Authenticity and Validation

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

Continued in response to CrystalSeraph's essay...

We are pretty sure there can be no such thing as external validation of our perceptions of reality, and that this may apply to everyone. We like to think that physical evidence can prove something is real but our perceptions can be very slippery things. In philosophy no one has found any way to prove reality exists. We may all simply be dreaming everything.

This is very disconcerting, and people have accepted the illusion that physical evidence is proof or validation of reality and our experiences perhaps largely because physical evidence is the standard used in legal systems.


The need for validation to relieve our anxiety and self doubt is real, but the methodology for actually validating anything is real may never exist. This is one reason we prefer to accept the descriptions of reality that other people put forward, to them it may be genuinely real; and who are we to invalidate their experience simply because it may make us uncomfortable with our own issues of self-perception or our comprehension of our own reality?

We believe we are the only ones capable of determining what is real within the context of our own experiences. We doubt very much that anyone has the power to extend their perceptions of reality to define reality for anyone else.

However, we are taught to accept others' definitions of reality as children, and to allow the commonly held beliefs about reality to shape our perceptions of our own reality. The trust required to accept these reality shaping influences from our parents, family, friends and cultures is pivotal to how secure we become with our realities as we perceive them. Any abrogation of that trust hurts us not only on a personal level within the relationship of someone who deceives us, but also hurts us on a deeper level where it makes us question the validity of our reality as we now perceive it.

We have created a culture in which the mutual validation process is a sort of sacrament shared among family and friends. We may rely too heavily on the support of friends, peers or family for our sense of security regarding our perceptions of ourselves and our realities. This process of seeking validation outside of ourselves may be detrimental to our well-being as individuals or multiples, and as a society.

Buying into the belief in the validity of a process of external validation seems to us to represent a huge investment both emotionally and intellectually. So people may have a lot at stake when they rely on external validations of their perceptions of reality. By accepting that a process of external validation is real we accept that someone or some group other than ourselves may have the ultimate authority to define what is real, both for ourselves and for everyone else.

We consider that to be quite a scary proposition. Even in a democratic system the limits of information within the system can lead to flawed analysis, judgment and actions. Have we given up looking for those Weapons Of Mass Destruction?

Rage against The Machine lays out a good warning in this regard, the thin line between entertainment and war seems to be the manner in which culture is used to drive our perceptions of reality and the decisions we make as a society about who should be considered legitimate or illegitimate in regard to their beliefs.

Do you trust the drivers of our cultures?

We suggest scrapping external validation of reality as a flawed methodology and propose that people resort to being personally responsible for their own ideas and opinions and how they choose to share them.

Starting with ourselves of course! ;)

Comments

[masterdoyle.livejournal.com]

Uhh... just because you believe something it true does not mean it is true for everyone on the planet, or even in this community.

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa DOYLE!!!!!!! rlol!!!!!!!!!!!

*LiSa*I deleted the other one because I want to use my better icon

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

Yoda exists!!!!!! you know why?? because I've seen him!!!!!!!!!!! bow to the chowdy dow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*LiSa*

[ex-suhina987.livejournal.com]

Lisa! I haven't seen him, but I know a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy that has! True story!

~ Key

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

woo hooz Key!!!!!!!! that guy rocks!!!!! rlol I've seen him!!! True Story!

*LiSa*

[overlord-mordax.livejournal.com]

Have you met he_dreams_awake ? I think the two of you have a lot of things in common, ideas, writing style and stuff.

Good tip!

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks Mordax, we appreciate the tip, we bookmarked "he dreams awake", gotta run, therapy appt coming up...

[liedownlovely.livejournal.com]

We may all simply be dreaming everything.

Somebody pinch me so I wake up and don't have to see this on my f-list anymore.

-J

[ghostcreature.livejournal.com]

agreed. gah.

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

Woot!!!!! Agreement!!

[de-linques.livejournal.com]

*pinches*

-Carthi

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

As I stated in your other post:

"If you are as confused about all of yourselves as you sound, I'd suggest putting off posting sweeping generalizations which are meant to include everyone into your/all views of reality. At least until you've figured out what your own reality is."

That would be best done within your own personal journal or within a community of your own. This way you can work through certain issues that pertain to you personally without having to wade through comments from others which may not be helpful for you.

Kasia

[phen0type.livejournal.com]

Starting a new post to continue a discussion and to divert off-topic comments is not attention-whoring. However, I do agree that these posters' statements are problematic, and I am deeply concerned about them.

- Richard

Ah well..

