Manipulation and Reality
To quote Jean Anouilh, the saliva of the Intelligentsia has never changed the world..; "-isms", politics and ideologies in the end are merely impostures.
It's part of our human condition to objectify reality, then to spin ideas and models and superimpose them on the world and people as a map of a warped reality, a hyperreality, instrumental to make the weal and woe, or the trauma of the mysterious more accessible and on an emotional level, more bearable. One way or the other, we're unable to dislodge ourselves completely from "manufacturing machinations"... but we might undertake an attempt not to cahoot with their spellbounding lightweightness and their ready solutions for big scheme contrivances.
Beyond these factionalism of perspectives, only two axioms should survive: being true to oneself and to live, simply to live – as one put it in German: artgerecht Leben in artgerechte Haltung.
Why are humans so easly manipulated?
Manipulation doesn't go straight in an one-way direction, but has multifacetted aspects and there's in various degrees co-involvement by the subject of manipulation. People are often the spindoctors of their own subjugation. Objectifying is a process of reductionism, dissecting a condition of inbalance in synoptical terms connected to a palpable general outline, but because it's seperated from a trellis of a permeable continuity, it's more a labour of abstraction and hence of creating a niche upon which a league of experts and technicians arise whose main concern is to secure the idea that the arsenal of easily prescribed solutions for contained problems that have received just enough added values of complexity to distract people of their forged origin is workable, but only by centralizing the expertise to the specialists to which people are contracted, and supplied by to smother their needs. The analogy to the situation of drugs addicts is salient.
People like a good bargain, and the quicker and more accessible the solution has to be, the more this pressure to fight Time, to prolong satisfaction and make it work instantly, the more it engenders a special 'line' of specializations to bring positive feedback right at time for each whim. Each creating stronger habit-forming, more delicate and to-the-point solutions, but while the problems move into a spectrum of haziness, the remedies tend to falter, become decrepit or encounter resistence, til it finally collapses. Then the whole procedure starts again, building new systems on the ruins of a shattered vision of that initial inbalance.
Doesn't the need for abstractions and theories forge a false sense of security, of comfort? Name the Beast, unlock the terror and be less terrified? Not exactly, but conciously or unwittingly, in the role or either servant or master, it's an expression of the desire to control, to manipulate, prune and tweak 'reality'.
ideas, conceptions, ideologies,etc. are a kind of precoordinated systematization of science and a 'common sense' type of intuition to create an understanding of the complex, almost inpenetrable nature of reality. A mean to bridge the divide between oneself and our surrounding.
As a matter of fact, that's the core of religion (lit:. restoration of a bond, a reconnection), a treaty that dissolves the ambiguity and likes to establish exactitude, to eradicate doubt on the who-where-whats of life.Apparently, it seems less important that it might only provide a false sense of comfort and security; pragmatism applies here as it may score high on resoluting an essential improvement of the quality of one's life, although it's not said that the tenets and principles, the vision it relays, comes anywhere near to reality as it is, but rather a perceived reality that makes life manageable.
Sadly, all best intentions considered, systems and ideas tend in a later phase to take in the central role, sacrificing man;the system then is no longer a parcours to further spiritual development, but a neurosis which makes people think in terms of a finalisation of all can reached. The Absolute is monopolized and dominion of a new scholastic teaching that annulates any progression in thought and a greater refinement of its own thoughts and principles. It becomes oppressive dead weight.
It's not a religious habit alone. Each scientific or metapolitical paradigm commits the same original 'sin' leading to cognitive frigidity. So, anything beyond the Holy Truth sanctioned by the consensus in vogue must be false, unreal. Please keep in mind that the reality perceived as such is the name named, the one faced through one's eye, not the reality 'an sich'.
In any rate, I believe that it was Braudel whose claimed that Mankind since the Neolithicum remained immutuable in its mentality and perceptions of life and thought patterns. Since even higher primates have cognitive faculties which allow them a type of pre-cultural behaviour not longer completely propelled by pure 'guts' instinct, it is quite possible that our ' reality sense ' is rooted in that primordial phase, has never detached nor substantially deviated from those initial venture into the world of ideas, abstractions and objectification.
Again, the present state of knowledge on reality doesn't (necessarily) imply improved and more reliable understanding of things in their essential nature ("Ding-an-sich"), but by means of a diversion, an imagination or re-invention of reality. The Dutch term for idea is denkbeeld, an image through which the thinking process runs and head to – a splendid coinage by Simon Steven.
Perhaps intellectual progression occurs not in a linear evolution, but circular, even floating from peaks to nadirs, reverting and thrusting forwards, maybe all together aimless and disorientated moving evermore further away from true reality, stuck by conventions and nomenclatures of yore resurgitated.
The irony may well be is that the cyclical vision is the Mother of the modern, Western thought... The ritual e.g. Had the quality some kind of Moebiusring, where one could along this end of reality and a parallel existence and still arrive to the primordial moment of departure; Creation encapsulated in the initial deed of siring and any renewal, any progression is then only possible by folding back to that starting point.
Later on a mental revolt against this vision arose.
In India, the solution happened to be found in a life of abnegations to escape from a circle of rebirths. Nietzsche advises to step aside and grap the events of the time from that position through myriads of perspectives.
On the other hand in the Middle East and Christianity, the ring is straighten to a bar, but even in those teachings linearity rebounds to its origin. Adam, and so thus Humanity, fallen in disgrace and banned from Paradise is on a quest to God, ultimate source, ultimate reality. Less Biblical of inspiration is the notion of freedom in our civilisation. The rise of cremation in Europe since the Bronze Age could be seen in analogy to the case of India, a liberation from periodical enchainment, reaching finer, ethereal and higher levels of existence. Say, spiritual upbreeding...
