“… what is reality?”
“It’s whatever the majority deems it to be. It’s not necessarily the best or the most logical, but it’s the one that supports the desires of society as a whole.”
—Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
Let’s add that to our ongoing list of definitions, shall we?
DEFINITIONS
Recall from 02 SEE THROUGH that
- Sanity is the state of being in alignment with the status quo. Any deviation, no matter how far, is madness. How far you stray defines how mad you are.
Let us add the above definition of reality to the list:
- Reality is whatever social constructs the majority in a society agree upon that allegedly best represents its desires.
ECHOES
And no one showed us to the land And no one knows the where's or why's —Pink Floyd, Echoes
And no one knows a goddamned thing And yet we’re selling out our lives To a rationale, and to a fraud, To a culture that’s disingenuous.
One iconic line that sums up “reality” nicely, from Fight Club: “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.”
Or another that drives attention to your base animal instincts, from a Sprite marketing campaign: “Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Obey your thirst.”
Forget about what makes sense. Forget about the rational. Forget about the ideal. Forget about principles. What matters is the incessant drive to fulfill your desires. The rat race exists solely as a means to drive consumption, for consumption is the metric by which the fulfillment of your desires is measured.
The more you consume, the more successful you are at fulfilling your desires.
As for principles and ideals, they are naught more than fading echoes of what you were and what you could be.
Principles and ideals are reserved for those mad enough to embrace and pursue them. They are not for the sane.
THE COLLAGE: 09 ECHOES
You can collect this NFT here.
Photo by Jakob Søby on Unsplash:
Photo by Christian Holzinger on Unsplash:
As to the Pink Floyd reference above, here’s a cool concept where an AI was fed lyrics as prompts to create art for this video: