{"id":1780,"date":"2014-05-06T10:57:01","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T18:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=1780"},"modified":"2014-05-06T10:57:02","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T18:57:02","slug":"the-truth-of-truth-or-is-it-delusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=1780","title":{"rendered":"The Truth of Truth (or Is It Delusion?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAha, it all comes clear!\u201d Such is the compelling feeling of what I heard called an \u201cepiphanous delusion\u201d that is a hallmark of paranoid schizophrenia. (See the Wikipedia on Apophany<\/a>.) Or mystical insight. Or for that matter, any compelling insight or convergence of notions. Some of these can seem crazy to others, and some indeed may be flat wrong. More commonly, this \u201cinsight\u201d often is the main thing going on with human thought. The unconscious is great at making things make sense. It\u2019s called \u201cthe Gestalt function.\u201d <\/p>\n

One\u2019s model of the world can really seem coherent\u2014and the operative word is \u201cseem.\u201d Notions  are combined together along with an intuition of verisimilitude\u2014what we feel in our dreams that draw us on\u2014this is really happening. I must respond to it!\u2014this is a pervasive tool of Maya, the goddess of illusion\u2014for want of a better way to describe it.<\/p>\n

This tendency to believe what seems so, what makes good sense, is one of the deepest and most pervasive human instincts. The human mind is driven by simple and complex instincts\u2014the latter, complex instincts, also being called \u201carchetypes\u201d by the analytical psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. A major, deep, unconscious instinct is the attribution of absolute reality to experience: Things thus seem not only real but also compelling: There\u2019s a strong call to do something about this. Walk further along this hall. Pack up your things that fell out of your suitcase. Fight that enemy. You, know, the stuff that wraps you ever-tighter into a dream-story.<\/p>\n

The point is that this dynamic is only slightly diluted and in some ways more compelling in states of mind we call being awake. Simpler minds not prone to much doubting may be seduced by a notion. It can be gripping and generate addictions, delusions (which take hallucinations a bit too seriously), prejudices, doctrines, ideologies, beliefs, systems of belief, and so forth. <\/p>\n

The clue here is the dis-inclination to doubt. The effort to doubt, the effort to systematically investigate our doubts, is an aesthetic that pervades good science. Pseudo-science uses scientific methods or superficial practices to prove things about which one has no doubts, or at time things one knows not to be true. The devil can quote scripture, as someone observed.<\/p>\n

But folks are dis-inclined to doubt that which is somewhat persuasive, by virtue of its internal consistency, but more because it is believed by people whom one respects. The passivity or laziness of mind should not be overestimated. The state of deep physical relaxation and its corresponding feeling of okay-ness may confirm the okay-ness of the unfolding story of the dream, a story that becomes quickly implausible and often largely forgotten upon awakening.<\/p>\n

(I get a bit poetic here talking about God and destiny, but I don\u2019t know how else to imply my impression that it\u2019s \u201cmeant\u201d to be this way\u2014that this is part of the design.) I think this is God\u2019s way of suggesting to us that the mind works this way, if only we\u2019ll recognize it, re-cognize being re-thinking, or properly interpreting. It\u2019s not just a common mystery: Dreams are there to remind us that we dream deeply, not so deeply, and much of our awake-state are dreamings-lite. It\u2019s a call\u2014well, this is but one very possibly wacky interpretation\u2014to call our dreams into question, and call much of what we consider real into question as well. How else will God get this message to evolving humanity?<\/p>\n

We had to evolve enough to think, to dream, to create culture based on our thinking-dreaming, and then to begin to think about our thinking itself\u2014meta-cognition. Also this is known as psychology, the study of psyche. It\u2019s only a couple of hundred years old and keeps evolving, just as our understanding of stuff\u2014physics, materials science\u2014is evolving. <\/p>\n

What if psychology begins to grasp what meditators in India have long known, that much of what we call real is indeed real\u2014but dreams are in one sense real\u2014we really dreamt that!\u2014but in another sense dreams are not real. And for that matter there are different levels of real so that what we think of as real often is illusion, or interpretation, or mis-understanding, or prejudice.<\/p>\n

