We Know What We are, But Not What We May Be

“The World is nothing but change, our life is only perception.”

–Marcus Aurelius

Do you know the world in which you live?

This is a question that seems simple, then complex, then inconceivable the more thought you invest into it. At first you think, “well of course I know the world I live in, I may not know every detail but I know that I am here I am living on a planet, in a country, in a state, in a town, in a home. However, what is a planet? What is a country? What is a state? What is a town? What constitutes a home?

When posed with these questions and the insightful inquisitions they can lead to, you realize that your path is not a path at all, it’s just the direction you are currently going, and sometimes when you look up from your somewhat reluctant trudge through this modern landscape, you realize that the landscape itself is not at all how it was when you embarked on your life’s journey. So then, with this in mind, what is your perception of the decisions you made in the past, for your future, which is now your most present? Those decisions you made to make a move, to move from your hometown to a place out of town or even to a different country, did it pay off? It made sense then, but does it now? Regardless of the answer, and regardless of whether your decision from the past is one you are still happy with, the fact still remains, the landscape has changed and the reality for which you prepared for is not at all the reality you currently live in.

So, with this in mind, with an ever-changing landscape of cultural, technological or social evolution, how can one keep a grounded perception of their own reality?

When you choose to go on, unquestioning, towards the horizon of your life and fail to look up with wonder, and mesmerize yourself with the deepest ponderances of the human psyche, you are destined to trudge along making no real headway within the essential part of your mind that shapes your perception and more importantly CONTROLS your perception. We live a modern life of conveniences that are inconvenient to our mental health. We feel anxious, tired, worried, depressed, stuck, hopeless, and content all in the same week in sporadic times of the day. What we eat, what we see, what we hear, what forms of media we consume, all will skew our perception one way or another. Trapped within a landscape of monumental over stimulation, we often can become overwhelmed by things so far away from us that if we were to view ourselves in the grand scope of the human experience, we would be amused at how we let such insignificant factors rule our mind, simply because the system we are plugged into insists that we allow those factors to do so.

Social media, instant news, instant opinions, instant conversation, instant answers, these are all things that make us sub-human, it makes us androids. This sounds silly so let me explain, in movies an android is a robot with human appearance, the robot has built-in systems that make it capable of things a human alone cannot possibly be capable of doing. An android in a movie can calculate an extremely hard math problem in an instant, can know the date to any and all factoids of world history in an instant, can see whatever they want in an instant, can speak to others across the globe in an instant, all the things we humans can do now with the help of smartphones. We may not be symbiotic robots with wires and titanium limbs but we are in fact more android than human in todays modern world. We are capable of all of those feats I mentioned, the only difference is, androids in science fiction have everything built in within themselves, our systems are still on the outside of us, in our pockets, in our hands, on our kitchen table, its not yet within our being… yet. This new found ability interferes with our natural perception, it makes us into a different entity entirely, it tries to replace the wonderous curiosity that got us here with an obsession for gaining instant gratification. This instant gratification we are addicted to, succeeds in stunting a human’s natural inclination to question, reason and use critical thinking to form perception. Instead we rely on external sources at an alarmingly high rate, to the point where a lot of people are just walking shills of someone else’s ideas that they just adopted for themselves.

Furthermore, the new conveniences that our technology allows us to have, puts us in a headspace where our perception is dictated to by external stimuli, so an insignificant inconvenience can drive an otherwise content person to anger and anxiety. Why we worry about occurrences that have no real bearing on the natural order of the planet is intriguing. I myself let occurrences that are really unrelated to my own life get the best of me at times, but I realize this is due to the unnatural nature of our system, it does not treat me like the natural born human I am, it treats me like a node, something to use while useful. So, even occurrences that directly effect your life, like work issues and stresses do not have ANY, NONE, ZERO bearing on your natural being, they simply do not. If you are late to work or make a mistake at work, you may get fired and go homeless etc. all the negative occurrences may happen, yes, but in the grand scope of human life, it will not disable your mind from being able to problem solve out of your problems, it really only effects the system we are plugged into. We are so invested in this system that our perception is not in our control, the slightest shift in the system can send you in a tailspin depending on how close you are to the shockwave the shift creates. However, if we step back, and meditate on what truly drives our minds, we see that unplugging from this system is needed greatly and has caused many of us to be manipulated and made malleable to the whims of others looking to shape our ideology, beliefs, and even control our habits and information. This all leads to a mental hardship in our social system, we feel unheard, we feel useless in any forum of public discourse so much so that we either slink back and do not participate or we blindly spout out ideas that are not our own, simply to feel heard and like we stand for something.

A big element of modern internal mental hardship is that our social system, especially in “developed” countries, does everything to shape our perceptions into a vapid and consumerist mentality. We are even packaged like products with concepts like value based on, wealth accumulation, standardized ideas of beauty, social media numbers that create “value” etc. etc.

When a populace is predisposed to value made up concepts and apply them to judge the worth of others, our unique perspective is manipulated. Our perception becomes inundated by these new “rules”. It’s a very ridiculous time, where silly people can be admired for traits they don’t even poses, vapid people are listened to as if they hold wisdom the likes of Aurelius or Sagan. It’s not that people are stupid, on the contrary the individual has the capacity for the most beautiful level of compassionate rational thinking but the individual plugged into our social system becomes almost impaired and their perception skewed, almost as if our modern social system is a sort of reality altering drug. However, instead of granting insight like psychedelics, this social drug our system feeds us, takes it away. We all are passionate about certain issues but to have your personal being REVOLVE around such issues is doing nothing for your mental health but making your mind into a shill of its wonderous potential.

Marcus Aurelius once said, “The World is nothing but change, our life is only perception”. For me this means that the world around us is going to change forever, no matter what we believe in personally, so the one thing that controls the world in which you live in for yourself personally at all times regardless of change, is perception. Now, this is a problem in our modern world with our perception being completely bombarded by myriad occurrences, issues, preoccupations etc. that are hell bent on skewing our perceptions away from being under our own control and replaced by this perception that can be manipulated like a machine to sway one way or another.

There is an abundance of information, but an astounding LACK of perceptive ability to use the information constructively. We can have the answers to almost any question within reason, but find it useless within the scope of our systems value system. The world around us is ever changing and is even attacking the very machinations of our own minds that allows use to project our unique identity on the world via our unique perception. Separate the system from the natural, you do not need to become a minimalist, free spirit, liberal to understand the difference between a system of control and your own natural processes. Delve into your psyche ask why you let external instances shape your mind so rapidly, question the validity of your OWN beliefs recapture your perception in this ever changing world and delve into the dark unknown of your innermost being, do this and you will have a feast laid before you, a feast of knowledge, a feast of POWERS that allow you to regain the control of your own mind, control your own perception in an ever changing world. There is nothing impeding your progress, so as the Locust Preacher says in Dark Souls, fear not the dark my friend, and let the feast….begin.

Thank you for taking time to read this.

Written By: Marcos Lopez 10/31/2020