We're Not Going to Make It Are We?(It's Generational, Not Political)

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   GA Andersonposted 7 weeks ago

   First I chuckled and just shook my head. But then I remembered a recent clip of a guy that spent his wedding day, except for the actual alter ceremony, but including the reception night that followed, with those goggles on.
   
   And then . . .  "Oh no, I've turned into my grandfather."
   
   
   
   GA

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      Credence2posted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

      No, we may well not make it,  but it will the political divisions that will be what ultimately divide us up, in a irreparable way.

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         GA Andersonposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

         Well, if that's how you take it . . .
         
         GA

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      tsmogposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

      Observations first for context.
      
      ** Probably under thirty closer to twenty-five
      ** More than likely has a college education
      ** Trendy clothing indicating social status
      ** Car is probably less than ten years old and is an SUV indicating status
      ** Parked in front of Starbucks hinting a social setting while spending probably $4.45 on a grande Carmel Marcchiato
      ** Virtual Reality headset at $500 for Meta Quest 3 to $3,500 for Apple Vision Pro
      ** Social impact of VR headset the same as Airpods/earbuds not long ago for listening to music and/or talking on smartphone
      ** Mental status perhaps is reality is unsettling especially interacting with people no different than today with smartphones and earbuds. In other words, existing in a social bubble of individualism
      
      Yes, "Oh no, I've turned into my grandfather." who dealt with AM radio in cars and/or carried in public listening to Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly. Perhaps the beginning of who knows what as it is still the beginning.
      
      Just one article of many I read about VR headsets worn in public as well what the technology is. Amazing!
      
      What wearing Apple’s Vision Pro headset does to our brains, Apple’s mixed reality headset heralds a new era of “spatial computing.” We are not ready.
      https://www.vox.com/technology/2024/2/1 … -computing
      
      Concluding paragraph . . .
      
      "It will be a while before we get that magical headset, the lightweight glasses that put a computer screen on your world. Lindlbauer, the Carnegie Mellon professor, doesn’t think we’ll still be using smartphones in 15 years. What we will use will be more exciting, and how that technology will work depends on what people do with gadgets like the Apple Vision Pro. If people who buy the headset don’t like seeing the world through a screen, watching the moments of their lives fly by like shadows on the wall of a cave, someone will just have to build something better. And hopefully cheaper."
      
      Ponder Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
      Plato’s Allegory of the Cave Explained
      https://www.masterclass.com/articles/al … ax8dLM770C
      
      "Plato uses the cave as a symbolic representation of how human beings live in the world, contrasting reality versus our interpretation of it. These two ideas reflect the two worlds in the story: the world inside the cave, and the world outside. For the prisoners in the cave, the shadows on the wall created by firelight are all they know to be real. If one of the prisoners breaks free and witnesses the outside world, they will come to understand that as the true reality. However, when the freed prisoner returns to the darkness of the cave, their eyes will have now been blinded by the light of the sun, and their fellow prisoners still inside the cave will believe that it is the outside world that is harmful; to them, that truth is not worth seeking."

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         GA Andersonposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

         Damn, that concluding paragraph is pretty depressing. The truth is not worth seeking equates to reality is not worth enduring.
         
         Social media bubbles used to be something we interacted with. Now it seems to be something we interact from. I don't think that's a good thing.
         
         I'm gonna have to look into that Plato thing.
         
         GA

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            tsmogposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

            hmmm . . . agreeing with a however . . . which reality as Plato is saying there is Reality and there is one's interpretation of it, which is 'one's' reality. There is contrast. Seems, science is suppose to keep us on the straight and narrow of what reality is, right?
            
            Quite honestly when I read about politics while pondering in my subconscious mind is not only the history of being governed through the artform of policies, but my studies on 'Entropy'. Reconciling the two is fun, fun, fun!!
            
            If you are ever bored and would like to explore something different if you don't have familiarity come out of the cave for a while. That was meant as humor.
            
