Trapped

If you’re locked in a room, and the room is all you know, and you believe you are free—- are you free?
Similar to the allegory of the cave.

Inconvenient truths are hardest to perceive. Mostly because of our unwillingness to see, because doing so what mean we must alter our entire paradigm/ way of seeing, and perhaps upend fundamental beliefs we cling to for security.

Everyone’s reality is valid, in the sense that it is their reality. But I believe there are levels of reality. Primitive reality, there are forces acting upon our lives that we attribute to certain causes to, completely ignorant of their true nature or origin.

This applies to natural physics as well as societal.

We perceive higher levels of reality when we move up the causal chain to first principles, or whatever the first mover is or might be.

I like to think there is no power in any one reality beyond the network which shares that reality.

I often wonder how many realities are shared unconsciously— playing games and repeating narratives that feed the reality, without ever knowing the reality you’re participating in.

Democracy.
Communism.
Academia.
Entrepreneurship.
Capitalism.
Government.
Hollywood.
Religion.
Morality.
Etc.

We look at these as prima facie objective enterprises. But the reality of each is a scale, depending on how you’re participating. The realities can invert completely on themselves, depending on how you’re participating, or who invites you to participate in their reality (akin to being dragged out of the cave)

It’s like the closer you get to the higher reality, the more disturbing it becomes, because it shatters the innocent uninformed ideas about the forces actually governing reality.

And we naturally adopt whatever reality is convenient. Not because it’s best or right or true, but because it’s less disturbing, less threatening.

I think about this often.

Trying to square one reality with another. Asking myself what information I’m able to perceive.

I think about the whole notion of the enterprise of philosophy, as I understand it. I was reading Montaigne this week, specifically his essay That to Philosophize is to learn to Die. (https://monadnock.net/montaigne/learn2.html).

It makes me think about these inconvenient truths. To reveal them is to get more comfortable with death. It prepares you for the ultimate reality.

Montaigne says
“He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint.

There is nothing evil in life for the man who has thoroughly grasped the fact that to be deprived of life is not an evil.”

Our unwillingness to confront certain inconvenient realities is a reflection of our servitude.

There is no freedom— not in the liberal sense— without learning to die. Which is to say, embracing realities and truths which are most inconvenient, which pose the greatest threat to our being.

I think the process of philosophizing is a process which ultimately liberates us. Questioning our realities. Our convenient, cozy assumptions that we are so self assured of, but ultimately enslave us to limited realities.

Philosophy is asking if there is more beyond the room. Sometimes it’s just a matter of knocking on the door and having someone open it. Sometimes it’s just opening it ourselves. Sometimes it’s inspecting and cracking the lock. And I like to think these rooms lead to more rooms, and often these rooms are connected, and we must continually remind ourselves that we are unfree, that there are other realities beyond our perception.

This is why books are useful. But books can also reinforce realities and keep us trapped.

I think about this.

How do we grow. How do we advance, evolve, progress. It’s all a reflection of our ability to exercise this true freedom of choosing. Not accepting the status quo, the given, the false dilemmas presented as fixed options. But scratching at the corners to reveal something always there, but imperceptible because we cling to convenience.