Friday, November 17, 2006

Reality check

Just a quick one ..
Yves over at As in Life.. is looking for three words to carry the world forward into bliss and happiness (am not being facetious, actually, his posts are an excellent read.)

“Distinguish what’s real.” is his contribution. There are several other contributions in the comments. Made me think a bit.

What, exactly, is reality.

Check this out. Do we really see what we think we see?

23 comments:

Vincent said...

gee thanks, Davo for the plug. What is reality? A good question. Many would like to restrict it to objective reality, that is, what you perceive with your external or other senses must be independently confirmed by other people or by scientific instruments. Fine, but what about the experience which is rejected as "not real" in this process? You can call it illusion, as in your link.

Or you can do what I recommend, which is to trust your own perceptions & intuitions regardless of any ratification by anyone else. It's a tougher way to live, and perhaps not for everyone, but it takes you to some very interesting places.

Anonymous said...

Hi Davo

I enjoy reading Yves blog. Distinguishing what’s real is hard. Yves said to trust your own perceptions & intuitions...i like that. I was raised in such a way Not to trust my own perceptions. But I'm beginning to learn.


okay i'm off to click on your link.....
Have a wonderful weekend!

Anonymous said...

WhOooooooooA! thats an amazing Link! Thanks for sharing that with us! I'm saving it to my computer...will show it to my family :)

Davoh said...

Yup WhhoooHooo!! Kathy, I just mislaid about three hours by clicking through into the rest of the links from that first image, arrrrggghh!

R.H. said...

Trusting your own perceptions regardless of what other people say is what schizophrenics do, and it takes them to some interesting places alright -mostly to the nuthouse. And rightly so.

Vincent said...

Hi rh. I live in the same world as you. You consign me to the nuthouse? I'll put up with that. I have my integrity. I'll survive anyhow.

Blessings to you.

Davoh said...

Now now fellers, no fighting. Am sure that stubbing a toe, bumping into a door, or hitting a thumb with a hammer hurts pretty much the same for everyone. I also try to trust my own perceptions, bleed like everyone else .. but have had some very strange experiences that make me wonder about "reality". Have yet to see the inside of a nuthouse, but that could be because have not turned myself in, or am keeping one step in front of the men in white coats. Peace.

Davoh said...

and as an addendum to that .. does anyone think that blindly trusting the "perception" of "what is" to the dictats of GW Bush, Rumsfeld et al, or even the Pope, for that matter - is the summation of "reality"?

Nah, am sticking to my own perceptions and mostly, instincts.

R.H. said...

There's no shortage of wankers on this internet ("original thinkers"), plus lots of Trotskys Nabakovs and Prousts -attracted by the grandeur, but without actually believing they are Trotsky Nabakov or Proust. It's merely what they'd like to be.

Bullshitting yourself is silly, and you can be shaken out of it, but I know people who live in their own world -an uncontrollable world, full of auditory and visual perceptions (hallucinations). They're happy sad terrified, for no reason at all. They're fragmented; bizarre, deluded, childish. And sometimes they kill people. Schizophrenia strikes in the late teens-early twenties, and it's tragic. Heartbreaking. Not to be recommended.

Anonymous said...

Hi Davo

I've experienced some very strange realitys and it wasn't because i was taking drugs. I have seen the inside of a nuthouse. I've learned from it i have...and it makes me see that reality is not what we think. Call me crazy but i even had some psychic experiences during my illness or hieghtened awareness or whatever it was... it was not comfortable! because of these episodes i see things differently now...and that makes me happy. :)

Anonymous said...

Davo

keep on keeping one step in front of the men in white coats! LOL i love that!

Anonymous said...

i got scared and called 911

LOL

Davoh said...

Robert, Schizophrenia is not a subject that have much detailed knowlege about - even though I was a stage and screen actor from early twenties to late 30's, and spent much energy and concentration trying to believe I was somebody else. So much so that I lost track of who I "really" was (am - and am still not definitively "sure"), so am sometimes flippant about the subject. I hope I am forgiven for that but, like most people, tend to treat that which we are uncomfortable with, or ignorant about - with some degree of scepticism .. and wry humour.

I console myself with the thought that while I might be mad, I still know a wedgetail from a chainsaw.

I do, however, have a great deal of sympathy for those who truly suffer from extreme mental distress.

Davoh said...

Ho ho, Kathy, you must have posted those comments while I was writing my previous, uncharacteristic, longish one.

and don't call up 911 .. that's a myth .. heh heh.

Anonymous said...

I'm doing good davo Thanks! the last few
episodes i rode it out here at home. trying to be master of my own brain.:)

Anonymous said...

lots of people out there with blog profiles and no blog. I find it funny/strange LOL you know Robert thats good i think. I visited his blog and laughed at the color blue LOL

i better get of this her computer...im getting silly.

bye for now Happy Sunday! (((Hugs)))

Vincent said...

To RH: I do agree with you about the terrible nature of schizophrenia, and that one might want to suppress acknowledgement of hallucinatory experience for this reason.

On my own blog I'm going to tackle the topic of reality next, and I welcome you there, so we can continue to discuss!

Davoh said...

..master of my own brain.

That, Kathy, seems to be the essence of the discussion.

R.H. said...

Naive and gullible people -along with the mentally ill, are vulnerable to quacks and 'Gurus' who set up cults to exploit them. Jim Jones is probably the worst example, but there's Charlie Manson as well, and hundreds more you never hear about because the damage they do never hits the news. There is one cult leader creep I heard about in Queensland - an old piano-playing bastard running a commune, who talked a schizophrenic pal of mine into eating 'magic mushrooms', which made his condition a whole lot worse.
Beware of charlatans and quacks, that's the point I'm making. And Miss Kathy I did have my own blog for a little while; it was a guest blog inside someone else's blog ('Go away please') and got 123 marvellous comments. Have a look, it'll give you a really good laugh. I'd link you to it but don't know how. Maybe old whiskers here will do it for me. Best regards.

-Robert.

Davoh said...

..Naive and gullible people.. mm, sounds like a generic description of "voters".
(and "old whiskers" here has no interest in connecting anybody with anybody .. too 'egocentric'.. heh.)

R.H. said...

Thanks Davo -my finest hour.

Davoh said...

mm, reminds me of a story once heard.
Sister Theresa was giving a lecture to the graduating students of a prestigious college. After the duty to god, the duty to husbands, Sister Theresa arrived at the subject of unmarried sex. "Always remember," she said, "One hour of pleasure is a lifetime of torment."

A small voice from the back of the auditorium asks ".. excuse me, Sister ..How do we make it last an hour?"

Anonymous said...

LOL :-D

too funnnnny! Ahhh i love whiskers. my beautiful dog i named whiskers. :)

I'll take a look at the link


thanks Davo
Thanks rh