Sergeant Barnes:
You smoke this shit so as to escape from reality? Me I don’t need this shit…
I am REALITY!
My routines have been all off this week. Travelling does that to you, especially where airplanes are involved. As you would have picked up from the social web (are we connected? connected? connected? ) I spent some time in Munich this week. Not for pleasure, but then, you know, what is pleasure? I had a good time training folks on relationship mapping and influencing as well as eating way too many German pretzels and the Southern Germans are meant to make the best pretzels in all the land! You can have pretzels for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m talking real pretzels not the snack packs you get at the supermarket.
But enough about pretzels, let’s talk reality.
#57: Does language correspond to reality? Is it our map, that if used a certain way, leads us to reality? And that is the goal right, to find objective reality, a reality that exists outside of me? You? Us?
Morpheus:
“What is real? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
Or have we moved beyond the real into the hyperreal?
“You are living in a world created almost entirely by the modern consumer society of which you are a part. You work hard and earn money just so you can pursue a dream in a world fabricated almost entirely from your fertile imagination, aided by a relentless barge of images from the media, in which it has become impossible to distinguish image from reality, style from substance.” - a Beginner’s Guide to Reality
(If you clicked no other link in this edition, click and watch this video! - CL)
Let’s go deeper into the hyperreal:
…a representation so realistic that it cannot be distinguished as a representation, but is treated as reality.
We have lost all contact with the “real” reality. I’ve tried to find my way back there, but at every turn I’ve met simulation, after simulation…illusion stacked upon illusion.
They tell me the Philosopher’s Stone may hold the key. Timothy Leary tried to show us a number of ways to the Source.
#58: I’m trying to find a way by treating language as a virus.
#59: Imagine that your brain is floating in a tank and being stimulated by a computer to make you perceive an entire world around you. How do you know that this world really exists? Can you really be sure that your brain isn't just floating in a chemical solution?
#60: And finally, a word from the original Neo - Rene Descartes on Cartesian Skepticism
Ok, all this thinking about reality and I’m still not sure what is real. But then, if i can’t tell if this is real or not, does it matter as long as i believe it to be real? Maybe Cypher was right:
Ignorance is bliss!
Ok folks. That’s it from me. I hope you’ve had a pleasant week. Until next time consider this:
Word of mouth is the best way to get my work out into the wild and help me grow. If you like The Coach’s Notes, please share it? New folks can subscribe here.
Peace and love,
Clay
P.S. Some tunes for you before you go: