I’m trying to imagine how my world view would change if I were abducted by aliens, or if there were other cultures of extraterrestrial civilizations to references the culture of in our own. It becomes so jarring to only live in this culture, it becomes delirium inducing, insanity inducing, to only have the frame of reference of a human being. I’ve been trying to break out of this frame of reference for as long as I have had the strength of independent thought, but it’s troubling to me. A lot of people seem to think that with radical individual thought, comes a sense of smug superiority, that I somehow think I am above everyone else in their opinion. This is exemplified by the expression of a fedora wearer, which is a popular meme to post to anyone showing individual thought. In the broader scheme it’s nothing more than tribalism and the suppression of individual thought for the purpose of group politics, group superiority, the power and control of the group.
In fact, I do not feel a sense of superiority, though I don’t assume everyone thought so by default of my thoughts. I in fact feel a deep sense of insecurity, I am a human being and I unsurprisingly yearn for a deep connection to a group. Being disconnected from group politics, by virtue perhaps of simply rejecting group identity, and group authority and power, I have a sense of being alone and lost in the world without support. This feeling manifests itself not only out of my debates that I have with others outside of my writings and inner thought. I feel out of effect of my inner thoughts, this sense of insecurity, though perhaps out of a more innate sense of anxiety. I know that I don’t induce a sense of anxiety on myself, that seems to be innate in me. While I do feel an innate sense of anxiety and always have, none the less my insecure thoughts revolve around my thoughts, though beyond words and logic, perhaps the underlying cause is more innate, as words and logic seem to be meaningless babble, when the illusion of meaning is stripped away.
My anxious thoughts may have pushed me to be uncomfortable with my perception of the world around me, causing me to question it though. Perhaps if you take away the idea of anxiety as some sort of medical term, and look at it more as a philosophical discomfort with ideas, it starts to make more sense. However the fact of the matter remains, that with anxiety, if you strip away all the ideas there will still be the inborn anxiety, causing all of these ideas to take form. It’s like a whirl pool, and all the thoughts that get caught up in it may seem to be forms of their own while inside of it, but anxiety is basically focused too much thought, too much thought which feeds back into the anxiety. It’s the tendency to think too much. It’s hard to express what anxiety actually feels like without giving you my own version of what the movies do, what pop culture instills inside of our heads what anxiety must be like in order for you to gain and understanding of it, however incomplete. As you are aware, human beings have a tendency to prefer neatly organized familiarity in ideas, instead of a continuously grey and nuanced spectrum.
The nature of anxiety is only so understandable to me, so I can’t give you an idea of what it means entirely myself. I don’t quite understand what it is. However it begs the question, is my anxiety some inborn illness, or is my brain simply effected by the world we live in today, in which if I was born into a more suitable society, it would consequentially reduce my anxiety to nothing? I have always believed it was the latter. I believe that my mind is simply sensitive, and that because I live in a world such as the one that I do, that it gives me anxiety. This takes us back to the original point, that sometimes I lament not having a civilization not based off of the behavior of human beings to take reference of. Human beings have a tendency to look at everything in their own human centric way. Human beings even have a tendency to base the image of their own non human, metaphysical and make believe images of gods, in the image of themselves. This shows the extent and power to which the human mind can become trapped in it’s human centric view of the world around it.
Consequentially I feel trapped in this world view myself, but I simultaneously feel that the world view is false. My whole view of the world, then, seems constantly at odds with itself, and the more detached view of the world that I hold through my own observations. I wonder to what extent my own world view can be held only through my own point of view. Sometimes when I read someone tell me something I wrote is funny, I will somehow through this sudden shift in perspective, see my own work as funny, because I will immediately have the lens of this other point of view to think through, in which everything I was thinking becomes filtered through. This is something I have noticed, how immediately a person’s thoughts can shift when put through another perspective, it makes me wonder how much of our own perspective, or anyone’s perspective can ever be entirely shaped by itself. Perhaps in a sense, ideas are filtered through an individual lens of sorts, and not purely the lens of others. We all hold our own thoughts which we have accumulated, whether they be by our own making or by others.
