But those cracks exist because of an accident. We are born with a certain nature built in. Our genetics result in certain characteristics and tendencies in our nature, some of which we inherit directly from one genetic strand and some of which occur because of a mixing of genetic strands creating a new one.

So this basic nature exists, what the Illuminatus Trilogy refers to as the biogram.

And then you meet society.

Society is built along specific rules and logic, called the logogram and you are conditioned to agree with and follow this logic. And most of the time people do, even when they think they're defying this conditioning most of us are just sliding into a different niche that exists under this conditioning. Even though any specific societies rules and logic will exist only for a short period of time before a new order will replace them, the concept of society itself has existed for a long time. Consequently humans are at this point used to being domesticated.

Anyway when your nature meets the societies conditioning, its like a lens being cracked. Your basic nature is the lens, and the conditioning is the cracks that spread across it. Depending on the shape of the lens, the cracks will assume different patterns. Due to a tendency among people to seek mates they are compatible with, people who repsond well to conditioning seeks others whom repsond well to it. So this means that the majority of people are gentically likely to go along with the conditioning as well, so the lens is the right shape to assume the pattern of cracks that society wants.

However there are many lenses that are shaped or warped differently, and when they crack the pattern is altogether different from what is expected. And yet again because people will seek compatible mates, those with similarily warped cracks will gather. So now you have different groups of individuals looking at the world and imposing their imagined patterns onto it and then arguing because they see different patterns that dont exist.

And then further onto this you have the people who's basic nature is so different from the conditioning that it results in an incredible distortion and pressure on the individual. And they will react in very dangerous ways. Some turn violent, some just turn inward.

Nietzsche gives a very good description of this in Thus Spake Zarathura under the heading of The Pale Criminal.

 

So...now we have a bunch of people who disagree over whose imagination is right, some who are driven to violence, some simply to quiet insanity,  and others to the thousand other reactions that can happen because of their personality.

 

And the biggest irony is that even if you remove the cracks none of us would be any closer to seeing the actual reality. We would still be looking through a lens. And lens is a very appropriate word. None of our senses are direct. They go through a decoder in your brain. Your eyes see something and your brain decodes it, your ears hear a noise and your brain decodes it. For all we know the world is nothing like what we feel, see, hear, taste, etc...although shit mostly likely does really stink.

So where does that leave us? Questioning. And thats the only state we can exist in without stagnating. Perhaps one day we will experience reality directly, maybe drugs help remove the lens, maybe if your lens becomes cracked enough, it will shatter altogether, although thats probably what happens when you go insane.

So till we experience directly, we have to question everything. We can never be comfortable thinking that we know reality, because we are merely thinking that. 

Long live the eternally paranoid!

 

Enough ranting for now, i need ice-cream.