greetings from bizarro world
Sep. 12th, 2006 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ineffabelleyou know, my friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bibble said something once that had a deep impact on me because it was so true, it was astonishing:
"people have it all backwards"
There have just been too many examples to even really get into details, and it wouldn't do much good anyway.*
But one of the weird side effects of this is that we've built a bizarro world for ourselves where everything works backwards, too, so if you try and do things forwards, you run into all kinds of frustrations. We have to sort of "tack against the wind" to make any progress at all.
Which I think is why so many of us, in this thing of ours, identify with the image of the secret agent, ninja, magician, etc.
Everything should be very simple and easy to explain at root, but in bizarro world of course, the simplest truths require 800 page books to deal with all the backwards-thinking objections in advance. Now, it's not a "smart-dumb" thing either. Funny enough the smartest people are often the ones that are the most backwards, because they've been integrated so deeply into bizarro world.
My genetic predecessor alter-ego once called himself "the master of the obvious" because he would say seemingly obvious things that seemed revolutionary to people.
The outer universe still runs forwards, and thus we enter the post-modern society where the spiral is being driven in on itself, to eat it's own tail or die. The best truths seem contradictory to bizarro people, even though they're based on non-contradiction.
We will remix them into oblivion or die trying. And I'm not going to start talking backwards to please the bizarros.
That said, I don't know exactly how to get out of the conundrum. We'll see what happens.
* - for a good fictional example of Bizarro thinking, in the movie Armageddon, they trained a bunch of miners to become astronauts, instead of training astronauts to be miners. Now the person that pointed that out to me cited it as a criticism of the movie, but unfortunately it's just the kind of thing that would actually happen.
bibble said something once that had a deep impact on me because it was so true, it was astonishing:"people have it all backwards"
There have just been too many examples to even really get into details, and it wouldn't do much good anyway.*
But one of the weird side effects of this is that we've built a bizarro world for ourselves where everything works backwards, too, so if you try and do things forwards, you run into all kinds of frustrations. We have to sort of "tack against the wind" to make any progress at all.
Which I think is why so many of us, in this thing of ours, identify with the image of the secret agent, ninja, magician, etc.
Everything should be very simple and easy to explain at root, but in bizarro world of course, the simplest truths require 800 page books to deal with all the backwards-thinking objections in advance. Now, it's not a "smart-dumb" thing either. Funny enough the smartest people are often the ones that are the most backwards, because they've been integrated so deeply into bizarro world.
My genetic predecessor alter-ego once called himself "the master of the obvious" because he would say seemingly obvious things that seemed revolutionary to people.
The outer universe still runs forwards, and thus we enter the post-modern society where the spiral is being driven in on itself, to eat it's own tail or die. The best truths seem contradictory to bizarro people, even though they're based on non-contradiction.
We will remix them into oblivion or die trying. And I'm not going to start talking backwards to please the bizarros.
That said, I don't know exactly how to get out of the conundrum. We'll see what happens.
* - for a good fictional example of Bizarro thinking, in the movie Armageddon, they trained a bunch of miners to become astronauts, instead of training astronauts to be miners. Now the person that pointed that out to me cited it as a criticism of the movie, but unfortunately it's just the kind of thing that would actually happen.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 11:46 pm (UTC)I don't know if that's a good analogy for how you feel, but it's been one for me for a while. That was behind what I posted yesterday. And you'll notice that you were the only person to reply to it. My usual verbosity and the overabundance of 9/11 commentary is probably part of why, but that didn't stop this far longer screed (http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/2006/09/09/) from making it to half of my friends list. The truth is that in Bizarro World, only Bizarro words are heard. And really, much as we might pride ourselves on trying to understand what goes on in the world outside of us, we couldn't speak backwards for long even if we wanted to. In fact, I'd say much of the distress we share comes from the strain of how much we already do so just to pay the rent.
Truth is these aren't easy times for redpills. In fact, I'd say thes times are precisely the test that we must inevitably face. We seem more outnumbered and less heard each day. The trick (call it "faith" if you must) is to understand that Bizarro World itself is an illusion, a facade put up to confuse the few of us that stare at it in horror into thinking that it must be what people really want.
In actuality, all truth eventually has its audience. If someone's on a sinking ship, it doesn't matter whether we can convince them of it or not. Sooner or later the waters will rise to meet them, and whoever wants to live will want something to grab onto. And by and large, people want to live.
So if we really mean it (and let me tell you, this is as much advice to me as to anyone), this is exactly where we need to stand our ground. Continue to grow and learn ourselves while we do so, of course, and also not slip into elitism, another form of the same disease. But not ever, EVER just accept that 2 and 2 is anything but 4.
If you need any help with the math, the Pittsburgh node is standing by.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 11:49 pm (UTC)working from the inside out
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 11:54 pm (UTC)I'm just at a loss for where to go next.
We need to hang out soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-13 12:00 am (UTC)we are gonna go check it out this weekend
u wanna come?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-13 12:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-13 12:26 am (UTC)You persist because you have an admirable code.
I don't think the world is full of liars. Just backward people.
arataZ nhoJ ot gnidrocca lepsog ehT: Turn Me On, Dead Man
Date: 2006-09-13 01:05 am (UTC)I'm increasingly convinced that the filmstrip of time is actually running "backward" from the bureaucratically ordered universe toward something like mythology: from the dying earth to Atlantis, the new lands rise and the peoples recollect themselves, moving toward the center bringing their (our) once-scattered technologies with them, (back) toward an ur-age that isn't so much a distant memory as a vague presentiment. That said, I haven't checked the cosmological constants lately and so in theory inflation may yet triumph, heat love will tear us apart (again). Thanks for the thoughts....
The good news
Date: 2006-09-13 01:12 am (UTC)Eventually people's expectations trump the numbers and they abandon the paper.
Love always wins. But it needs to be patient.
The mystics were really talking about the future, they just didn't have the fine tuned language we do.
Word.
Date: 2006-09-13 01:16 am (UTC)And the word was ParaTheos.
Re: arataZ nhoJ ot gnidrocca lepsog ehT: Turn Me On, Dead Man
Date: 2006-09-13 01:18 am (UTC)You spin me right round, baby
Date: 2006-09-14 03:16 am (UTC)Nautiloid Elohim
Date: 2006-09-14 05:22 pm (UTC)Re: Nautiloid Elohim
Date: 2006-09-14 05:27 pm (UTC)Re: arataZ nhoJ ot gnidrocca lepsog ehT: Turn Me On, Dead Man
Date: 2006-09-13 01:27 am (UTC)ni ssendriew eht let eW
Date: 2006-09-13 02:26 am (UTC)