Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Awakening to Fictional Realities...






I received many email questions regarding my previous post Your Fictional New World Order (with thanks to disinfo.com for reposting) and so I would like to further elucidate points made in that post.

A fictional reality is something that is not factual, but engaged with as if it were an undeniable fact and that, thereby, sculpts facts to fit the fiction. 

Factual things are constructed to support fictional realities and entire lives unfold almost entirely through fictions. A need for food is a bodily fact, but grocery stores and restaurants are fictional realities ingeniously constructed to manage factual hunger in fictional ways that we find more satisfying and pleasurable. Hunger is a fact. The many ways we assuage hunger is based on fiction. Starving Ethiopians have no fictional realities regarding hunger.

To live in a fictional reality requires the “willing suspension of disbelief.”

If suspension of disbelief were not possible, fictions such as society, career, marriage, money, government, war, love, truth, etc, etc, etc, on and on ad nauseam, would not be possible. Entire technologies have been invented to support fictions that require the use of factual objects to make the fictional reality a fact. A house, made of physical materials, is a fact, but a “home” is entirely fictional, as are all the factual objects we perpetually stuff into a house to support the fictional reality of a “home.”

However, all fictional realities begin with the most complex fiction of all, that you are a factual “self,” and from that fiction all subsequent fictions magically unfold. 

Belief in a fictional world demands belief in the greatest fiction of all…that you have a 'self' and that 'self' is a seriously indisputable fact and not a fictional reality. You can touch a factual body, but you cannot touch a fictional 'self.'  Hence, this demands chronic, daily self-actualizing through fictional realities to maintain and manage the 'self' as factual.

If the self were to finally be recognized as a fiction, all other fictions would crumble of the weight of their own insignificance, since it was the fictional ‘self’ from which all other fictions were invented. A fictional ‘self’ must constantly be “actualized” to maintain and manage it as an actual fact. The fictional reality of a ‘society’ provides a menu of fictional self-actualizing avenues and paths. A fictional ‘self’ that can no longer be actualized through the fictional realities available through the social menu of fictions becomes a burden to the fictional "society." If the fictional self defies or negates the available menu of self-actualizing fictions, it must be silenced or made to conform (hence, the Snowden affair). The killing spree of Charles Manson was based on fictional realities. But then, so was the military occupation and bombing of Iraq.

As a psychotherapist (fiction), my job is to assist people in managing their personal fictions, because they believe, above and beyond all other fictions, that the 'self' they identify with is factual and not fictional. If they did not believe the “self” a fact, I would be out of work. If I were to emphasize the exact nature of their fictional realities I would also be out of work. Hence, I (a fiction) work delicately with the fragile fictional realities of the fictional selves I meet with, because I recognize the lack of free-will in those attached to the fictional realities of a fictional self. Essentially, in one way or another, we are all victimized by the very fictions we require be factual and this includes the fictional 'self.'

Frequently, there are certain facts that cause fictions to become impossible to maintain. There have been reports of fictional selves who commit suicide because they lost all their fictional "money" in a fictional reality called the “stock market.” In addition, if a fictional self becomes suddenly inflicted with a factually debilitating disease or severe physical disability, then numerous fictional realities may need to be discarded and this is often  highly traumatic for a fictional self, thereby, requiring other fictions through which to actualize it “self” as a fact. Fictional “careers” can be terminated instantly, due to sudden alterations in other fictional realities (i.e. fictional “economy”). Fictionally paired units, called “marriages” could be rent asunder for various reasons, subsequently, taking down with it all the fictional appendages necessary to maintain the fictional reality of “marriage” and “family” that is the cohesive, but purely fictional, micro-tapestry of a fictional macro “society.” Egocentrica mammalians have grave difficulty adapting to changes in fictional realities that become necessary due to changes in factual realities. This is apparent in the numerous ways egocentrica mammalians seek to conserve their fictional “way of life.”

“Society” is an expansive fiction containing myriad other intricately interlocking fictions from which fictional selves function through fictional purposes. It has fictional rules and boundaries that fictional selves agree are fact. The “United States of America” is a fictional reality. It is a fiction that fictional selves agree on as fact, with fictional boundaries, as well as fictional “armies” (factually large groups of fictional selves with factual weapons) and fictional “governments” for which to protect those boundaries. Hence, fictional selves proclaim all people on this side of the fictional boundary “citizens” and those on that side “aliens.” Essentially, if there were no fictional boundaries on a factual planet, there could be no wars. If I cannot locate the enemy within fictional borders, I might accidentally bomb those who agree with my fictional reality and that would suck.

“Terrorism” has become one the most incredible fictional realities ever devised by human egocentrica mammalia. Since there are no fictional borders anyone can be considered a terrorist, requiring ever more abundant fictional "laws" serving to identify a fictional terroroist. This makes it that much easier to control everyone through the predominant fictional reality of fighting fictional "terrorism."

