(no subject)
Consciousness is a tricky thing. Existing in a level beyond thought. I wonder however in my time talking to a wide variety of people I've noticed that there are a lot of similarities in people. Reading that statement it sounds trivial and banal but I think there's something deeper to it. I've been trying out this alternate view of humanity that seems to ring true to me, perhaps you or someone you know will relate to it as well. My alternate view of humanity is that we're all really one being where each individual person is a fragment of this whole looking at the world through these lenses we call bodies.
I've started to feel the truth of this myself and I've noticed it being a plausible explanation for some easily observed phenomena, like how people can independently come up with the same ideas at the same time, like the story of Leibniz and Newton simultaneously inventing calculus. It also explains in my perception this powerful need we have as human beings to connect to one another and the lengths we go to in order to do so.
Some methods of connection prove more successful than others, like opening up, listening, feeling caring. These seem to produce some of the most powerful felt connectedness-feelings of love in its many forms. To me love whether we're aware of it or not is this defragmentation of souls-we shed this barrier of I am me and you are you and it's we and us. Your joys become my joys, your pain becomes my pain and visa versa. Two fragments have joined and become one more whole fragment.
A less successful method and a very often used method is control. You can see this everywhere-from economic control with big name corporations like bp to physical control with violence, to emotional violence with gossip and verbal abuse. From what I've met of people who do these things, almost all of it comes from some felt disconnection and some either felt or unfelt desire to connect. Often such actions come when a person even feels disconnected from themselves, and instead of mending that divide they make some misguided attempt to connect to other people before they're ready, often unable to truly see the person.
Having sadly done some of these things, I can safely say there's no satisfaction to be had in them, and they served only to shove in my face that feeling of disconnection. Reactively I'd often try to reflect some of the meanness I was receiving back, only to find that there's a bottomless well of meanness in me and my fellow unconscious man and all I was doing was adding to it. I couldn't connect with myself so when someone would do something mean it would cut me and cut me DEEP. After all I was already wounded and bleeding, just like the person who cut me and having a knife jammed in the wound just pushed me further into that behavior.
I've found that my only reprieve from this was to watch what was happening without judgment. Judgment being the dualism that caused this to begin with. Then the creepy phantom who often took me over and forced me to do such awful things evaporated. As if merely being seen was enough to collapse it like a house of cards. The weakness could no longer disguise itself as strength and my formerly cut off an autonomous half started working with me instead of against me. The divide is still healing and I do have moments where the phantom seeps back into my life, but at least I am healing and the phantom is now on its way out.
Since language is imperfect and sometimes art expresses what words cannot, I am also making a game about this. I will likely post a link to it when I've finished it.
I've started to feel the truth of this myself and I've noticed it being a plausible explanation for some easily observed phenomena, like how people can independently come up with the same ideas at the same time, like the story of Leibniz and Newton simultaneously inventing calculus. It also explains in my perception this powerful need we have as human beings to connect to one another and the lengths we go to in order to do so.
Some methods of connection prove more successful than others, like opening up, listening, feeling caring. These seem to produce some of the most powerful felt connectedness-feelings of love in its many forms. To me love whether we're aware of it or not is this defragmentation of souls-we shed this barrier of I am me and you are you and it's we and us. Your joys become my joys, your pain becomes my pain and visa versa. Two fragments have joined and become one more whole fragment.
A less successful method and a very often used method is control. You can see this everywhere-from economic control with big name corporations like bp to physical control with violence, to emotional violence with gossip and verbal abuse. From what I've met of people who do these things, almost all of it comes from some felt disconnection and some either felt or unfelt desire to connect. Often such actions come when a person even feels disconnected from themselves, and instead of mending that divide they make some misguided attempt to connect to other people before they're ready, often unable to truly see the person.
Having sadly done some of these things, I can safely say there's no satisfaction to be had in them, and they served only to shove in my face that feeling of disconnection. Reactively I'd often try to reflect some of the meanness I was receiving back, only to find that there's a bottomless well of meanness in me and my fellow unconscious man and all I was doing was adding to it. I couldn't connect with myself so when someone would do something mean it would cut me and cut me DEEP. After all I was already wounded and bleeding, just like the person who cut me and having a knife jammed in the wound just pushed me further into that behavior.
I've found that my only reprieve from this was to watch what was happening without judgment. Judgment being the dualism that caused this to begin with. Then the creepy phantom who often took me over and forced me to do such awful things evaporated. As if merely being seen was enough to collapse it like a house of cards. The weakness could no longer disguise itself as strength and my formerly cut off an autonomous half started working with me instead of against me. The divide is still healing and I do have moments where the phantom seeps back into my life, but at least I am healing and the phantom is now on its way out.
Since language is imperfect and sometimes art expresses what words cannot, I am also making a game about this. I will likely post a link to it when I've finished it.