None the less, the thoughts that I make, seem to always be held up to this general idea of what others may think. It’s a sort of sentience in which I not only have a concept of my own self with feelings, but in which I seem to have the concept of other people’s feelings, simultaneously inside of my head conflicting with the feelings I have within myself. Ironically I can’t know what other people think, I can’t seem to separate this notion of the ideas others have of me however, which is purely a matter of my own construction. There’s been times when this construction has failed me, and turned out to not only be a mere fabrication of what others may think, but was in fact a paranoia, in the sense that I was convinced something was real when it really wasn’t. I realize that a person can only be truly paranoid if they are convinced that something is real when it really isn’t, though I do seem to have a sense of paranoia with people in general. Perhaps this sense of paranoia is pervasive, but it perplexes me to try to imagine how I could live without this sense of other human beings, this sense of the fabrication of what others may think.
This is where I feel the fabric of my notions of others in the world around me seems to break down. Perhaps it’s the fabric of my concept of humanity, which reflects itself in that pervasive human centric point of view which I was mentioning earlier, which makes human beings see gods in their own image. I am doomed to see human beings through the fabricated idea, the generalized sense which the human brain seems to require, because uncertainty doesn’t seem to be something feasible to a human mind; complete uncertainty in which there is only guesses and never truly concrete ideas and total familiarity. It’s this problem, this pervasive and invariable problem, that human beings can only see through their own individual perception. In which case we reflect all of perceptions of the world off of ourselves, because we only have ourselves to reference. Do you wonder though what might happen if we had another form of consciousness, one which is truly sentient and not just the algorithms of AI we see today in things like google? It’s fun to try to imagine.
What if we did try to break down the human being into nothing more than the sum of it’s parts? Sometimes you see me talking about human beings as if I was observing them, and not one of them myself. Logic and observation, I try to detach myself, I try to observe objectively. Perhaps through rationality, one could break down his thoughts into objective - based on only what he can observe, and subjective - based on the human experience which is by nature subjective and not based on rationality, because there’s only so much that a human being can rationalize inside of his or her own brain. Ironically, the inherent irrationality of a human being, this emotional side of ourselves doesn’t seem to be manageable through pure thought, because it’s inherently separate from the logical part of our minds. Therefor there will always be a stalemate between the two, a constant tug of war for the individual, this battle between the logical mind and the irrational emotional side of the mind. But what if we could try to manage that side of our mind through pure thought? Perhaps that is a naive idea, born out of the will to win the tug of war between rationality and irrationality.
I shouldn’t negate the irrational side of my own mind though, because indeed so much of the human experience is irrational. There’s a lot that can be observed about the nature of the emotional and human side of nature. I myself still have a lot to understand about the nature of my own mind itself, I find that it’s a strange and mysterious, hidden and invisible force of nature which I can only observe through it’s consequences. I can’t observe the inner workings of my own consciousness, indeed the nature of phenomenological consciousness, that is the sentient mind of a human being, is something that scientists do not understand even themselves. The irrational mind cannot be negated, for pure rationality, because it is one of the least understood and consequential factors, variables ubiquitously influencing all that goes through the mind itself. Paradoxically, we can’t observe this irrational side of our brain without the rational side. In fact, without our cerebellum; the part of our brain which evolved giving us the ability to have this deep sense of self which apparently animals without it lack; we would have no language in which I type to you, using the rational side of my brain right now.
Seeing as the human mind and the group identity are nothing more than a delusion, of which is human centric in nature and can only lead to the anthropomorphism - in which the human mind can only reference itself; we can begin to break down the idea of the group and lead to an example of why the individual - my own insecurities sloshing around inside of my head in that whirl pool of anxiety - the inchoate ideas which are nothing more than babble of the stream of consciousness, the river of the conscious mind when detached from words and logic - the irrational mind which can only be observed by the rational mind; now we can show the individual in it’s own sense. My insecurities can no longer only be insecurities, in which they are at odds with the group’s identity and the paranoid delusion of other individual’s minds fabricated within my own - they must be taken into their own account on the basis that they are the only thing in which one can truly reference. My detached self, outside of the human centric point of view, in that uncomfortable place of not knowing, in that place of uncertainty of observing and being detached from the group; it’s the place in which we observe a civilization not based on our own phenomenological consciousness, but perhaps the unusual cultures of civilizations which we can only imagine.
These are not lofty imaginations of some sci fi proportions. In fact they aren’t even as exciting as you may imagine. They’re my own trivial insecurities. They’re the things that perhaps everyone laughs at, the insecurities going through life that perhaps all people more or less have. The feeling of being insecure and trapped, with feelings of awkwardness, perhaps even at something so trivial as a small miscommunication in conversation. These are the details I always seem to become trapped with, trapped in a world of my own construct, an imperfect reflection of other human beings around me of which I only have myself as the reference of. It’s strange to me that these sorts of struggles seem to be the ones that go through my head when I hardly even notice it. Before I sat down to write, I didn’t have a clue what I was about to write; all I knew was that I was deep in thought and I wanted to capture of bit of that stream of consciousness that flows through my mind, like a river. All the words stripped away, they’re somewhat meaningless I suppose. I only want to be at peace.
