Heh, wow, looks like this thread's become a big debate on existential reality.
If I were to throw down my own take: there is one unified reality, one to one, you really can't make your reality. The idea on the filters though; I really think it depends what your made of at the core. Some people really can make themselves happy just by denying certain aspects of their realities or changing what they believe just to suite their emotional health.
For me I can't, I'm not built that way at all - in fact anytime I try I really feel like I'm headed down the wrong path, feel intensely uncomfortable like its a path to a complete nowhere where my best attributes and everything that makes me me (in a good way) is just stolen by embracing...well....it feels like internal/spiritual mediocrity. For me to work on my adjustment to things takes really dwelling on the things that I'm horrified with, figuring them out, coming to peace with what's there and that its not going away, allowing for it as part of my reality, but at the same time forcing myself to hold my head up and stay strong - even if I may say some things occasionally that may sound sharply negative when I talk about my sense of reality I won't let it flatten my sense of pride or dignity.
Life is an ongoing and always evolving thing. You want to learn, you want to expand, you want to figure yourself out better IMO. Then again I really can't say that I have any idea what its like to have that drive, if someone without that drive though would be as ill and unhappy doing what I do (to some degree a more managed - now at least, maybe not in the past - version of what Todd says he does) if I were taking their rout and simply not trying; I guess I wouldn't recommend it. I chalk it up to this - hypothalamus, brain chemicals, neurodiversity; the whole saying 'different strokes for different folkes' is something I'm finding to be very true. Yeah, it used to really drive me crazy when it came to politics that most people can't get their heads in the game to see what's what - people die, soldiers and combatants, car bombs blow, kids get taken hostage, people get a free neck scratching on Al Jazeera; this is the cost we pay though for having and allowing our freedoms and differences of opinion, withholding the right to judge others on their actions based on certain rules of rights and personal sovereignty, just like one person can't change the next if they can't see it the other persons way. Sadly subjective reality and sharp focused 'my way is it' are both to blame to probably an equal degree (again, I'm saying this as a guy who votes Republican - everything is a check and balance to the next thing and if we didn't have have this tug of war I'd imagine the human condition would even be worse; human monkeys, as a weighted average - don't want piece in the sense that they don't want to make the sacrifices necessary; they want theirs and analyzing their realities for flaws in their own thinking, if anything, makes them less potent since lacking knowledge adds a certain braggado that many societies really seem to reward).
Hmmm, debating... do I submit or delete.....submit or delete...hmmm...., nah I think I may just hit submit; even if this like a lot of my other stuff like this, just gets blown over without so much as a blink. I know people try to weave humor into everything but I still can't tell whether my discomfort and reluctance in posting things like this is that I'm not being glib and breezy enough to code it into extended word play and banter or if its just the fact that what I'm presenting is challenging or not necessarily as feel-good or benign as what most people prefer to lock their reality filters on. Either way, if I'm breaking up the feng shue or natural peace or flow of this thread...(shrugg).....hate me today love me later.
13 Sep 2007, 11:00 pm