Anything created to support a fiction, must itself be fictional (even though it may have factual properties) and, hence, we exist in a complex spinning vortex of contradictory fictions. Many fictional “citizens” fear their fictional “boundaries” may dissolve and this would require defining their fictional selves in new ways. A fictional “self” could not consider itself as a fictional “American” if the fictional boundaries on a map were not believed, protected and reinforced by fictional authorities with fictional laws and factual guns. A “war” is also completely fictional and it requires that boundaries between fictional “states” be agreed upon by fictional “citizens” existing within those borders.

Egocentrica Mammalians are more concerned with conserving their fictional realities, culminating in fictitious “lifestyles,” then with conserving their factual resources. The “American way of life” is entirely fictional and is a tenuous and fragile weaving together of fictional values and moralities that often require fictional selves endure factual death to protect.

“Christianity” is a fictional story used as a foundation to construct fictional laws for which to maintain order and preserve boundaries. This is why fictional selves proclaim that we are a “Christian nation,” totally forgetting that a “nation” is as fictional as the “God” who blesses our bombs, but not the bombs of that other fictional “nation” over there. The fiction of an omnipotent being in the sky, demanding that you not covet your neighbor’s wife, was merely a necessary fiction to ensure the sanctity of fictional marriages, which serves to bind a fictional “society” together. "Thou shalt not steal" serves to protect the property that we amass to reinforce our fictional realities.

However, currently we are observing a gradual dissolution of fictional realities. A collective awakening to fictional realities is picking up steam. 

Unfortunately, this is resulting in a push by those fictional “selves” who strongly desire to conserve their specific fictional realities. As the fictions that bind a fictional “society” together begin to lose their relevance, chaos ensues because a fictional ‘self’ no longer has any fooking idea what its fictional purpose is, because any purpose a fictional self would have must be, subsequently, fictional and provided only within the fictional “boundaries” that make up the fictional “society” in which it resides.

In many places fictional governments have fallen and new fictional governments take control and perpetuate alternative fictions with fictional laws. Those who disagree with the new fictional laws, invented to maintain and impose order on the fictional selves in a particular fictional society, then seek to overturn that fictional government so as to impose their own fictions as fact. This has been a never-ending theme of fictional selves existing within fictional boundaries and may continue on ad infinitum.

It does appear that conserving fictions is egocentrica mammalias sole purpose for existing and most of the suffering apparent in the world today is related to protecting fictional realities. 

In fact, recall that the fiction of “banks,” invented to manage large sums of fictional “money,” required billions of fictional “dollars,” collected from the fictional “taxes” of fictional selves existing within fictional boundaries, or “society, in order to preserve the fiction of “banking,” considered the cornerstone of a fictional “economy,” which tends to make some fictional selves enjoy the comfort of fictional “wealth,” while others exist in fictional “poverty.”

Nevertheless, the United States was created, by a bunch of fictional selves writing a fictional “constitution” (on a factual piece of parchment) to allow for numerous different fictional realities to exist in some form of peace and harmony. This revered fictional “constitution” made the bold claim that all fictional selves had the right to a factual life with fictional “liberty” and the factual pursuit of fictional “happiness.” The idea was to allow people to have the freedom to invent their own fictional realities without the need to conform to the fictional “nations” fictional “way of life” as ordained by a fictional “dictator” or “king.”

However, living in a fictional “society” in which all fictional realities are equal was very problematic, because fictional selves have a tendency to demand their fictional reality be seen as factual truth and will factually kill non-believers of that predominant fiction. Yet, this problem was easily solved through a fictional system referred to as “capitalism.”

Capitalism is a fiction that claims that the chief purpose of a fictional self is to generate as much fictional “money,” or fictional “wealth,” as possible and, hence, those fictional selves with the most fictional “wealth” have the fictional power to direct the fictional society. Thusly, the fiction of capitalism trumped all other fictional realities and this was seen as advantageous with regard to the horrors endured through centuries of fictional “religions.”

With the fiction of “capitalism” (actually derived from and supported by the fiction of Christianity”) egocentrica mammalians now had a serious fictional purpose, which serves as cohesive glue for fictional “citizens” and maintains and manages the functioning of those fictional selves in a fictional society. This seemed to be the purpose of the fictional constitution, in which all fictional realities could coexist harmoniously and you could worship any fictional “God” you wanted as long as the basic conduct of your life conformed to the fiction of capitalism, or fictional “wealth” creation, no matter which part you played, titan of industry or welfare queen.

Yet, alas, it is the fate of all fictions to have the curtain pulled back, seeing it as nothing more than a naked fiction, with no factual properties whatsoever and often only serving to hide the facts. The problem is that the fictional “self” has very few options left for ordering its fictional “societies” because, as can be seen throughout history, when one fictional reality is destroyed the fictional reality that takes its place is often as fictionally absurd as the one that ended (as can be seen by the dictatorial and oppressive presence the fiction of “capitalism” is now evolving into).

Is there a factual reality that fictions cover up? Is egocentrica mammalia so frightened of the factual reality that he must construct fictional realities to hide from fact? Is egocentrica mammalia cursed with the inability to SEE fact and must only see his conjured up fictions?

Many human egocentrica mammalians continue to perpetuate the belief that there is a better fictional reality that fictional selves can one day realize if we only destroy the current fictional reality that is much worse than the better fictional reality

However, there are fictional selves out there that have developed the unique capacity to separate fact from fiction and they have started with the “self,” in the recognition that there is no need to go any further than that fictional reality.