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

It was too lengthy, there is a character limit on comments, perhaps we could have done it as a series of comments? We'll try that next time...

[plethorus.livejournal.com]

We suggest scrapping external validation of reality as a flawed methodology...

I think your wrong that people can't validate their reality between themselves. Nobody is an island.

Validation comes in many forms everyday. From a pat on the head of a child that has had a good day at school, to the hug of a husband comforting his wife. They do these things because they share a reality, and that is this one.

Have we given up looking for those Weapons Of Mass Destruction?

I don't really think that you are talking about the same kind of validation here. GWB lied to get the things he wanted and was driven by money.

[crystalseraph.livejournal.com]

>_>;

This isn't quite the reaction my post was supposed to get...

[ex-suhina987.livejournal.com]

That's the thing. It was /your/ post, and /you/ were getting the attention. I don't think that fact sat very well with this poster.

[cirape.livejournal.com]

Do you trust the drivers of our cultures?
We suggest scrapping external validation of reality as a flawed methodology and propose that people resort to being personally responsible for their own ideas and opinions and how they choose to share them.

But I thought we were supposed to trust everyone. Now you tell us not too.
Figure out your dogma before you try to spread your cult, thx.

Touche'

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but expecting internal consistency in a multiple is what, futile?

Riposte

The context for trust we were proposing is interpersonal trust, we are not sure that should apply to institutions, pericularly those which appear to frequently act against public interests.

Considered within different constexts perhaps we were not being truly inconsistent.

Salute

Re: Touche'

[cirape.livejournal.com]

If you didn't mean to trust everything absolutely you should not have said that you did. I did ask you that, and you did not say 'no, in some cases things/people/etc should not be trusted.' If you wish to change your wording, at least admit that you are doing so and that you were incorrect before.

Re: Touche'

[threedog.livejournal.com]

You haven't posted a ramble yet that wasn't continually self-invalidating. Inconsistent barely begins to cover it.

[threedog.livejournal.com]

Man, I would love it if you'd stop basically talking for everybody here.

[ghostcreature.livejournal.com]

seconding this, i'm afraid.

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

Hi Black Dog! ::Waves::

[threedog.livejournal.com]

Er, heya. Can't remember if I know you or not.

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

I don't think you do. But we have some mutual friends I think. We're also in a com you help moderate. Just agreeing and figured we'd say hey.

[phen0type.livejournal.com]

I agree with you.

[shiro-hayabusa.livejournal.com]

Why all this assumption? You keep saying or insinuating that your system is like everyone else's, your worldviews are like everyone else's, your manner of handling things is like everyone else's, and if any of the above happens to be false, everyone else should change.

[effeteifrit.livejournal.com]

I haven't read all the backposts and discussions on this, but...if it's true that this person is saying that their worldview is "like everyone else's", then this does not fit with "stop looking for external validation of reality."

Well, at least I'm not being flamed. ^_^;

[overlord-mordax.livejournal.com]

Its because they've (or at least one of them has) got a savior-complex. Or at least that's what I've gleaned from reading their blog that is actually written in.

I'm not trying to attack their system, at all, but there is a fine line between righteousness and (at least percieved) self-righteous.

[effeteifrit.livejournal.com]

All right; I think that part of the problem here is a confusion between the personal "we," and the general/generic "we". Having spent so long picking apart English language, I can kind of see where the personal or system "we" shifts over into a "we" that looks intended to be inclusive of the community. Right here:

"However, we are taught to accept others' definitions of reality as children..."

...seems to be where it shifts over. I can also chime in on this, seeing as how in the past, I've had to deal with not only (likely) multiplicity, but psychosis.

Your post seems like it's dealing heavily with the issue of subjective reality vs. objective reality, and basically calling objective reality invalid. It seems to be saying that subjective reality, as it is all we can ever know we know, is therefore the only thing important to the observer. While that may be true for you, at this moment, as an observer, this does not mean that it's true for anyone else.

(Even IF all things and all spirits are interconnected, this does not take away from the inherent individuality of all living things!)

I've dealt with things (in objective reality) that could be considered cults for a while; which may be a reason why I'm actually able to look at this without overtly attacking you. That is, I'm not *as* overly defensive on this, as many. Look at it this way--people here may be defensive (do you ask yourself why? Remember the Prime Directive?), they may not like you, but that doesn't make their lashing out at you justified. Lashing out, however, is what people do when they feel threatened. If you're secure, you don't have to feel threatened. Security is something that has to be built, developed, gained. It's not the norm.

