by, M. Wythe, Ph.D
Grand Junction CO
THE SEXIEST THING YOU DON'T KNOW
In a popular movie, The Truman Show, actor Jim Carrey plays the
unwitting star of a television show. Raised from birth on a giant sound
stage, Truman tests the limits of his reality, gradually discovering
that the 'real' world lies just beyond fake scenery bordering the set.
When someone asks Christof, the director of this mythical TV show, why
it took Truman so long to question his predicament, Christof's answer
is: "We all accept the reality with which we are presented."
Put yourself in Truman's shoes. Imagine your surprise upon learning
that your entire life, right down to whom you had sex with, had been
scripted by a mere mortal! Try to envision what changes you would make
as a result of this discovery. It's mind boggling, isn't it? Now prepare
yourself for the shock of your life...because unless you happen to be
one of those very rare individuals who have plumbed the depths of their
own consciousness, then your sex life, indeed you entire existence, has
been directed from behind the scenes by a mere mortal -- YOU! What's
more, you did it without even knowing it!
If you're not afraid follow in the footsteps of Truman, to explore the
outer limits of your reality, then you're about to discover the sexiest
thing you don't know. What you're about to learn is that each person's
perspective on life, this lens through which we view the world, is not
corrected for certain distortions of consciousness. The vast majority of
us never question the tacit assumption that reality is exactly what our
minds tell us it is. But if we happen to be wrong on that score, then
all bets are off. The world we've come to know and trust could be
nothing more than a facade, no more 'real' than The Truman Show.
When Truman finally escapes from the confines of his make-believe
world, he sets out to find the girl of his dreams. We, too, can break
out of prison, that self-imposed cocoon of illusion which denies us the
freedom to pursue our dreams. When we shed the straitjacket of beliefs
that constricts our view of the world, new horizons open up before us.
If you agree there's nothing sexier than someone who embraces life with
passion and wonder, then open your mind to the sexiest secret out there.
But it won't be easy. Overcoming years of conditioning will take more
than persuasive reasoning and solid logic. It will take courage. Since
each of us is motivated by a belief system that frames our perception,
we all have a built-in predisposition to resist change, to behave in a
particular, habitual way. Our actions, therefore, are self-directed by
the manner in which our minds interpret reality, following scripts that
are, in a sense, predetermined by our worldview.
For instance, take the concept of solid matter. We take this 'fact' as
a given. But is it true? The brick wall you might wish to beat your head
against has a certain reality to it, alright. The imprint on your
forehead would surely attest to that. It's just that bricks aren't made
of solid matter, not really. At the most fundamental, subatomic level,
solid matter is in very short supply. In fact, science has yet to prove
its existence!
As philosopher Roger Trigg noted, "Knowing that a world beyond a window
is as we see it through the window presupposes that we can go outside
and see it for ourselves." But that's impossible for the simple reason
that our view of the world doesn't come to us directly; it is filtered
through a complex web of neurons in the brain. Our experience of reality
rests on the release of neurotransmitters, fluids that facilitate an
exchange of electrical signals between millions of neuron cells. Taking
into account everything we know about the physiology of the brain, not
to mention the innate human tendency to see only what we want to see,
there is clearly no basis on which to claim that the world outside is
exactly the way it looks to us through the window of perception.
For example, if our minds convert sensory data into a snapshot of
reality in a manner analogous to the way a computer turns the digital
bits of an e-mail message into a facsimile of the original, then imagine
the dilemma one would face upon learning that the copy isn't identical
to the original because the machine is wired in such a way as to
'filter' the words, providing a 'doctored' version of the original text.
That, in essence, is the human predicament. Computer artist Tom Baccei
put it very succinctly: "Our senses are filters that make reality into
what we think we see. Nobody knows reality. Quantum physics,
mathematics, twentieth-century philosophy have accepted this."
It's the quintessential Catch-22: Since we don't know precisely how
this computer (our nervous system) works, there's no way to figure out
how it is altering the text of experience (sensory data) -- and without
knowing the precise nature of the data, there's no way to ascertain how
our minds are deciphering it. Clearly, we can't apprehend that culprit
we call reality for a simple reason: unless we first remove the filter
that is our mind, we'll never be able to determine how much of the total
reality is being filtered out.
You see, most of us share Truman's plight. What we have mistakenly
called 'reality' is nothing more than a slide show of mental projections
created by our own minds in response to the cultural environment in
which we were raised. In the words of author Carlos Castenada, "Everyone
who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly
describes the world to (them), until the moment when the child is
capable of perceiving the world as it is described...we have no memory
of that portentous moment, simply because none of us could possibly have
had any point of reference to compare it to." The 'real' world lies
beyond the horizon of our senses, shrouded in a veil of impenetrable
mystery.
