Knowing, Believing and Illusion

We all navigate our trips from the cradle to the grave deaf and blind in important ways. Some of these ways are obvious, if we have some humility. Others require taking a long look into the ugly mirror of human experience. 

How do we know? How we do sift truth from narratives and agendas? None of us have enough time to chase down everything, do all the experiments, or check the backgrounds of the talking head we listen to the most. We're all affected by carefully crafted planes of possibility, and we're all conditioned to dismiss claims that venture beyond those planes. 

CNN and Fox report on the same incidents, but their rhetoric presents them entirely differently. One says this about the event, the other says that. Both claim to be telling the truth, so... how do we know which is truth and which is lie?

We don't. We choose what to believe and commit to it. We commit to it so strongly that we will regurgitate what we hear on our channel of choice as though it's the gospel truth. Some even repeat the stories as though they were the one that thought up the particular "truth" delivered by the well-trained, made-up, convincing talking head who said it. 

You don't know. You believe. The distinction couldn't be more important. 

Belief as Knowledge

Religious believers will tell you they don't believe God exists. They know God exists. Their belief transmutes into a bone-deep certainty that their belief is an unassailable truth, regardless of the reasons a person gives for not believing it. Their claimed knowledge comes by revelation as opposed to evidence, much like the process of enlightenment for Buddhists. 

I'm not disparaging or doubting these experiences in any way at all. I've had my own so I'm intimately familiar with this kind of revelatory "knowledge." I try to keep myself in check by acknowledging certain "knowledge" I claim is indeed revelatory, and not a universal truth. That's actually difficult. No one is as enthusiastic (or potentially annoying) as a true believer.

To sum it up, we are all provided information we did not obtain and cannot verify ourselves. We all choose who and what we believe, and we live our lives (albeit with varying degrees of fidelity) according to those beliefs. This fact of the human condition gives the crafters of opinion tremendous power, doesn't it? 

It is a power we all give to them, and a power we can take back. That inherently means turning away from the world as it is presented to us, and embracing a world we want to believe in. Not with just our words, but with our daily thoughts, words and actions. This is where our true source of power lies. To grab hold of that power though, we've got to let go of these illusions we cling to. And that is no easy task.

"Be on the watch. There are ways out. There is light somewhere. It may not be much light, but it beats the darkness. Be on the watch."

Time spent away from the screen, away from the water cooler, away from the traffic jams and relentless imposition of narratives and opinion all free us bit by bit from the illusory world we're nudged into believing in.

One pathway feels particularly appealing to me, though it, too is fraught with its own challenges and difficulties.

A Different Vision 

A grown man can adequately care for an acre of land planted with crops with about eight hours of work each day, if they do not use any machines. With crops grown on one acre of land you can provide a family of four what they need for fruits and vegetables. Add a 20-30 minutes and you can care for a rooster and hens to get all the eggs and poultry you need to supplement the vegetables. Another 20-30 minutes and you can care for a few goats to get more milk and meat. All in all, it's about a 10-hour day which, when you add commute, is about the average work day for a man in the modern era.

Now undoubtedly there are challenges in the set-up and maintenance of a small farm, and they are significant. You need healthy soil, a crop rotation plan, the knowledge and means to store food long-term, a reliable water source, irrigation... creating a small farm for yourself or a family is no easy task. But nothing worth having is easy to get, is it? 

The challenges and risks of a small farm are considerable. Bad weather can wipe you out. Disease in your plants can kill entire crops. Of course, your morning commute could leave you mangled, crippled or dead from a car wreck but... poTAYto, poTAHto... no path through life I'm aware of is free of grave danger. And if one exists, I'm convinced little about that path would make it worth pursuing. 

Split this labor over a family of four and, after the pains of a successful set-up and as an average without life playing too many jokes on you, everyone puts in four to five hours or so each day to meet the family needs for food. These four to five hours will be spent together. Parents will have to teach their children how to do what they'll later be responsible for doing themselves. The kids learn the value and importance of contribution and connection. The family connects to the earth and to nature in ways the modern man has all but forgotten. 

But what does a modern life and its pursuits offer? Paper? Material goods? Comfort? Frivolity? Self-doubt? Anxiety? Temptation for moral compromise? Heavier weight of conformity and desire for higher social status that may, or may not, come with it? Of what real value is any of that?

That's the path illuminated for you by the spell casters, the talking heads, the gurus, and by the prevalent society so heavily influenced by the "reality" of modern life Darth Grampus is so harshly criticizing here.

The small farm life would force you to spend less time and attention on the illusion. Though fraught with its own dangers and uncertainties, this is one path that almost certainly grounds one into something much closer to truth in the joys, pains, struggles and victories of real life. 

If so many people who claimed they wanted the success, the status, the money etcetera to increase the impact they could make on the world held true to their claimed motivations, maybe many of the problems that plague us would disappear or be otherwise alleviated. But they don't, do they? Thus those who achieve the goals of the modern life become cogs in the machine they may have initially wished to break. Beware the hubris in believing you are somehow better or wiser than they. 

Your life is your life, as the great Charles Bukowski reminded us. Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission. You are worth far more than the hole society wants to fill with you, and the lures they use to shove you into it.