It's part of our human condition to objectify reality, then to spin ideas and models and superimpose them on the world and people as a map of a warped reality, a hyperreality, instrumental to make the weal and woe, or the trauma of the mysterious more accessible and on an emotional level, more bearable. One way or the other, we're unable to dislodge ourselves completely from "manufacturing machinations"... but we might undertake an attempt not to cahoot with their spellbounding lightweightness and their ready solutions for big scheme contrivances.
Beyond these factionalism of perspectives, only two axioms should survive: being true to oneself and to live, simply to live – as one put it in German: artgerecht Leben in artgerechte Haltung.
Why are humans so easly manipulated?
Manipulation doesn't go straight in an one-way direction, but has multifacetted aspects and there's in various degrees co-involvement by the subject of manipulation. People are often the spindoctors of their own subjugation. Objectifying is a process of reductionism, dissecting a condition of inbalance in synoptical terms connected to a palpable general outline, but because it's seperated from a trellis of a permeable continuity, it's more a labour of abstraction and hence of creating a niche upon which a league of experts and technicians arise whose main concern is to secure the idea that the arsenal of easily prescribed solutions for contained problems that have received just enough added values of complexity to distract people of their forged origin is workable, but only by centralizing the expertise to the specialists to which people are contracted, and supplied by to smother their needs. The analogy to the situation of drugs addicts is salient.
People like a good bargain, and the quicker and more accessible the solution has to be, the more this pressure to fight Time, to prolong satisfaction and make it work instantly, the more it engenders a special 'line' of specializations to bring positive feedback right at time for each whim. Each creating stronger habit-forming, more delicate and to-the-point solutions, but while the problems move into a spectrum of haziness, the remedies tend to falter, become decrepit or encounter resistence, til it finally collapses. Then the whole procedure starts again, building new systems on the ruins of a shattered vision of that initial inbalance.
Doesn't the need for abstractions and theories forge a false sense of security, of comfort? Name the Beast, unlock the terror and be less terrified? Not exactly, but conciously or unwittingly, in the role or either servant or master, it's an expression of the desire to control, to manipulate, prune and tweak 'reality'.
ideas, conceptions, ideologies,etc. are a kind of precoordinated systematization of science and a 'common sense' type of intuition to create an understanding of the complex, almost inpenetrable nature of reality. A mean to bridge the divide between oneself and our surrounding.
As a matter of fact, that's the core of religion (lit:. restoration of a bond, a reconnection), a treaty that dissolves the ambiguity and likes to establish exactitude, to eradicate doubt on the who-where-whats of life.Apparently, it seems less important that it might only provide a false sense of comfort and security; pragmatism applies here as it may score high on resoluting an essential improvement of the quality of one's life, although it's not said that the tenets and principles, the vision it relays, comes anywhere near to reality as it is, but rather a perceived reality that makes life manageable.
Sadly, all best intentions considered, systems and ideas tend in a later phase to take in the central role, sacrificing man;the system then is no longer a parcours to further spiritual development, but a neurosis which makes people think in terms of a finalisation of all can reached. The Absolute is monopolized and dominion of a new scholastic teaching that annulates any progression in thought and a greater refinement of its own thoughts and principles. It becomes oppressive dead weight.
It's not a religious habit alone. Each scientific or metapolitical paradigm commits the same original 'sin' leading to cognitive frigidity. So, anything beyond the Holy Truth sanctioned by the consensus in vogue must be false, unreal. Please keep in mind that the reality perceived as such is the name named, the one faced through one's eye, not the reality 'an sich'.
In any rate, I believe that it was Braudel whose claimed that Mankind since the Neolithicum remained immutuable in its mentality and perceptions of life and thought patterns. Since even higher primates have cognitive faculties which allow them a type of pre-cultural behaviour not longer completely propelled by pure 'guts' instinct, it is quite possible that our ' reality sense ' is rooted in that primordial phase, has never detached nor substantially deviated from those initial venture into the world of ideas, abstractions and objectification.
Again, the present state of knowledge on reality doesn't (necessarily) imply improved and more reliable understanding of things in their essential nature ("Ding-an-sich"), but by means of a diversion, an imagination or re-invention of reality. The Dutch term for idea is denkbeeld, an image through which the thinking process runs and head to – a splendid coinage by Simon Steven.
Perhaps intellectual progression occurs not in a linear evolution, but circular, even floating from peaks to nadirs, reverting and thrusting forwards, maybe all together aimless and disorientated moving evermore further away from true reality, stuck by conventions and nomenclatures of yore resurgitated.
The irony may well be is that the cyclical vision is the Mother of the modern, Western thought... The ritual e.g. Had the quality some kind of Moebiusring, where one could along this end of reality and a parallel existence and still arrive to the primordial moment of departure; Creation encapsulated in the initial deed of siring and any renewal, any progression is then only possible by folding back to that starting point.
Later on a mental revolt against this vision arose.
In India, the solution happened to be found in a life of abnegations to escape from a circle of rebirths. Nietzsche advises to step aside and grap the events of the time from that position through myriads of perspectives.
On the other hand in the Middle East and Christianity, the ring is straighten to a bar, but even in those teachings linearity rebounds to its origin. Adam, and so thus Humanity, fallen in disgrace and banned from Paradise is on a quest to God, ultimate source, ultimate reality. Less Biblical of inspiration is the notion of freedom in our civilisation. The rise of cremation in Europe since the Bronze Age could be seen in analogy to the case of India, a liberation from periodical enchainment, reaching finer, ethereal and higher levels of existence. Say, spiritual upbreeding...
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