She's a good person, but not a nice person. Sound contradictory? It isn't...I'm sure you've met nice people that aren't good at all...And some of the people that do the most good aren't very nice at all.
Janus-like, she has a face on one side of her head that looks into this world, and a face on the other that looks into the universe next door. You know the place I'm talking about...Sometimes you get a feeling that if you turned right instead of going straight like you were supposed to, everything would suddenly be different. Sometimes, even, you actually do something out of character or routine, and just for a moment, you can sense the strangeness of your surroundings. Then things go back to normal, and you're plagued by deja vous for the next three weeks. You saw this other universe as a child, before they beat it out of you. ("Grow up." "Act your age." "No, there isn't a three-headed, transdimensional soul-sucker in your closet. Now go to sleep.")
Anyway, she sees into both universes, and thus appears to act a little irrationally, as if she were responding to stimulus that you can't see, or reacting inappropriately for the occasion. Some people think she's nuts, but she isn't. She just sees a very different existence than you do...You are drawing conclusions based on incomplete data.
That's a common monkey problem, and she's the perfect illustration of what they're NOT doing. People spend their entire lives making decisions that seem to be right, but somehow don't work out. The reason they fail is that the decision maker was operating on incorrect or incomplete information.
The reason they do that is that they are trapped in a common monkey trap, where the first idea that comes to mind is the best one possible, and they'll hammer at the universe until it fits - or appears to fit - the situation. However, what they're really doing is changing their perception of the universe. The real universe is still there, and it will plod patiently up, sooner or later, to explain the situation in terms you'll understand. This may or may not be fatal, depending on the situation.
To continue the allegory (And it IS allegory, after all, people don't really walk around with a foot in "each" universe, ha ha, don't be silly.), some people act on too much information, which can also cause problems, if irrelevant information is treated as relevant...Again, a failure to view the universe the way it really is, as opposed to the universe as you'd like to see it.
And as for the allegorical woman, pay her no mind when she screams shit like "If you're stuck in a bad reality tunnel, remember that there's two ways out! Where you're going, and where you came from!"...As if any of us would be foolish enough to ever admit we make mistakes. Why, They would eat us alive.
No, she's clearly unbalanced...And that can be infuriating, when the things she does usually work. Why can't she just let things go, you know, and be sane like the rest of us?
Or Kill me.
Yeah! If this is your new direction of writing, I'm on board.
You speak of the soul-less glazed eye automatons here. They fear the unknown and tremble in the face of the reality She brings.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 25, 2011, 04:24:28 PM
Yeah! If this is your new direction of writing, I'm on board.
Pills here. I had this
nightmare really cool dream, and it happened to fit perfectly with what I wanted to say.
I feel a kinship with this character.
I am actively creating the universe I want to live in. That's my mantra, man. And it IS working, albeit slowly. And it's working because I am focused on a universe that doesn't exist, but could. (I'm a professional larp designer for chrissakes!) :p
I can think of a time, before I arrived at PD, when my thoughts were still very magical. Pineal, some might say. I was living in Stamford CT, I had knowingly deluded myself, I was living in a dream world. And then the money ran out and a new reality of the situation came to light, and I had to make some core changes in how I operate. but I still haven't lost sight of that magical universe, the dream machine I built one night at a time, the world hidden behind the veil... It's still out there, calling to me, I just have to pursue a different avenue to it.
The allegory seems to say "get your head out of the clouds". And yeah, to a certain degree one has to remain anchored, grounded. one should always be pragmatic about their actions, use what works, toss aside what doesn't work. But if I'm reading you right, the allegory suggests that the lack of pragmatism is a result of a bigger problem... she lives in a world that is incompatible with this one. And I don't think that's a sin in itself at all.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2011, 04:49:36 PM
The allegory seems to say "get your head out of the clouds".
Actually, it says jam it back into the clouds, if you read it carefully (particularly the last paragraph).
ahh - read it three times but didn't catch the "sane like us" line as a pointer that the narrator is unreliable. I know you dislike reality being presented as a subjective, malleable, it's-whatever-you-believe kind of thing, this seems like an unusual direction for you, no?
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2011, 05:01:04 PM
ahh - read it three times but didn't catch the "sane like us" line as a pointer that the narrator is unreliable. I know you dislike reality being presented as a subjective, malleable, it's-whatever-you-believe kind of thing, this seems like an unusual direction for you, no?
