The Social Matrix: This Will fuck With Your head

If the work of gathering evidence and reasoning through thorny, polarizing political questions is actually the process by which we trick ourselves into finding the answers we want, then what's the right way to search for answers?  How can we know the answers we come up with, no matter how well-intentioned, aren't just more motivated cognition?  How can we know the experts we're relying on haven't subtly biased their answers, too?  How can I know this article isn't a form of identity protection?

I love that there is a growing amount of research that is actively questioning itself.  I love that there are researchers who feel deeply troubled by their own findings.

At the same time, I understand why this emerging cognitive dissonance is happening at a time of increased partisan tribalism and shorter-sighted policy positions.

Of course, I've thought through all this social lekking, partisan tribalism and the evolutionary cognitive matrix behind our so-called conscious thought.  I keep doing so, because I know the rabbit hole only goes deeper.

And I would be happy to share with you, point-blank, the startling, comforting conclusions I have found.  I try to do so on this blog, regularly.

If I've learned anything, though, it's that there's purpose behind this little bit of aged wisdom:

Anyone can show you the door; you're the one that has to walk through it.

What happens when you let go of the tribe?  You become part of something infinitely more satisfying.

But don't take it from me - I'm just a messenger.

Living On the Edge of Emergence

#LiveDieRepeat all over again!

Since we already know there are no new stories under the sun (only new retellings) you'd think that by now, we'd be more consciously recognizing the underpinning themes.

I mean, The Hero With A Thousand Faces was written in 1949 - and the concepts within Campbell's words have been winked at by countless writers over the course of history.

There's the fall.  We were better off, once - happier, more in control, stronger, healthier, more in tune with The Presence.  

There's the cycle.  Death, rebirth, the slow progress towards understanding over time.  

There's the enemy.  External, alien, inscrutable and as often as not expressed as a hive mind, like a murmuration.

There's tomorrow.  It can be represented by light, by nothingness, it can lie before us or behind us but is always a world removed from the matrix of our present.  

There's the Presence; a Force or Being that is unknowable, not the enemy but somehow beyond us all and conducting events in some purposeful direction.

And of course there's us, living on the raggedy edge.

Between us and the temporal or physical Undiscovered Country of tomorrow lies cataclysm, some horrific event we fear (or hope) will rip our world open and forever sever our connection with where we are now.  

If we can somehow navigate all these competing pieces, at the end lies emergence.

Exactly.