In a time where we are getting more and more disconnected as a species, using the internet and technology to complete more of our daily actions, I find us really becoming solipsistic as individuals, causing our analog interactions to flounder. With buying groceries and shopping in general, esports and online gambling, and media(social or traditional) being our main way on communicating. All things that we would have to be face to face, or at least make a phone call for, have turned into apps tailored to make finding what you need as streamlined as possible. Everything is designed to take our agency from us. From marketers personally designing deals and ads for each person based on their internet history and purchasing power, to your "for you" page telling you to what to enjoy. It's not even just that they want to tell us what we need but also they have to control what we want. Though this isn't about them, it's about us, you, me, everyone really.
Nobody can take your agency from you, they can trick you into not believing you don't have any but you still have to give in to that, to give it away. It's your will to put it simply, what allows you to take the wheel and drive. So what is taking your eyes from the road and hands from the wheel? Well we could talk about a myriad influences and "actors" in your life but those change for each of us, something that separates us further. So lets start at the first step before we make it past our own noses, our emotions. The instincts we have built as a species over the millennia to help us survive, to prosper and flourish, are at the same time our on worst enemy in a peaceful world. They have been forged and sharpened into weapons for our own safety but it also begs the question, is it time to demilitarize our hearts?
Outside of the many reasons that the stoics can get into for why this is helpful there is a much more modern reason for us to keep our emotions in check. Back to losing our agency, the tools used to take your agency are your emotions. This is because there are two realities that we all exist in simultaneously, these two realities are one of symbols and one of experiences. The World of Symbols is that of our emotions, it's how we feel about what we perceive, this is an individual's world, one that only you have access to without you having to describe it to others. Then there is The World of Experiences, this is a world that you actually perceive, and it is shared with everyone else who was present for the experience. Our personal Symbols are the emotions we tie to an experience, that is what becomes a symbol, the amalgamation of experience and emotion. When accessing that experience from memory it will all call forth the symbols and vis versa, they become intrinsically tied to each other.
These two worlds are constantly at battle with each other and that is why even though we no longer live in a wicked world full of combat, we must maintain these battle chops. The World of Experiences is the reality of truth, a world of hard physical evidence, where we can find the truth. The World of Symbols is the reality of self, colored by our personal thoughts and feeling about the situation at hand. One of the failures of our society is that we don't socialize our people to understand this, that instead we slyly use the mudding of the waters between these two worlds to blind us of the truth. Our emotions are important, they are a tool that has kept us alive long enough as a species to get to the point in society that we can forgo them in our budding peaceful world. Part of this is because our social contract is built on the idea that we should assume that everyone is trying to do their best at being a good person, that the world and it's people are no longer wicked.
Emotions are the communication of our body's instincts to the rest of the self, letting us know how we feels about a situation. Our body can produce emotions from both Symbolic and Experienced situation. Now just because we have a feeling pop up doesn't mean it was the right one to feel in the moment or even that it is meaningful at all. The feeling could be from something tangential but because of the timing we assume it's from our Present Situation. I call these invalid emotions, ones where something bugged me and when I think about it later I'm like, "What was I doing, I got upset about that? How fucking embarrassing, could it have been something else." The reason that is important is because we can be our own worst enemy when our symbolic brain doesn't agree with our experiencing brain. Now our symbolic brain can easily take charge of us if we aren't familiar with the feeling it is producing in reaction to the situation. We get so caught up in the feeling produced that we begin to fester in it, it consumes our thoughts and perverts them to fall in line. Now don't get me wrong, it's this same mechanism that lets us fall into a piece of art, feel the energy of the crowd at a concert, or even embrace the feelings of others through sympathizing. This invokes the entire history for the symbol that we have experienced in any form before, every emotion and thought will be flushed through your circuitry in a conflux on context that leaves us feeling a certain type of way. This is a beautiful thing when it is working properly.
Our Experiencing Brain can only collect and sort data, this is not to say that our thoughts can't be flavored by our emotions or our emotions by our thoughts, especially when our emotions are in control but once we learn to control our emotions, we can more easily trust and rely on our experiencing brain to not be seasoning the data it collects, in turn giving a more clear view into a shared reality with our fellow humans. The issue comes in when we let our Symbolic brain influence our Experiencing brain before we have taken in the experience wholly as it was. In a Wicked society a warrior knows that the best way to gain the upper hand on an opponent is to scuff their vibes. It's to get in their head, which really means to set up a thought spiral for them to fall into. In a peaceful world that dynamic is flipped, you are the enemy, your emotions are constantly "attacking" you, trying to keep you safe, but when you aren't being attacked by another person you have to have a different reaction.
Getting to the title, The Greater Disease, a lack of belief in ourselves and our ability. Its is a solipsistic spiral where ones Experiencing Brain orbits their Symbolic Brain, always seeming to eclipse in the worse moments. Blinded by their emotions only Experiencing what the Symbolic Brain reflects back to us. The worst part about this is that we love it when it happens, we are flushed full of emotions and feel alive because well we are feeling. So much so that we let is take control and fill us with energy. In closing the disease is you, it's you allowing yourself to muddy the waters of reality, the reality we can all share in experience, all forgone for the comfort of your personal Symbology. It's an inherent selfishness in the way we socialize where we pretend our personal feelings are any where near as relevant as the experiences we can share. Where we stand by our convictions as long as they make us feel alright. Where we believe we are even the main character of our own story when it's always been an ensemble cast.
In our next post we will be continuing this topic into "The Romance of Every Waking Moment", in our romantic little solo dates with ourselves, to convince ourself to fall in hate or love in the moment. I know we didn't fully explain every concept here but we will get to it don't you worry. Deeper and deeper we dig for our consecration lies in the soil.
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