to cut and pasting all the meaning you can stick together and float peacefully over the horizon into paradise... There's nothing wrong with that after all.

But I have to say as far as honesty, truth, love, beauty go I'd rather spend a week looking at a 4 year old's finger painting than listen to 5 minutes of your rationalization.

Peace.