Artwork by Mark Ryden



Saturday, November 2, 2013

Recreational Swimming in the Primordial Soup





Once upon a time, a Big Bang happened and you had no choice in that. 

This resulted in an expanding universe that unfolded regardless of whether you wanted it to or not. Then cooled protons and neutrons did their usual thing by crashing into one another and in a short 380,000 yrs matter cooled down a bit and there was a period of darkness, after which stars and galaxies formed and, of course, you had no choice in that either. Some days you may wish you were dead (post-modern society is pretty much the walking dead), but because this sheit happened as it did, you were allowed to live.

The solar system you reside in formed up about 9 billion years after the BB and is about 4.6 billion yrs old. The planet you reside on began popping out simple organic compounds in a “soup” from which more complex organic compounds formed.


You could not have changed or altered this sequence of events, simply because “you” did not exist. But you were in that primordial soup, nonetheless, and the entire sequence of events would one day result in the “you” that you are right now. But, it all had to happen exactly as it did for you to reach this very moment that you’re now in.


Of course, my description is highly simplistic; because there was all kindsa crazy sheit going down before “you” were non-volitionally thrust into the world in the form you are in now and, alas, you had no choice in any of it. However, from this organic soup “you” would eventually make your appearance, although you would go through many forms before appearing as “you” do now and how you appear now you had ZERO choice in altering or redirecting in anyway. You had no choice in your current body type, nor in the formation of the first neuron that arose from the embryonic goop that was eventually to cluster up in a tangled web of circuitry in your brain, providing millions of “thought” impulses that have, for years, resulted in action (albeit, mostly useless, but with justifying circuitry also in place).

But you proudly assert that you have a choice in what happens to you. You actually claim that you have the power to alter your destiny, as if the universe suddenly, in exasperation with your fooking complaints, said “okay fine! Do whatever you want. I set thee free” You negate the power of billions of eons of unfolding life, by demanding that you now have a say in what happens to you and that you have the power to shape a destiny that you had no power to initiate and no choice in leaving.

Life has been causally unfolding long before you existed and the direction you now take is as causally predetermined as the primordial soup that, over billions of years, would eventually grant you the capacity to manifest.

Without the Big Bang you’d be without a big brain and without a big brain, you would not be experiencing the very “thought” impulses that you are this very minute.

So in what way are your “thought” impulses separate from this predetermined order giving you the power, external from that order, to experience electro-chemical "thought" impulses, completely free and autonomous from that predetermined causal order?

If you had no personal responsibility for the manifestation of the universe and the direction it took resulting in the manifestation of “you,” how is it you now suddenly have personal responsibility for the direction you are currently on? Where is the causal order taking you based on the autonomous choices you believe you make every day? Did the predetermined causal order dupe you into thinking you had personal responsibility for your existence after it granted you that existence? Is the predetermined causal order having a good laugh at your expense? 

Ha!

The rise and fall of entire civilizations had to occur for you to exist today. Millions of generations had to live and die and billions of people had to interact exactly as they did to bring you to this very moment. If certain specific interactions did not occur the year before you were born, "you" would NOT exist. Your parents and their parents and their parents before them, and all those who existed prior, needed to engage reality exactly as they did for you to exist exactly as you now do. As our illustrious president proclaims…”you didn’t build that.”


Events and situations must have occurred exactly the way they did for you to experience this very moment and every following moment will occur exactly as it must for the next to occur exactly as it will and this process is infinite, beginning before your birth and continuing on after the worms have consumed you. 


Every generation before you had to think the exact thoughts they did, resulting in the exact conditions necessary for you to exist and have the thoughts you have in this moment. You had no choice in anything that preceded you and you have no choice in what follows, because what follows is determined by what preceded. There is no cause and effect, because every cause is itself a cause. The sequence is infinite. Cause is the cause of the cause.

Every neuro-circuit in your grey matter is genetically predetermined and every thought impulse that arises in your brain entirely inevitable. The next thought that arises is as inevitable as the last. You are an inevitable product of an unfolding predetermined causal reality and you have no WILL separate from that infinitely unfolding process and your belief that you have an autonomous will that is free of that causal order is caused by that order and there is absolutely NO possibility of escape, because even escape would be preordained.


There are no coincidences in your life. Everything experienced and everything learned had to be learned and experienced exactly as it did for you to have this moment exactly as it is right this moment. 


There are no random events and nothing occurs by chance. Everyone you have met and every single interaction had to occur exactly as it did to get here now. Every trauma and every joy was merely waiting to manifest exactly as it did and much more is still waiting and will appear when the variables and factors are aligned exactly as they must for that experience to be engaged as it must and will be.


Can you see the pattern?


Not one thought impulse in your grey matter has occurred autonomous from the causal order that makes it possible to "think" at all. Every thought that results in a choice being made will be thought exactly as it must so that the choice can be made by you as you must make it.

So relax, kick back, make choices, do things, feel proud, be disappointed, get irate, laugh a lot, demand to be free and then die.

It’s all predetermined.