In an age when 'spin doctors' are required to interpret news events, it
was only a matter of time before the very nature of reality itself
would be called into question. Perception is now reality, almost
overnight usurping the power of mere facts to describe our world. As
author Walter Truett Anderson claims, "An increasing theatricality of
politics, in which events are scripted and stage-managed for mass
consumption...is a natural and inevitable feature of our time. It is
what happens when a lot of people begin to understand that reality is a
social construction."
We've all bought into the notion that our minds are perfectly suited to
the task of translating the data of experience into a picture of reality
that is, for all practical purposes, entirely accurate. What most of us
don't understand is that our personal take on reality is, at best, an
approximation of the true state of affairs. When people forget that
their particular view on how the world works is merely that, one
possible viewpoint among many others that may be just as valid, given a
different set of parameters, what results is a loss of perspective,
leading to intolerance. But as the deepest thinkers of every age have
always known, nobody holds the exclusive rights to reality.
This might sound like much ado about nothing were it not for the fact
that every value we hold dear, every belief we're willing to defend, is
ultimately based on a set of underlying assumptions about the true
nature of reality. "For all that we are and will and do depends, in the
last analysis, upon what we believe the Nature of Things to be,"
declared Aldous Huxley. If our worldview happens to be false, then it
follows that our actions will reflect an illusion. As we used to say:
Garbage in, garbage out.
With so many complex issues dividing us at every level of society,
sparking the bloody confrontations that occur between those on opposing
sides of every ideological fence, it might be prudent to examine the
perceptions that color our reality. Whether it's a world away, in the
streets of the West Bank, or across town at the local abortion clinic,
the message we're being bombarded with is the same: if perception is
reality, then the reality of violence won't change until our perceptions
do. We've become desensitized not only to the depiction of violence but
also to the hidden cause, an inability to see that our beliefs are being
held hostage by our perceptions.
Without doubt, our problem is one of perception. "We are all hypnotized
from infancy. We do not perceive ourselves and the world about us as
they are but as we have been persuaded to see them," observed the late
Dr. Willis Harman, Stanford University professor emeritus and former
member of the Board of Regents of the University of California. We
suffer, it would appear, from a kind of tunnel vision that prevents us
from thinking outside the proverbial box. But if each individual, ethnic
group, or nation fails to understand that reality is not simply what our
senses tell us it is, then forming the necessary consensus to tackle
problems that are increasingly global in scope will be impossible. As
long as each person believes that their reality, their god, their
ideology is the only true one, then we are condemned to a world of
violent confrontation.
For one moment, however, try to imagine a world where everyone
recognized the limits of their own perception. What would happen if we
all woke up one morning to read in the newspaper that nobody knows
reality? Consider the implications: Suddenly, the competing worldviews
that drive global conflicts would lose much of their power because the
vast majority of such worldviews hold that reality is a single,
verifiable constant. When it becomes universally accepted that each
person's unique perspective is merely one viewpoint among a vast
universe of possibilities, then no perspective need be defended from
behind a barricade of unconscious preconceptions. Undermined by the loss
of any concrete reality, the pillars that support intolerance would
topple of their own weight, thereby destroying the foundation which
supports so much human misery.
Since we simply can't determine to what extent our perception of
reality is a product of our own imagination, it follows that all
perspectives are ultimately philosophical. As mythologist Joseph
Campbell noted, we all create a myth to live by. Not all myths are
created equal, however. Sometimes things go horribly wrong. Believing
that we had most of the answers, we've neglected to notice the
deep-seated assumptions that suggest what questions to ask. But it's not
too late to ask the most important one of all: If nobody owns the rights
to reality, then don't we each have the freedom to take responsibility
for our own?
Because, when you think about it, any person or group attempting to
define your reality for you has thereby revealed a hidden agenda, a
vested interest in the politics of reality. To a certain extent this is
unavoidable, a necessary evil, a byproduct of the socialization process.
Everyone who describes the world to a child has infringed on the right
of that child to think for themselves. If perception is reality, then
we're all guilty of inflicting our bias on others.
And yet, isn't that what the story of human history is all about, each
generation weaving a tale of its own, enriching the tapestry of
experience handed down by previous generations, thereby shedding the
cloak of superstition that conceals our illusions? In seeking to share
that story with others, we uncover the common threads that connect us to
the only perspective that honors all perspectives, the one that
acknowledges a powerful truth: nobody holds the deed to reality...and
that, quite possibly, is the sexiest thing you didn't know!
by, M. Wythe, Ph.D
Grand Junction CO
