{"id":641,"date":"2012-08-24T17:51:36","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T01:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=641"},"modified":"2012-08-24T17:51:36","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T01:51:36","slug":"confabulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=641","title":{"rendered":"Confabulations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cConfabulation<\/a>\u201d as I learned about it almost 50 years ago is a neurological condition (when it\u2019s done flagrantly) in which people are not obviously demented, but will immediately spin out a plausible story, a pseudo-memory, and sincerely feel that it happened. What occurred to me some years back is that (1) this is what happens all the time in dreams; (2) authors of fiction learn to tap into this potential and structure it so that it\u2019s plausible; and (3) seemingly normal people create pseudo-memories about their own lives and do so quite unconsciously, sincerely believing that their very selected and shaped \u201cmemories\u201d are true reports. Sometimes these serve the need to believe that the past was rosy (the good old days), unlike the more mixed present; or that the past was tough (we had to walk to school 4 miles in the snow barefoot), so they could feel proud of their past stamina and victimhood; or that everything wrong is due to whatever scapegoat supports one\u2019s political prejudice, etc. These are all confabulations, if you look at them carefully and recognize the spectrum of illusion that operates in the world. <\/p>\n

To illustrate this, I dared to publish online on my website a number of webpages under the category of Confabulations: A Journal of (Very) Speculative Philosophy<\/em>. It\u2019s a bit of a satire. I was deeply influenced not only by MAD comic book\u2014later a magazine\u2014but the whole comic-cartoon tradition. Indeed, this pseudo-online-journal is a thinly-veiled sublimation of my doodles, rationally explaining them as if this were a \u201ctrue\u201d explanation. Huh, doggone it if the explanations don\u2019t make some sense!<\/p>\n

My journal is also an indirect way to spread some of my philosophical musings that are still pretty half-baked. I don\u2019t bother to fully bake them, just spew them out with the doodle-cartoon-illustrations that, along with the commentary, present \u201cphilosophical speculations.\u201d When you call them that, they have more status than pure drivel or flagrant blather.<\/p>\n

But in another way, it\u2019s all a bit of fun! Or a kind of art form! I mean, these doodles have to mean something! Of course they do\u2014they are \u201cchanneled\u201d messages from the guiding sprites (sic) (not spirits, but sprites) beyond this dimension who ornament my life. They would yours, too, if you would invite them to do so, but there are few of us tapping into this rich psychic resource. Ah, that\u2019s enough for now. I\u2019ve said too much already. They\u2019re gonna come and take me away. (To where?) To the booby hatch! (You fool, to remind you of a line of the comedian Mel Brooks playing the role of Doctor Hollywood on a comdey record around 1969\u2014the Two Thousand Year Old Man\u2014I, a highly qualified actual official high-falutin\u2019 psychiatrist\u2014I am the guy who gets to say who\u2019s crazy and who\u2019s just \u201cfoolin\u2019 around!) Can you do that? Hey, I\u2019ve just done it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cConfabulation\u201d as I learned about it almost 50 years ago is a neurological condition (when it\u2019s done flagrantly) in which people are not obviously demented, but will immediately spin out a plausible story, a pseudo-memory, and sincerely feel that it happened. What occurred to me some years back is that (1) this is what happens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foolin","category-play-and-spontaneity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641"}],"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=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}