Chaotic Media-Mind

 

posted Mon Jan 8, 11:44 PM by Marcus

People’s interpretation of their immediate environment and circumstances seems to be almost mystifying at times. How we deal and react to things around us is so heavily dependent upon our personal biases and beliefs—that it’s difficult to say why and how any one individual is going to react at any given situation.

This has been something I struggled with over and over. Why did he say that? Why did she blow her top? Why can’t they understand me?

Ever felt misunderstood? Sometimes the feeling can be perpetually unending. No matter the direction we turn, that bleak face of incomprehension is staring right back at us. Is it really that difficult for one person to grasp another’s nature, feelings and insights?

Or perhaps there are no answers defined within those particular set of questions.

A reversal of perspective, a little twist and maybe it is possible to slip right out of that ongoing psychosis. I mean that is what it is—isn’t it? We are all a little psychotic in our own little ways. I wonder how people in mental asylums relate to each other. Do they constantly seek understanding from their co-inhabitants? Do they presume that their room-mates share the same world-views? I don’t know – that’s why I am asking. Perhaps they do have unending debates on their social environment, and enjoy spreading their message.

Or perhaps they do not.

After all, they are in the loony-bin so they must know on some level that they are somewhat psychotic. The woman sitting at the lunch table; perhaps she knows that everyone else in the room—including the guard-carers—see things in a very different way to herself.

What does that say about the rest of us? We’re normal because we know what we think is correct—it’s the guy next door that has it wrong.

Obviously.

Or maybe it is the break-down of social barriers that helps the psychotic get better. Locked away from everything else—you know you’re a bit mad, you know everyone else is a bit mad. That’s a less confusing place to start from for sure.

The media-product-consumer worship culture we live in has become God-Like in its all-purveying all-infiltrating stance upon our minds. It is a difficult thing to break out of, and indeed I wonder even if it is any longer possible to completely break free. Anyway maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea even if it was possible. The problem is misunderstanding. The conglomerate techno consumer god has life; it lives through us, it is a conscious self-aware agent. It really is not that difficult to see. Look around your local mall or high street and it is walking around in a mild, frantic manner. It wants to multiply like all other organisms. It seeks to spread itself out, develop and grow—become more than the sum of its parts.

Where is the beginning of its influence within our minds and its end?

Does it want to be understood? Or is it cold, calculating and inanimate? What does it do as its tendrils reach into our consciousness, what impact does it have upon us? How much of our biases, reactions and beliefs are of this god-like entity, and how much are our own?

We are left somewhat displaced in the end. Like a lost soul shivering out in the chill artic storms, battering at the silent doors of comprehension, trying desperately to get back into our own minds.

Did we give our minds away or were they stolen? I watched the movie “Children of Men” just the other day. A real dystopia of a future, I knew immediately after the first scene that it was a film that was going to leave a deep groove. Something I probably didn’t need to watch.

Amazing cinematics, great acting and some of the most deeply memorable scenes of any movie. But it is a lost cause; does it aid compression or enforce division? Fantastic movie – but I didn’t feel enlightened for having watched it. Rather instead downtrodden, down-cast, locked in a cage. But that is the feeling the movie evoked in me – so is that my fault or the fault of the movie? I’m reminded of the movie “Monsters Inc.” the generation of fear for the benefit of others.

The media god is everywhere and all-purveying. The division between it and yourself is a blur. Or maybe there isn’t a division any longer and we are as much a part of it as it is a part of ourselves.

So who does that voice belong to—shouting from out in that chilling frozen waste? Who has been locked out of our mind and who has been locked in? Which one is “me”?

Which of those voices interprets the world around us? Just who does my perspective belong to anyway?

People’s interpretation of their immediate environment and circumstances seems to be almost mystifying at times. But it is getting much less of a struggle to understand just why that is.

There is clarity; it is readily available when you want it. You don’t even have to reach out and take it. It is just there – right in your mind or maybe it is out there within the world somewhere. I guess it doesn’t matter which, it is just there waiting to be found. It’s a bit like the weather really. Here in the UK, it’s nearly always cloudy – in fact I once saw a photo from the 1300’s showing the last time we had sun.

Saying that, New Years Eve night was amazingly clear; the night sky was of the deepest black—all the stars shone brightly despite a nearly full moon. It’s not hard to see why really, look where everyone’s attention was.

The clutter in our minds is brought on by the stormy winds of chaotic thought; a rough sea in the middle of the night – with no stars for guidance. It is not what we let in that is the problem. It’s what we let out.

Not in the sense of what we display to the world – but in the sense of what we generate. Awareness of what we allow to act within and through us becomes a great help. It is not a matter of suppressing or fighting it—that is akin to splashing about in the bath. How calm would the water be?

When we let our minds be. When we don’t force upon ourselves the endless stream of external and internal propaganda, there is room for change – swift, strong and total.

Not the (non)change of a hanged-dictator. But the soft gentle change of falling snow.

Awareness allows you to see in and through yourself. Your mind really isn’t that hard to see. Take a look at the world around you, what you notice and feel is the buffeting of your perspective against your mind.

Now which one generates which—and who or what made that happen?