This train has done lost its tracks, Cram.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2011, 05:03:51 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2011, 05:01:04 PM
ahh - read it three times but didn't catch the "sane like us" line as a pointer that the narrator is unreliable. I know you dislike reality being presented as a subjective, malleable, it's-whatever-you-believe kind of thing, this seems like an unusual direction for you, no?
This train has done lost its tracks, Cram.
I think the run-away train ride is going to be very interesting.
Cram, to me the important sections are "if you spend too much time in one universe over the other (or believe in one universe more than the other), things will go badly for you."
That line about "incomplete information"... It almost relates back to the Order/Disorder paradigm in that if you can't see both clearly, one of them's gonna smack you on the back of the head with a baseball bat.
The drones have given up on that universe she's looking at... and the doomed dreamers can't deal with the other.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 25, 2011, 05:22:06 PM
The drones have given up on that universe she's looking at... and the doomed dreamers can't deal with the other.
THIS. FUCKING RIGHT THERE.
I feel like that's a unifying theme of a lot of the stuff we write here...
Change the world ... but keep your head down.
Reality is subjective ... except for barstools.
Go crazy ... but not too crazy.
I sometimes wonder if we're sniffing up the middle ground fallacy (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/middle-ground.html). I mean, all the people who DID change the world in a significant way - the napoleons, the martin luther kings, the julian assanges ... most of those characters are not grounded, they are shooting so far past the moon that if they didn't get famous doing it, they'd just be run of the mill nutjobs.
Roger's position in this piece seems to suggest we should join them, and I can dig that.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2011, 05:35:59 PM
I feel like that's a unifying theme of a lot of the stuff we write here...
Change the world ... but keep your head down.
Reality is subjective ... except for barstools.
Go crazy ... but not too crazy.
I sometimes wonder if we're sniffing up the middle ground fallacy (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/middle-ground.html). I mean, all the people who DID change the world in a significant way - the napoleons, the martin luther kings, the julian assanges ... most of those characters are not grounded, they are shooting so far past the moon that if they didn't get famous doing it, they'd just be run of the mill nutjobs.
Roger's position in this piece seems to suggest we should join them, and I can dig that.
Join them? I want to BE them.
Why half-ass things when we can fully-ass them?
I've been out of these circles of thought for a little while, spending lots of time in whatever ragtag collection of comforting external influences I call my own mind. I spent a good chunk of this morning trying to catch up on new thoughts, and before lunchtime my head started hurting and I felt unusually tired. That preamble is really just to explain my perspective - trying to integrate new thoughts physically hurts when you're not used to it. If I didn't recognise the symptoms as something which
need to be worked through, then my natural course would be to just give up and stay in my own universe.
She is screaming at the drones about reality tunnels and what-not, but if to comprehend her position, the drones need to put in a lot of head-hurting work, then there is a missing-link of motivation. Eye on the prize - sure - but what is the prize?
A new flavour of Enlightenment? Well Deepak Chopra is on Oprah in a few minutes, and his shit must be true because it makes sense and isn't so damn confusing.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2011, 04:17:23 PM
And as for the allegorical woman, pay her no mind when she screams shit like "If you're stuck in a bad reality tunnel, remember that there's two ways out! Where you're going, and where you came from!"...As if any of us would be foolish enough to ever admit we make mistakes. Why, They would eat us alive.
When a reality tunnels gets bad, it appears as a wide open field. I'm not stuck in a tunnel you crazy allegorical woman, for I have my Freedom
tm.
Wow y'all good stuff!!!
The OP rocks and reminds me of someone I know.... :D
:mittens:
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2011, 05:31:45 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 25, 2011, 05:22:06 PM
The drones have given up on that universe she's looking at... and the doomed dreamers can't deal with the other.
THIS. FUCKING RIGHT THERE.
*sigh*
Quote from: Captain Utopia on January 25, 2011, 05:59:09 PM
She is screaming at the drones about reality tunnels and what-not, but if to comprehend her position, the drones need to put in a lot of head-hurting work, then there is a missing-link of motivation. Eye on the prize - sure - but what is the prize?
I never scream at the drones, myself...I tend to assume that
everyone's working with a different perspective that I myself might not be seeing.
I'm more of the "not eliminating irrelevant information" type.