Welcome To The Real World
If that sentence doesn't ring a bell, please do yourself a huge favor, stop reading and go watch The Matrix right now. And afterwards come back to this post, of course ;-) Although we aren't connected by wires, or WiFi, to a computer generated simulation (as far as we know), we are living in a fake world. This post is my feeble attempt to remind us of what's real, what's not, and why it matters...
Image by Jon Bragg - source: Flickr
We humans live, like all other creatures and organisms, in an objective reality that consists of real things like rocks, mountains, clouds, plants, trees, animals, lakes, rivers, other humans and so on. These are real and we share every little bit of it. Homo sapiens is special in many ways, but most strikingly we are the only organisms we know of that have built a completely new and imaginary world on top of the real one, consisting of many things that exist in our minds only; Gods, ideologies, nations, governments, money, corporations and yes, algorithms too. We've long ago reached a point in our psychological and cultural evolution where our imagined world is more real than the objective world we all share, with each other and all other living and not living things. We, as the dominating species on the planet, have over the centuries created the uncomfortable situation where we make all our decisions in the imagined world, leaving the consequences of those decisions to reflect on the real world.
This is, in my opinion, the reason why we seem unable to make real progress on the road to a better world. The human-constructed fabric of imagined entities is not fit to generate objective progress; the decisions we make in our collective dreamscape have only negative and destructive effects on our shared objective landscape, which is why we make no progress at all in saving the planet, even when we're all aware of the urgency to do so. Of all the imagined constructs, it's the economy that overrides all the others; the meme of a for profit, ever growing economy is shared in minds all over the globe. When I and others claim that we've globalized the economy, but not humanity, this is what we're alluding to. This is why words, the building blocks of our imagined reality, are so essential; they affect our behavior in both worlds and have the power to cause wars or build sustainable houses. To illustrate I'll use my usual scapegoat; Donald Trump.
The coronavirus is real, and so is the disease it causes, COVID-19. The international participants in the World Health Organization have agreed on a very specific naming-convention for such viral outbreaks; COVID-19 stands for COronaVIrus Disease-(20)19. The coronavirus exists, so does the disease. Our current leader of "the free world" has taken upon himself the task of going against the internationally agreed upon naming-convention, and calls the virus the "Chinese virus", and the disease the "Wuhan Pandemic." I've even heard use "Kung-Flu"... To identify a virus by its country of origin is never done without a racist motivation to do so. Trump, since he stepped into the Oval Office, has been on a war-path against China, visible most apparently through his endless trade-war against the country, and completely ignoring the effects on the real people in China, America and all over the world. The swine-flu, just like the Spanish flu, originated in America, the latter in Kansas according to virologists worldwide. The reason why they're both not called the "American flu" or "American virus", is that America features most prominently in our imagined world. Trump's racist move to go against the international naming-conventions and blame the Chinese government and culture for this latest outbreak, has already resulted in the first hate-crimes against REAL Asian people in America, and I'd wager in other countries as well.
China itself has been pretty successful in containing the epidemic within its own borders; the numbers of new infections are some of the lowest in the world. But let's not celebrate that success too abundantly; to accomplish this progress, China has made use of another major generator of the fake world, namely algorithms driving an all-encompassing surveillance state. The incredible advancements made in containing the virus rest on the Chinese government's ability to follow all its citizens 24 hours a day... In the "free world", the one we think we inhabit, we will most assuredly be given a choice between the further spreading of the disease and an increase of the state's surveillance capabilities; we will always choose health over freedom in such an emergency situation, and the government will reassure us that these measures will be temporary, only for as long as the virus wreaks it's havoc. I believe my readers are informed enough to know that the measures will not be temporary; may I remind any new readers about the fact that the Patriot Act still exists, and that there's not one politician, not even Bernie Sanders, who even tries to call off the state of emergency that brought that annihilator of freedom to life. The corporate owned governments of the world will always choose a policed citizenry over a well informed and self-motivated one. In the REAL world though, a self-motivated well educated and honestly informed population that is aware of the shared REAL world, is far more effective to gain progress in this situation and any other reality we may encounter in the future.
If you ignored my recommendation in the introduction and didn't watch the marvelous movie "The Matrix" first, here's the scene where the protagonist wakes up in the ruins of the real world for the first time. He's in a state of shock, just like we collectively are in our real world. We need to remember that real world, we need to do so badly, and this moment in time is one where our decisions will reverberate far into the future; will we sink deeper into the misery caused by the human-constructed imaginary world, or will we finally be able to welcome ourselves back into the real world?
The Matrix (1999) | Welcome To The Real World |
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Thanks for stopping by and reading. If you really liked this content, if you disagree (or if you do agree), please leave a comment. Of course, upvotes, follows, resteems are all greatly appreciated, but nothing brings me and you more growth than sharing our ideas.
Much of that you have said is correct. However:
The world is so fake indeed.
Spanish Flu ------ not racist, socially acceptable term
Chinese Flu ------ Racist
How fake indeed. How despicable, the level of hypocrisy abound..
It takes more than watching Matrix to even begin to grasp the level of perception needed to look within ourselves far enough to see more levels of the 'matrix' that even those that falsely think they 'woke up', will miss. Like screaming racism at everything you were trained to...
Otherwise some good info you have put together. Just, try not to feed the monster that has enslaved us....
Yes, we are existing in a fake world. One based totally on perceptions formed based on our individual upbringing, education, attitudes, social status and even health. Yes, a well educated and honestly informed population will be far more effective in handling the current or any similar situation we may encounter. However, hoping for such a population feels like an unreachable dream. We, the dominating species on this planet, as you said, also seem to have been blessed with the inherent capability to destroy ourselves, and with us our planet. For instance, I think democracy was formed with the idea that we all could be on the same page. That we could collectively take a call on who our leaders should be, and they would in turn help us get where we want to go together as an economy. However, by the same token, we decided we need an opposition party to do the needful when things didn't go the way planned. Why? 'cos in our "imagined" world as you call it, maybe there was not enough trust to begin with. I think the need of the hour is to get all the real facts, genuinely care for our future generations and try be the change we need to see in our world ourselves. Anyways, I think I went off the topic a bit, sorry, all I wanted to say is I enjoyed reading your post. Good food for thought there. :) Thanks!
Thank you, @sandzat, for such a beautiful response :-) Nothing is unreachable in my opinion even when we won't reach the next step in our evolution during our lifetimes, or that of our children or grandchildren. Humankind's true strength is its ability to cooperate while remaining flexible through our individuality. Our lifes are governed through the stories we've grown up with and those we tell our offspring; those stories are what enables us to cooperate on large scales as they fuel us with a basic set of guidelines we all more or less follow, so we don't have to know each and every person we cooperate with. Our stories are wrong, that's all. With the right stories we create a mental landscape that's not contradicting real life. It's gonna be hard and will take a lot of time. But is it impossible? I don't know, I can only hope. What I refuse to do though, is give up on that possibility :-)