In fact, I do not feel a sense of superiority, though I don’t assume everyone thought so by default of my thoughts. I in fact feel a deep sense of insecurity, I am a human being and I unsurprisingly yearn for a deep connection to a group. Being disconnected from group politics, by virtue perhaps of simply rejecting group identity, and group authority and power, I have a sense of being alone and lost in the world without support. This feeling manifests itself not only out of my debates that I have with others outside of my writings and inner thought. I feel out of effect of my inner thoughts, this sense of insecurity, though perhaps out of a more innate sense of anxiety. I know that I don’t induce a sense of anxiety on myself, that seems to be innate in me. While I do feel an innate sense of anxiety and always have, none the less my insecure thoughts revolve around my thoughts, though beyond words and logic, perhaps the underlying cause is more innate, as words and logic seem to be meaningless babble, when the illusion of meaning is stripped away.
My anxious thoughts may have pushed me to be uncomfortable with my perception of the world around me, causing me to question it though. Perhaps if you take away the idea of anxiety as some sort of medical term, and look at it more as a philosophical discomfort with ideas, it starts to make more sense. However the fact of the matter remains, that with anxiety, if you strip away all the ideas there will still be the inborn anxiety, causing all of these ideas to take form. It’s like a whirl pool, and all the thoughts that get caught up in it may seem to be forms of their own while inside of it, but anxiety is basically focused too much thought, too much thought which feeds back into the anxiety. It’s the tendency to think too much. It’s hard to express what anxiety actually feels like without giving you my own version of what the movies do, what pop culture instills inside of our heads what anxiety must be like in order for you to gain and understanding of it, however incomplete. As you are aware, human beings have a tendency to prefer neatly organized familiarity in ideas, instead of a continuously grey and nuanced spectrum.
The nature of anxiety is only so understandable to me, so I can’t give you an idea of what it means entirely myself. I don’t quite understand what it is. However it begs the question, is my anxiety some inborn illness, or is my brain simply effected by the world we live in today, in which if I was born into a more suitable society, it would consequentially reduce my anxiety to nothing? I have always believed it was the latter. I believe that my mind is simply sensitive, and that because I live in a world such as the one that I do, that it gives me anxiety. This takes us back to the original point, that sometimes I lament not having a civilization not based off of the behavior of human beings to take reference of. Human beings have a tendency to look at everything in their own human centric way. Human beings even have a tendency to base the image of their own non human, metaphysical and make believe images of gods, in the image of themselves. This shows the extent and power to which the human mind can become trapped in it’s human centric view of the world around it.
Consequentially I feel trapped in this world view myself, but I simultaneously feel that the world view is false. My whole view of the world, then, seems constantly at odds with itself, and the more detached view of the world that I hold through my own observations. I wonder to what extent my own world view can be held only through my own point of view. Sometimes when I read someone tell me something I wrote is funny, I will somehow through this sudden shift in perspective, see my own work as funny, because I will immediately have the lens of this other point of view to think through, in which everything I was thinking becomes filtered through. This is something I have noticed, how immediately a person’s thoughts can shift when put through another perspective, it makes me wonder how much of our own perspective, or anyone’s perspective can ever be entirely shaped by itself. Perhaps in a sense, ideas are filtered through an individual lens of sorts, and not purely the lens of others. We all hold our own thoughts which we have accumulated, whether they be by our own making or by others.
None the less, the thoughts that I make, seem to always be held up to this general idea of what others may think. It’s a sort of sentience in which I not only have a concept of my own self with feelings, but in which I seem to have the concept of other people’s feelings, simultaneously inside of my head conflicting with the feelings I have within myself. Ironically I can’t know what other people think, I can’t seem to separate this notion of the ideas others have of me however, which is purely a matter of my own construction. There’s been times when this construction has failed me, and turned out to not only be a mere fabrication of what others may think, but was in fact a paranoia, in the sense that I was convinced something was real when it really wasn’t. I realize that a person can only be truly paranoid if they are convinced that something is real when it really isn’t, though I do seem to have a sense of paranoia with people in general. Perhaps this sense of paranoia is pervasive, but it perplexes me to try to imagine how I could live without this sense of other human beings, this sense of the fabrication of what others may think.