            What is Entropy?
            Law of Entropy Explained – Smart Energy Education by Smart Energy Education
            https://smartenergyeducation.com/law-of-entropy/
            
            The last paragraph is the most important.
            Also, if read, consider the Republican and Democratic Party both are isolated systems interacting,
            
            Once one grasps the basic concept then venture further to . . .
            
            Exploring the entropic nature of political polarization through its formulation as a isolated thermodynamic system by Scientific Reports (2023) [One of several or more articles I have read]
            https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31585-w
            
            I only read:
            
            Abstract
            Introduction
            Then skimmed to Discussion

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               GA Andersonposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

               I'll stick with Plato's Cave for now. Your Masterclass link put me in a bad position.
               
               I'm not new to Plato's writings. Most of my participations here try to follow the Socratic method, ie. If there is no base agreement at the point of argument, then step back a bit until some point of agreement (as simple as an agreement on what is being argued) is found and proceed from there. Progress can only come from some common point of agreement. anything else is just arguing to argue, progress isn't a goal.
               
               But to the Masterclass link . . .
               
               I understand the Cave's philosophical concept and agree with its truth relative to human nature (maybe any living creature's nature?). But I have arguments for the Masterclass writing.
               
               That's why it put me in a bad position. Who the hell am I to argue with someone qualified to write a Masterclass lesson?
               
               First, the article's conclusion seems to add a conditioner—the sun blinded the man, which added a real physical danger rather than a perceived one (as in the allegory's description of perceived, but unproven danger).
               
               There were other points, but I'm not confident enough to argue them. Yet ;-)
               
               Your 'real' reality vs perceived reality is spot on relative to thinking creatures, but relative to physical reality, there is only one, whether it is known or not (ie. the Cave).
               
               GA

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                  tsmogposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

                  Are you suggesting the cave is the real reality? Or, are you saying the cave is the reality of prisoners?
                  
                  Honestly, at times, I get lost with perceived, perspective, and interpreted with reality. From my understanding, at this time, perceived and perspective affect each other and becomes circular reasoning moving with the element of 'time'. Interpret is of those two in a moment of time or a snapshot shall I say. In other words, it is frozen.

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                     GA Andersonposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

                     You are prompting memories of a decade ago. It was a discussion that turned into a rabbit hole where I spent a lot of time. I hadn't thought about it in years, so I'm not trying to lecture in what follows, it's more like I'm talking to myself to recall the different directions and levels of the thought.
                     
                     There is a reason the cave allegory (and other Socrates stuff) has occupied philosophers and their thinking ever since it was first argued.
                     
                     They even have a touchstone theory that supports their quandary. I'm too lazy to look it up but it sums up to the fact that no one can definitively say what the 'real' reality is because it can change with every new sensory input.
                     
                     Everyone's reality is a perceived reality because we understand it through our senses and it is the "real" reality for us, as the allegory shows. The cave was the real reality for the cave dwellers because it was all the input they had to understand their reality.
                     
                     Once you add more sensory input, as per the escaped dweller, his perception changes, and the real reality changes. The escapee's new perception of reality now proves the dwellers' reality wrong because it (the dwellers' perception) lacks the sensory input to know better.
                     
                     That reads like a word salad, it's probably just as easy to look to the movie The Matrix, it is Hollywood's interpretation of the theory.
                     
                     I would say perception and interpretation form perspective—which is the 'decider' when it comes to choices, but you're right about the circular reasoning because perspective can influence perception and interpretation . . . aka Bias. Tadaa!
                     
                     I'm not sure about your "element of time" thought. The idea of 'new sensory input changing reality' only involved linear time as I thought of it. *shrug*
                     
                     My bottom line is the real reality is the extent of the physical reality we know. It takes more than words as sensory input to change my real reality. Unless they come from an advanced alien visitor from another dimension or universe.
                     
                     I told you this was an inescapable rabbit hole. We are right back at the starting point -  our real reality is what we perceive it to be. We can't define one single real reality. The cave dwellers aren't wrong until they can be shown they are wrong—as the escapee did. That could just as easily happen to us now.
                     
