Open your mind wide
This semester I changed mayor to psychology, not knowing it it would fit me I atended my first class without expectations. This class is on observation and how to become more discerning about people and behavior. The class is supposed to do with scientific observation, but it truly has more to do with ideology.
To experience the world you need only open your eyes, right? Well, it’s not that simple, because some bias is always present in some form. The world, or the real, is something we can’t just take in. You can’t experience all your life at once, you live moment to moment. We can’t see the entire world as it is, but we get to see a small chuck of it, our perspective. When we see an image we don’t even look at the entirety of it, our minds compress the image and makes educated guesses based on patterns, that’s why optical illusions exists, because we can’t absorb the 100% of an image, so we only see about 50% and we guess the rest.
The same thing happens with all or senses, we never get the full picture, taste, smell, etc. We always get some, but not all of reality. If we never experienced the entirety of what’s out there, then we can’t know for sure that the real is like a hallucination, a fabric of the mind. If we can’t see reality, how do we know what it means? Well, some say it’s possible to know the truth of reality, but we just need better tools to measure it. However this is not a satisfactory explanation, truth is as it is, as we can study it, but not right now would imply that analysis and science is useless until we can truly understand the real.
A more useful notion of reality, is a reality that needs not exists as a complete and objective whole, but as an unfinished but never-ending puzzle. We don’t “study” reality, we construct it. We build social norms that dictate how to behave, we constructed institutions, business, industries, governments, and on and on, we build.
A constructive framework seems strange at first, because it throws out the window of objectivity. But there most be something that just is! We might look at numbers and the laws of math, but soon you’ll realize we made numbers up and we discovered the laws of math, therefore we have constructed them. No matter the example, we can always point to the creation of something or the idea of it.
We create our reality so much, that we forgot we´re living inside an artificial dome. Our mode of thought, our ideology or paradigm, is un-natural, manufactured, created, designed. The real is not out there, we make what’s out there, but with so much nose we can make out were we are.
Whenever you do something, anything, ask yourself is this my idea or am I playing a role in someone’s game? We can’t honestly say we choose anything without any bias at all, but where do this biases come from? You might be convinced those biases are individual. But as beings whose development never stops we can’t help but learn, imitate, and be swayed by external factors. This is where a paradigm comes in, or as I prefer calling it: ideology.
When you think you’re doing something by your own will and that you can’t be brainwashed is when you know you don’t really know. To act without question is to be a slave, we must always think twice and thrice about ourselves. Most of your life’s decisions can be traced back to a common reason. Why go to school? To get a job, Why get a job? To have enough money for a good life, What is a good like like? one with material and non material possessions, why can’t we posses those objects that improve our lives? Because somebody else owns them or because we area all competing for them, Why are those object in such high demand? because of such low supply, Why are they in low supply? Because if they weren’t people would not strive for them……wait, isn’t that just circular logic? Why would a claim be so self evident to not merit an explanation other than just because that’s how things are? because those things who can’t be explained are ideological statements. They are imposed, they are someone else’s judgments we play out.
To get outside of ideology you must be curious and brave enough to question. those facts we hold to be self evident are the most artificial in nature. We can’t simply draw a line in the sand and claim the origin of all ideology, but it has to do with power, ownership, fear, prejudice, discrimination and violence. Some people want to take advantage over others, to keep their status at the top a board game was built by their rules. The rules may seem consistent, but only insofar consistent as the creators of the game can win and nobody else can. The idea of working hard to build a livelihood, the american dream, seems only fair because it’s narrative is consistent, and it is, because it consistently produces the dream by the expense of the ones dreaming it. Ideology works only for some, not all benefit from it’s promises. We are sleeping until we begin to doubt the mechanics of our society.