Scattered Wide
32 comments
Sometimes I look back at old photos I have taken and while I remember them all, they are also somehow unfamiliar to me - lie I am looking at photos of people I have never met, in places I have never been. It is a strange disconnection, because at the same time I remember where I was when the photo was taken, and often my experience of that moment. As have mentioned before, sometimes I feel like I am living in someone else's body, and inhabiting their mind, with only remnants tying me to my actual reality.
Maybe this is why I am not a fan of people attaching themselves to some kind of identity, protesting that they are this, that, or the other thing they believe themselves to be, because it is always such a transient position. A slight shift in the way the brain functions, and almost everything they know about themselves, could be lost, scattered like the seeds of a dandelion in a strong breeze, never again to return to the comfort of the stem they had known up until that point.
I think when a lot of people define themselves through labels, they don't fully appreciate how insignificant their definition is, or how irrelevant. From one moment to the next, our conditions are changing, but much of it is outside of our awareness, hidden from our evaluating eye of judgement, unlabelled. But even without a label, it is still us in the moment, a an existential reality that we experience subjectively, inaccurately, and incompletely. We are there, but no matter how present we are, how focused, our attention and ability to process experience is just so incredibly limited, that we can only ever capture a sliver of it.
Hold your thumb at arms length and look at your nail. That is about the size of your focused eyesight at any given time - that is what you can pay attention to in detail. Past that tiny space, detail rapidly blurs. We can still be aware outside of that spot, but we cannot experience it fully. What about our other senses? How many instruments can we pick out at one time from a song, listening to the notes of both independently?
How many eyes can we look longingly into?
We can do a lot simultaneously, but that is because so much of what we do is automated. If we had to labour to breath, and think through the movement of each muscle to expand and contract the lungs, we would suffocate before the first breath, let alone be able to solve a mathematical equation in the process. We are far more complex than we give ourselves credit, because what we are capable of being aware of is comparatively so simple.
We like to label though, because labels give us the heuristics we require to be able to navigate the complexity of experience, by using generalisations to block the majority of experience out of our awareness. We focus our attention, because if we didn't, if we were able to let all the sensory information in unfiltered, it would drown our psyche, and overwhelm our feelings. We are not equipped to open the floodgates to reality, and all we can let through is a trickle.
We classify a body of water, lake, a river, an ocean, but each is made up of single molecules, uncountable. If we didn't create a way to consolidate the unknowable into something we can comprehend, we would go mad, unable to complete the simplest of actions in order to survive. We take all of the pieces, and lump them together, the million trees become the forest, the trillion drops of water, the lake.
We do it to ourselves as well.
We are all profoundly unique, but at the same time, we are also profoundly not that different to anyone else. Yet, we use these labels to differentiate ourselves, and in so doing, actually become less unique. Every label we add, the less unique we become, because it makes our personal group more inclusive - shared with more people. The fragmentation of labels to make ourselves feel special, feel unique, is a process of homogenisation. The more attention we pay to the thumbnail we have in focus, the less energy we have to spend on what makes us truly unique.
I know, I sound like a crazy person.
But look at the world we have created, and the things we choose to spend our time and energy on as individuals and collectively and ask yourself - who is crazy? Think about where you spend your attention and consider whether it is the act of a sane person? A sane people would focus on making life better, wouldn't they? Is that what you are doing?
Is that what I am doing?
I know, yet it all seems unfamiliar.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Be part of the Hive discussion.
- Comment on the topics of the article, and add your perspectives and experiences.
- Read and discuss with others who comment and build your personal network
- Engage well with me and others and put in effort
And you may be rewarded.
Comments