                     GA

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                        tsmogposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

                        I can go along with that.
                        
                        With what you shared as well as my perspectives giving delineation though congruent to an extent, all I feel like doing is sharing something I enjoyed this morning from History (Channel) and will share next. Maybe you will enjoy it too?
                        
                        Ancient Aliens: The Da Vinci Conspiracy (S4, E8) | Full Episode It is a YouTube video (44:17 min). One or two cups of coffee should cover it.
                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_VHUxAiGYs
                        
                        Might an examination of Leonardo Da Vinci's masterful paintings, highly technical hand-drawn sketches, and private journals reveal knowledge of otherworldly technology and extraterrestrial beings?
                        
                        Interesting, revealing, and intriguing! Certainly a distraction from politics and governing as I see it, said with a sense of humor.
                        
                        I stepped out of 'My' cave and watched (Listened) to it.

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                        Ken Burgessposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

                        A great comparison.
                        
                        In the Matrix movie, I recall someone stating that if given the chance, the majority would choose to ignore the new input and remain in the reality (the cave... the matrix) that they know, for them it is 'safe'.
                        
                        To challenge their beliefs, their understanding of the world, with new information that undermines or demolishes their perception of the world and their part in it, is something the majority of people will fight against with every fiber of their being... even when an occurrence they are personally experiencing disproves their own beliefs.

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               Ken Burgessposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

               Did you read the entirety of that second link?
               
               What it concluded:
               
               The results of the simulation of this hypothetical system show that the theoretical treatment of the model of political polarization conforms to the constraints imposed. The key takeaways are that it is possible to define a model of political polarization that is treated as an isolated system in respect to the entropy traces. The entropy trace for political engagement decreases as the homogeneity along political ideology increases. The variables which account for this entropic balancing are not introduced through external factors but via an intrinsic constraint imposed upon the total activity set of agents over time (as this will have to be bounded realistically). As the entropy trace in regards to political activities decreases due to the achieved homogeneity the set of non-politically aligned actions increases driving its entropy trace up in exactly the same amount as the other decreases. These counterbalancing changes produces a constant value equal to the theoretically formulated maximum entropy of the isolated system. It is therefore possible to view political polarization as a component of the total entropy which a system can display that has theoretical bounds.
               
               Key words to note, constraint and isolation.
               
               Our political system is neither.  We have outside influences making it far more complicated and complex.
               
               We have direct interference and influence from China, from the UN&WEF, from Industries and Corporations, Trillionaires and Financial Institutions that control Trillions.
               
               Today we have a political body in DC controlled by the above... whose wants, needs, goals and agendas do not meet the needs or wants of the American people.
               
               Hence the growing separation and divide between the political State and the populist uprisings against it... the efforts made to divide and pit one class, race, sex of American against another to keep the majority of Americans from turning on the governing body that has turned on the needs and interests of its citizens, is failing... more and more are seeing through these efforts and are beginning to agree on where the problem really lies.

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                  tsmogposted 7 weeks agoin reply to this

                  Okay . . .

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   Vlado - Val Karasposted 7 weeks ago

