VR Goggles

Nobody perceives reality as it is. Now hold up a sec--this gets way more and less esoteric. Y'see, as human beings, we only have so much ability to understand and engage in the world around us. My understanding is this--our senses constantly reinterpret information from reality, and those senses are, like us, beautifully imperfect. We thought the world was flat! Then we thought it was the center of the universe...now we are ABSOLUTELY certain that we know what we know and that's the way it is. Thing is--neuroscience has recently discovered that our brains function more like a computer desktop than a lens through which we perceive the truth as the truth. When you double-click on a folder, you understand that you aren't opening a physical object which contains other physical objects. Our computers serve to reframe ones and zeros so we can manipulate them as we see fit. Those ones and zeros are reality and our senses are our monitors.

Mind.

Blown.

But to step back from Matrix-style neuroscience and place a foot firmly on practical application, this means that everyone is right and nobody is right. Personally, I find an incredible amount of freedom in this realization. As someone who spent--well--a whole lot of time trying futilely to polish the lenses of my VR goggles, the realization that the most uncluttered version of my reality is still MY version of it is incredible. You mean it isn't about finding the truth, but finding my truth?

Well shit.

That must mean everyone has their own personal version of reality. They're all correct...and all totally unabashedly wrong. So all that perfectionism? Yeah, self-constructed. Not real. The ink on our stories is never totally dry. Not only is it ever-changing, but it's SCIENTIFICALLY ever-changing. Those 'realities'...those ideas about myself I held so dear--they're constructions I've used to make sense of my life. You too. You wrote your narrative to support your present.

So why dress up make-believe and call it "the way it is"? None of it is "the way it is". We don't even know what "the way it is" is. So let that rattle around in your brain a bit. And while you're at it, you now have a scientific reason to ditch the bullshit that doesn't serve you.

See you in the editing room!

Love,
Dak