This is where I feel the fabric of my notions of others in the world around me seems to break down. Perhaps it’s the fabric of my concept of humanity, which reflects itself in that pervasive human centric point of view which I was mentioning earlier, which makes human beings see gods in their own image. I am doomed to see human beings through the fabricated idea, the generalized sense which the human brain seems to require, because uncertainty doesn’t seem to be something feasible to a human mind; complete uncertainty in which there is only guesses and never truly concrete ideas and total familiarity. It’s this problem, this pervasive and invariable problem, that human beings can only see through their own individual perception. In which case we reflect all of perceptions of the world off of ourselves, because we only have ourselves to reference. Do you wonder though what might happen if we had another form of consciousness, one which is truly sentient and not just the algorithms of AI we see today in things like google? It’s fun to try to imagine.
What if we did try to break down the human being into nothing more than the sum of it’s parts? Sometimes you see me talking about human beings as if I was observing them, and not one of them myself. Logic and observation, I try to detach myself, I try to observe objectively. Perhaps through rationality, one could break down his thoughts into objective - based on only what he can observe, and subjective - based on the human experience which is by nature subjective and not based on rationality, because there’s only so much that a human being can rationalize inside of his or her own brain. Ironically, the inherent irrationality of a human being, this emotional side of ourselves doesn’t seem to be manageable through pure thought, because it’s inherently separate from the logical part of our minds. Therefor there will always be a stalemate between the two, a constant tug of war for the individual, this battle between the logical mind and the irrational emotional side of the mind. But what if we could try to manage that side of our mind through pure thought? Perhaps that is a naive idea, born out of the will to win the tug of war between rationality and irrationality.
I shouldn’t negate the irrational side of my own mind though, because indeed so much of the human experience is irrational. There’s a lot that can be observed about the nature of the emotional and human side of nature. I myself still have a lot to understand about the nature of my own mind itself, I find that it’s a strange and mysterious, hidden and invisible force of nature which I can only observe through it’s consequences. I can’t observe the inner workings of my own consciousness, indeed the nature of phenomenological consciousness, that is the sentient mind of a human being, is something that scientists do not understand even themselves. The irrational mind cannot be negated, for pure rationality, because it is one of the least understood and consequential factors, variables ubiquitously influencing all that goes through the mind itself. Paradoxically, we can’t observe this irrational side of our brain without the rational side. In fact, without our cerebellum; the part of our brain which evolved giving us the ability to have this deep sense of self which apparently animals without it lack; we would have no language in which I type to you, using the rational side of my brain right now.
Seeing as the human mind and the group identity are nothing more than a delusion, of which is human centric in nature and can only lead to the anthropomorphism - in which the human mind can only reference itself; we can begin to break down the idea of the group and lead to an example of why the individual - my own insecurities sloshing around inside of my head in that whirl pool of anxiety - the inchoate ideas which are nothing more than babble of the stream of consciousness, the river of the conscious mind when detached from words and logic - the irrational mind which can only be observed by the rational mind; now we can show the individual in it’s own sense. My insecurities can no longer only be insecurities, in which they are at odds with the group’s identity and the paranoid delusion of other individual’s minds fabricated within my own - they must be taken into their own account on the basis that they are the only thing in which one can truly reference. My detached self, outside of the human centric point of view, in that uncomfortable place of not knowing, in that place of uncertainty of observing and being detached from the group; it’s the place in which we observe a civilization not based on our own phenomenological consciousness, but perhaps the unusual cultures of civilizations which we can only imagine.
These are not lofty imaginations of some sci fi proportions. In fact they aren’t even as exciting as you may imagine. They’re my own trivial insecurities. They’re the things that perhaps everyone laughs at, the insecurities going through life that perhaps all people more or less have. The feeling of being insecure and trapped, with feelings of awkwardness, perhaps even at something so trivial as a small miscommunication in conversation. These are the details I always seem to become trapped with, trapped in a world of my own construct, an imperfect reflection of other human beings around me of which I only have myself as the reference of. It’s strange to me that these sorts of struggles seem to be the ones that go through my head when I hardly even notice it. Before I sat down to write, I didn’t have a clue what I was about to write; all I knew was that I was deep in thought and I wanted to capture of bit of that stream of consciousness that flows through my mind, like a river. All the words stripped away, they’re somewhat meaningless I suppose. I only want to be at peace.