   Robin Williams, the comedian, once said: "Reality?...hmm, interesting concept." And that's what it's is, just a concept, since we are not wired in our brains to experience the ultimate truth, just its fabrications through conceptualizing. That's what we do throughout our lives -- construct concepts, and some are stemming from individual consciousness, others from collective consciousness.
   The latter composes our cultural paradigm, which, evidently is full of crap, if we are to judge this level of its evolution by all animalistic tendencies of wars, greed, territoriality, and struggle for a status of an "alpha in the pack" -- be it in domestic or foreign politics.
   In some aspects, it truly defines living by the law of jungle.
   Thus, Plato's metaphor is a sort of misleading, since that reality of the cave is just another aspect of truth's fabrication from the one outside of the cave. Both are merely different aspects of a deception.
   Meaning that those inside are wired in their minds to see the cave as "real", and those outside merely are wired to see it differently -- while it's not saying who is deriving more meaningful experiences, more happiness, more peace.
   In my modest opinion, the whole difference should be viewed under the scope of the Pleasure principle -- meaning, which construct of reality is more life-promoting, while also promoting a harmonious coexistence, one with others, and one with the planet.
   Then it should apply to politics as well -- namely, it doesn't matter one bit which ideology "sounds smarter" according to these or those parameters of reasoning -- but which one is closer to LIFE, to harmonious and healthy coexistence.
   Everything else is a sterile philosophizing leading nowhere, with its only potential to perpetuate conflict.
   Both, Democrats and Republicans are plainly wrong, simply because they haven't produced a political landscape of cooperation, a unified effort of their different contributions towards "political health" -- but rather one of division, competition, all emotionally charged with hate.
   America -- and for that matter so many other societies -- won't find that close-to-ideal political system until the human consciousness makes that next step in its evolving away from all animalistic tendencies.
   It's futile to discuss about their delusions without getting sucked into that insanity.
   It's like visiting madhouse and going smart about which of those nutcases is making more sense.
   Well, that's what it appears to me to be so, and here I am also just contributing with another version of political conceptualizing, because the "truth" might involve a social arrangement in which political establishment would not exist at all.
   But that would be a subject for an entirely different discussion.

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   Vlado - Val Karasposted 7 weeks ago

   I am suggesting that, to the prisoners, cave is "their" reality, and to those outside, the outside is "their" reality.
   And they can be insanely incompatible constructs with one another.
   To reiterate myself, everybody is creating their own -- and also participating in the collective reality -- selectively.
   In countless instances, I have found myself in a position of pointing to someone certain undeniable facts -- and their version of logicalness could not accept it, simply because they were processing facts with different mental algorithms, different "technology of reasoning".
   Then I would give up, respecting the person's right to use their head in their own way.
   I actually heard from a hot-headed Trumpian that "there is no evidence of Trump's guilt, and everything has been fabricated, even his voice on those You tube videos was faked, saying something that would incriminate him...and January 6 was all staged..."
   This is only an extreme example of what I am talking about, when I say that everybody has their own sense of what "real" is.
   Those much milder cases are to be seen practically everywhere. Even the top scholars cannot agree about the nature of reality, And seeing those highly educated experts in nutrition can't but make one laugh, as each is interpreting biochemistry in their own preferred way.
   Here we are talking about intellectual tastes, not about "what really IS real".
   In my world of spiritual awakening, I am just exploring my own inner essence and my own unused genetic potential, which means that I may scrap my yesteryear's convictions.
   Not because they were "wrong", but it belonged to my another level of beingness which I am simply evolving away. Thus, nothing is wrong with my teenage concept of reality -- it simply belonged there, like this new one belongs here.
   We either evolve ourselves or we unnoticeably stagnate in the frozen sameness of our "unchangeable principles".
   Applied to politics, it is a pathetic stagnation, as a system is sinking into a chaos by its own weight.
   The good about it is that the newness is often born out of chaos. Like in health, when we are going through healing crisis which spells biological uncertainty, with body having to reorganize itself. A transition that's painful.
   I dare to optimistically believe that's the case with the mankind -- we have to go through some "growing pains" of shedding the skin of delusions, before a new, healthier horizon may appear in front of our eyes -- this time not as a "fata morgana" in a desert to lure us into following yet another round of collective idiocies.
   I think I am going to write a hub about all this.

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   tsmogposted 7 weeks ago

   Just for giggles take about 5 minutes to view the video at the link next. It is when Neo (The One)  played by Kneu Reeves is first exposed to the truth of what the Matrix is by the character that Laurence Fishburn portrays. If one wishes, it is when he comes out of the cave if one desires Plato's Cave allegory. Actually it is a metaphor.
   
   What is The Matrix? | The Matrix [Open Matte] YouTube (4:57 min)
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5b0ZxUWNf0
   
   Allegory = a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
   
   Metaphor = a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract.

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