I've also had the experience of looking at life prior to medication, and after medication. I know that there are certain states of mind which are directly correlated to brain chemistry (which tells me a lot about the nature of the human mind). I also know that there are some people more prone to "altered" states (by this I mean unmedicated states) than others.

It's easy to surround yourself with people who will validate every little thing you believe, whether that thought is grounded in rationality or not. And there are little pockets of the web where certain irrational thoughts are accepted, but not others. It's easy to get brainwashed, and have it all make sense to you in that moment. But then time passes, maybe you fall away from the groups who were bolstering you, and you begin to question what you once held as truth.

That voice is something worth listening to.

(cont'd below)

[effeteifrit.livejournal.com]

Having experience with psychosis, I also know that it can be relatively easy to have thoughts referring back onto other thoughts you've had, etc., until you come up with something that sounds not-entirely-sane to people outside of you. In the lack of outside information, what happens is that one uses the same information (from their own personal experience, or Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis--which I see from your journal, you heavily rely on) over and over--kind of like making a bitmap image where the quality degrades with each save. At first, it's not noticeable; but then one can see the image quality pixelate; and what was at one time as clear a picture of reality as one could get from that place in their lives--it becomes something not representative of reality at all. It is normally better to live and experience the present, not to live through past memories.

What at least I desire to be is clear, lucid, cogent--not recycling and recycling the same material, which may be wrong in the first place. Going back to the camera metaphor, there are filters that are normally placed over the eyes of sensation, creating perception. Perceptions are not always accurate.

In the case of psychosis, not only do you have perceptual filters in place; but, at least in an episode, what *comes through* to one is an altered or warped perception of reality--a reality which does *not* objectively exist. Symbolically speaking, yes; it may exist; in that it is an expression of perhaps something else that is going on in one's mind (for example, a fear of the world ending; which may in reality be a fear of death, which could be symbolically resonant to a fear of change...I don't know you well enough to really analyze this for you, however).

I've termed these "waking nightmares." Your nightmares aren't real. But sometimes acknowledging that is scarier than the nightmare itself, because to acknowledge that you don't have an accurate perception of reality means that you *don't have as much power over that reality* as you would like to.

But my point here is that sometimes, as people who have perceptual filters (and those who are prone to psychosis can have *strong* perceptual filters), it is of use to ask other people what they see, and really take it into consideration, and see if it matches up with what you see. If it doesn't, one of your perspectives, or both of your perspectives, do not match up cleanly enough to objective reality to be healthy. And it is not always the other person who is not seeing clearly!!! Yes, our society is very ill. But that doesn't mean that everyone else is always wrong.

Hope this helps.

[rabbitsystem.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your starting point, that there can be no knowledge of reality. There are more things in heven and earth, perhaps, but they are real and can be known. And if I didn't have reality to keep me grounded I'd be seriously messed up right now, because I'd be living in a dream world, comvincing myself that fiction was true.

I also have no idea what your actual point is.

-Seb

WhaT ID REALITY?

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

The point is that what people generally consider to be reality is a construct. We construct our perceptions of reality from beliefs and systems of beliefs. Most of our beliefs are absorbed from our culture and are rarely seriously challenged.

Unfortunately the concepts we learn from our culture often contain hidden assumptions or fabricated beliefs which either have become outdated, were never true, or serve an ulterior purpose.

For instance many people, particularly in China and on the Pacific Rim still believe smoking tobacco is healthy. This belief appears to have become outdated, it may never have been true, and serves an ulterior purpose for tobacco merchants who propogated this myth to increase their sales.

People in the USA who consider themselves patriots have a slogan they love to use "My country, right or wrong", but when our own country indulges in acts of international terrorism or supports corporate profits over human and environmental welfare, true patriots should be saying "Hey there is something wrong here, lets change things to make them better."

But cultural and social belief systems have immense momentum and people are afraid to make changes, no one wants to question their assumptions or chosen beliefs because it is too threatening to do so. The point then is to try to get people to accept the challenge of examining their own beliefs and considering change.

No one has to believe what we personally believe, but since many of the activities of the advertising industry rely on selling belief systems that are detrimental to our perception of ourselves in order to tie their products into a mindset where we may falsely believe their products will do more for us than they really can or should it is important to re-evaluate what we are being told, and even more important to discover the hidden messages that tear down our self esteem and wellbeing in order to make us better consumers or to get us to follow political and economic schemes that may not be in our best interests as individuals, societies or in the context of our global environment.