After a day to think around it, I need to add something I feel yesterday’s piece left out. I think I was so busy bootstrapping in order to write the piece, at all, it slipped my mind to inform you, my Gentle Reader (for those of you that don’t know, “Gentle Reader” is stolen from, and in direct honor of, Issac Asimov), the other thing. I mentioned the adjustment to my world view and the subsequent alterations to how I relate my fellow humans. I feel I inadequately expressed the complete inhalation of the “goggles” I had been seeing the world through. My moral self fell to its knees and wept. This is the second factor that had me silent. But, not anymore. It’s time to save the world.
Alright, first things first. You are all addicted to yourselves. Fucking junkies, but I say this with no shame attached. This is not a space for victim blaming. Just to clarify, I am saying: you are all addicted, physically and pathologically dependent, to yourselves. It is a pandemic across nearly every culture that comes to mind. This ailment leads to physical and mental breakdowns that are so common we have a difficult time maintaining the ability to function morally and efficiently, because this issue dominates the lives of billions across the globe. This is the only thing we must survive, as this leads to all of our self-destructive habits. As sure as any serious addiction can destroy a life, addiction to the self, compounded exponentially as it currently is, erodes our potential and kills in the hundreds and thousands daily.
It’s time to stop this behavior. This is an intervention.
I am only this one author, I need your help to populate “the room”. The ideas that I will be presenting from here on out in my non-fiction non-exclusively must be propagated. I urge you again, as I often have, please, steal from these words. Adopt as much of this intellectual arrangement as you healthily can. As with any addiction, this process will be very uncomfortable, and I will do my best to offer tips along the way and answer as many questions as I’m able.
I’m going to begin right now.
Blind Spots and Lies
The eyeball has many flaws. For all its “miraculous” function, there are numerous flaws of catastrophic impact. Detachable retinas and cataracts are just a couple of the compromising flaws in our eyes. Today, I need you to focus on just one little quirk, please. Many of you will have seen the television show Brain Games, or will at least have been exposed to some of the variety of cool visual tricks and illusions that artists have come up with to play on, and describe in immense detail, the ease in which our sight fails to be 20/20.
Our subject exercise is very much along those lines, as we discover what is known as:
The Blind Spot.
The Blind Spot is in both eyes. Below in figure S.1 we see a simple graphic that can be used to reveal this Blind Spot. It’s very simple:
Turn your mobile device to get the maximum screen width. Close your left eye and stare at the brain on the left, bring the screen of your mobile device closer to your face, maintain the cold stare from your right eye to the brain on the left. Depending on-screen size and face arrangement, you will see the brain on the right disappear, leaving only the white background. Pretty neat, but let’s take it up a notch. Do the same exercise, but this time use two thumbs up. Extend both arms directly in front of you. Give two thumbs up. Close your left eye and stare at your left thumb. For many of you, your right thumb will have disappeared immediately. If not, you can bring them towards your eyes, evenly, and slide your right thumb a little left or right if needed to make the thumb vanish. I enjoy adjusting my right thumb to maintain the effect bringing it as close to my face as I can.
Fun, right?
Within this little exercise we can stop and observe something that isn’t so playful. Notice, it seems we are able to see through our thumbs, aka. there isn’t a black hole where our thumbs used to be. Now, if we are observing a “blind spot”, how can we be seeing what is behind our thumbs?
Answer: we aren’t.
We are hallucinating. Our brains build a false reality where the thumb used to be, but of course, our thumbs are still there. This is happening every waking second. Every moment you are using your eyes, you are hallucinating your brains best guess at what is in your field of vision. It usually gets it so close we don’t notice. Isn’t that slick? Our brain supplies made-up information constantly, and we don’t even notice. A constant stream of well-intentioned lies.
This is the first example of the most joyful realization language has ever delivered me.
My brain is a liar.
My brain is a liar.
My brain is lying to me—all the time.
I invite you to say this several times out loud. Write it down, and put it on the fridge or filing cabinet. When you notice it, say it to yourself out loud. A new friend said of the Astrology superstition, “It is a language.” Think around it like that. You are arming yourself with an objective statement about the brain, and a simple exercise offering testable, experiential, and comparative data. Remember, sharing the exercise and your experience of trying it is so important, which also gives you more opportunities to promote the idea to your own consciousness via spoken language. Below are two posters that I created to really drive the point home, if you are interested in displaying one, hit me up via comment or private message.
I’ll give everyone a couple of days to practice and let this digest. Until then, don’t forget to practice mindfulness meditation too.
An Arkansas Atheist 