Imaginary and real
realms of thought and feeling
The internet will not make you wise. Sure you can accumulate a lot of data, and then what? Analysis and study matter, as do distinctions and weighing risks.
I met too many people both under and overconfident in vaccines, whether or not someone was on the moon, and the media. I wondered if anyone payed attenion in science class or if it was just me who found the facts so exciting more than the gossip of my peers.
The thing is, just because an experimental technology revealed itself as such (experimental), does not make the critical thinker the wiser person all of the time. An old soul or even an old body is not always wiser than a young child, and vice versa. There are both inner intuitive realms and external formations to observe.
This makes life both difficult and necessary to remain in a state of observation. I am guilty of reaching conclusions too slowly, often to my own detriment. I thought this was because I was stupid, and so people told me I “manifested” people who called me that. I am not sure if new age dogma will really ever help anyone but instead be yet another form of religious THEism that makes one person right at the cost of someone else being wrong. This kind of shrouded cloud of arrogance lacks discernment, something we are all learning if I am correctly hearing people and tuning into the sediments of my personal lessening. I struggle with this a lot myself: when I hear someone say “eveyone lies”…I argue that statement because I do not think everyone lies. I think people tell the truth. That is because any sane and rational person will understand a lie is simply a responsibility or due owed later…and not only does debt but a bad conscience sucks. So as awful as a truth may be, each of us has to reconcile the deeper complexity of that origin: was it born of care, fear, projection, or protection…and for what? Coming soon…the essay on love, ego, friendship and saying no…but back to this post:
Some people I met, seem to have no conscience, or zero care for the way their actions effect others. In my personal struggle, I am mostly motivated to do well not just for myself but to alleviate the suffering of anyone witnessing my life.
My life feels like a damn cliche too often no matter how hard I try to make it more normal, I seem to be whisked into a flow of both idealistic and circumstantial dynamics that mean for some: this is free entertainment. This is my, and probably our, love-hate with Social Media. I would say all of life rides some kind of tide, and it’s up to how well one can balance that determines if the undertow takes you far out to try to not drown or you manage to ride safely to shore.
These kind of literal metaphors continue to happen…so I wonder if I was born mildly autistic or if I was simply noticing how cruel humans were to each other from a young age and partitioned my attention toward things that gave me a greater sense of purpose and meaning in what seems to be a very short spanse of biological reproduction that carries on, if I think this is the meaning here, some kind of knowledge to the next probability set expressed through life. All this logged, I’m deeply concerned if people are able to distinguish human from machine anymore, and if the softer skills of relating and deeper skill of discipline will have any value in the future artificially intelligent society.
I really want people to ask themselves: what does intelligence mean or imply? because the banality of cruelty just seems righteously indignant and anti-moralistic which means we are creating a massive societal depression, and we have our hands to look at here. What is it we are all doing either indirectly or directly….
Photos made by Marc Pricop, from the KiT exhibition. Followed by the continually peculiar dryer lint series that opened the gates to grad school, and a series of unfortunate and fortunate events that put us here. Polite Remnants was an impulse that forever changed my fate and has only grown in horror and wonder as the years go by while I ruminate on a question one of my mentors asked…was I really a photographer or a writer? A question A.I. seems to be answering more frequently as Tom Wolfe did in The Painted Word….words do matter, even if this whole thing called life is imaginary. If this is a dream, are you co-creating yours with friends or making nightmares and enemies out of cowardice and fear?
Solfege Souche and Afjoradance
In 1984 I got a job working for the Murray State University Library in the periodicals department. One of my responsibilities was to return magazines and books to their places on the shelves. I did this for a couple of years. At some point I realized that my brain was like a library and could be organized in a similar fashion . As I live my life in the moment I do what I did in the library... I look for signs about where an experience should be put back on the shelf for retrieval at a future time.
When I would sit at the front desk watching people go by I would see them holding their books or magazines and wonder what they were reading and why. I still do this when interacting with people throughout my days. What are they thinking/reading and why? .... and usually what I find is that most folks are thinking/reading the same old books and aren’t prepared to discuss anything else. As a former librarian I prepare myself to make suggestions where I think people should go in the library to become a smarter person. I get excited when I meet people actively becoming a more knowledgeable person.
More on this subject later.