Evidence is accumulating about the elusive nature of what most folks have taken for granted as truth. Of course he did it! I saw him do it! This basic kind of evidence has time and time again proven false as other evidence has emerged to show that who we thought did it was in fact somewhere else. And who really did it was someone else.  <\/p>\n

On Belief<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who would have thought that our perception and story-creating could be so plastic, so influenced by unconscious bias, by the need to please others or to appear clever or just to make sense out of impressions that are just crying out to be woven together\u2014the aforementioned Gestalt function\u2014even if they don\u2019t in fact go together. Scientists have been demonstrating this susceptibility of the mind to illusion for a century and more! But still we believe our eyes.<\/p>\n

I mean, it\u2019s obvious that the sun goes around the earth. I don\u2019t feel the earth moving, do you? Nope, it feels still. And flat. Okay, I bow to the experts, it\u2019s round. But it sure feels flat. And the numbers of illusions have multiplied and multiplied again, though most folks haven\u2019t yet gotten the idea. Maybe it\u2019ll take a few more hundred years, the growing widespread idea that we get fooled, fooled and fooled. We fool ourselves. Respected citizens consciously fool us. They don\u2019t admit it, sometimes even to themselves. It\u2019s advertising. It\u2019s publicity. It used to be called propaganda, but that word got tainted as something bad. <\/p>\n

Very very gradually folks are getting used to the idea that it is wicked to fool others, to lie, to cheat, to deceive. It\u2019s not so that \u201cbusiness is business\u201d is a justification of unethical business practices. It\u2019s immoral. Consciousness is very gradually raising in all these ways, though I can\u2019t guarantee that this trend will continue. Many people have significant incentives to lie, and if they can fool themselves while they do it, so much the better. (\u201cSlaves were happier that way!\u201d said innocently. Yeah, sure.)<\/p>\n

So this blog is just a drop in the ocean, or maybe the pond. What must be said again and again and again and again from many different quarters to raise the threshold of doubt? The mind is lazy and wants to believe. We want to settle into a stable belief system. It\u2019s not only easier, but it feels right, and it can\u2019t be wrong if it feels so right, right? To doubt is to struggle against our childish nature. Alas, that\u2019s what\u2019s up.<\/p>\n

Can we dare teach this in adolescence? 98% of mass media begs us to surrender our critical functions and for awhile just coast along with them. No harm done. Innocent fun. But of course, beyond (I\u2019m just making this number up) 33.4% it\u2019s no longer innocent. A bit of fantasy, maybe, but we sorta know it\u2019s fantasy. I am suggesting that the saturation of life with mass media generates an uncritical gullibility. Sure they\u2019re our friends. They entertain us. They smile at us. They don\u2019t hurt us. Well, they eat our wallets, but that don\u2019t hurt us, do it? <\/p>\n

Yes it does, and it\u2019s not the wallet-eating. It\u2019s the habit of opening our minds. But we want an open mind! There\u2019s a big difference between an open mind and letting your brains fall out, and that difference is obscured by the thousand gentle seductions of the mass media. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re only giving folks what they want? Yeah, the same argument can be made by those who manufacture concentrated alcohol and drugs, and any addictogenic stimuli. This is such a pervasive part of our culture that to challenge it seems to make us the equivalent of a pinch-faced abolitionist. Where\u2019s the mid-point? <\/p>\n

It\u2019s happening gradually with tobacco, at least in the USA. Is it happening elsewhere? How much? Ditto with all the other intoxicants and seductions. Dare we include sugar and sugared soft drinks? Television and mass media? Loud and intense music. The ethos of party and the entitlement to have fun\u2014not just a little, but a lot? Is there an ethos of moderation? I\u2019m chewing on many of these middle-ground problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAha, it all comes clear!\u201d Such is the compelling feeling of what I heard called an \u201cepiphanous delusion\u201d that is a hallmark of paranoid schizophrenia. (See the Wikipedia on Apophany.) Or mystical insight. Or for that matter, any compelling insight or convergence of notions. Some of these can seem crazy to others, and some indeed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26,13,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-psychology","category-spirituality-and-philosophy","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780\/revisions\/1781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}