Our skepticism muscles are atrophied.
That’s not good because right now there’s some heavy belief lifting required in the world.
Today the notion is widely accepted that injecting too much reality into life impedes enjoyment of it by tossing a cold pail of “get real” on our ability to:
- lose our minds in dramatic moving pictures of (insert favorite show/movie)
- fantasize about money solving all our problems
- pretend that we own/follow/live the BEST of anything
- relive the emotional experience of music or love
- splish splash in spirituality
Granted, there is absolutely nothing wrong with contrasting experience for short periods though wine, wo/men, and exultation and who has not laughed or cried over a movie and ten dollar popcorn? Nope, suspending our disbelief can be a real benefit in that it allows everyone to calmly chit-chat with old Jerry down at the lotto booth even though the shifty beggar sold us ten bucks worth of useless tickets last week. And the week before that…
For example, here is some incredible stuff folks are expected to believe these days:
- Nuke Ding Done – instant hot stuff in little kitchen boxes
- Shiny High Flying Tubes – wind engine buses leaving hourly
- It’s A Game! – playing sports for Ten Mil a Year
- Still Here – three times dead is really dead but not until
With regular miracles occurring all around us it’s easy to see why it’s nearly impossible for anyone to suspend their disbelief and this innocently places us between a rock and a hard place. After all, once we’re conditioned to suspend our disbelief we’ll climb onto whatever reality we’re presented as long as it’s Walt Disney plus even a fraction of the truth.
The real challenge lies in trying to compute what this exponential growth has exacted from our belief systems over the past two hundred years and to perhaps at least look around and find the hand brake on this unit.
In spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary, many folks cannot suspend their disbelief that:
- governments might lean toward self interest above all others
- corporations might be irresponsible by design
- the truth may not live on television
- newspapers sell advertising & may do anything to that end
- oil companies may be fixing prices as if they were broken
- reality shows could be scripted
- at some point it’s likely each person for themselves
Happy folks must wear an open mind during fantastic technological and cultural growth but the wheels fall off when we stop questioning our beliefs about what is real good and what is real bad.
And it’s up to each of us to figure out what’s what.
Thank you, friend.
Barry out.
You might find this hard to believe but something big is happening. Big.
I might have too many suspends in here. I have to think on it.
Perhaps you are looking at reality too closely Barry? It’s easier to let it just flow naturally, and don’t complicate things by over analysing the details. You might end up missing the beauty of the forest by looking too hard at the trees.
Just my tuppence worth…..
John
Leamington Spa, England
John McNally recently posted..WHY Has My TRAFFIC Gone UP
Hey mister – that is a good comment.
However, I totally disagree with you because I see reality being a little too smooth, too contrived and that patch of leaves and twigs over there covers a hole with sharpened sticks in the bottom.
I used to limit my belief to reflect the concept that folks saw the world as they are but now I understand that while that is true, if we can see the world as someone else might, there, in front of us, exists another slice of available reality. And how many types of people are there? Lots.
And that’s my point. Many, many slices of reality are available and today the pie we cut slices from is sooo big that almost none of us can see the incredible variety of possibilities. So we don’t look too hard even though we understand that some pieces may not be all that good.
Secret wars / games are being played out, the world’s largest man made disaster (which is seriously affecting ALL of us at this very second) is underway right now and so many shells are being moved around that few folks even understand that a game is being played.
We are at a point in human existence when having a positive mental attitude means that sometime soon we’ll be wallowing in pointy peg province.
That evil reaper cancer currently collects 25 – 40% of people before their transfer date and the nuclear door just swung open to snag another 25% asap.
It’s gonna be a shit storm and there is the odd second when I wish I couldn’t see it on the horizon.
But there it is, just on the other side of that grove of trees…
Thanks John.
Have you ever wondered how you could help those who are less fortunate than you?
People are fortunate to not know me as I am more likely to be needy.