The Inverted World
The world we have been given (and within which we are required to live our lives) is absurdly narrow, absurdly rigid, absurdly lacking in any actual content. It’s a simulated world, in other words, rather than being ‘the actual real thing’. It’s a description of a reality that can’t ever be described and because it’s a description of something that can’t ever be described it’s not actually a real thing, but only an abstraction. There’s nothing wrong with abstractions of course — abstractions are simply abstractions and that’s fine, there’s no problem there at all. What does have consequences however is when these abstract descriptions of reality take the place of the real thing so that we no longer have a relationship with ‘the real thing’. When this happens then there are lots and lots of consequences, and none of them are good…
There’s nothing inherently wrong with creating a simulation of the world — that’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do. We can do that if we want to. What isn’t legitimate is when the simulation in question is promoted as being ‘the one and only true world’ and when any talk that might suggest otherwise becomes an act of heresy, becomes a punishable offence. This is clearly another type of thing altogether; what’s happening here is a gross act of deception. The ‘deception’ in question is that the full story isn’t being told — the full story would of course include details of how ‘the simulation is only a simulation’! To leave this particular detail out — as if it were somehow of no consequence — changes everything, obviously.
The full picture would be when the abstract representation is seen as ‘an abstract representation’, or when the simulation is known as ‘only being a simulation’. Everything is out in the open, everything is above-board. No sneaky business is going on. When information is withheld, on the other hand, so that we don’t know that the abstract representation is merely an abstract representation, so that we aren’t aware that this simulation is only a simulation, then our understanding of things is profoundly altered; our understanding of things is not just altered, it gets turned on its head. Our perception of reality is turned on its head and from this point on we’re going to see everything backwards. This isn’t just a ‘change of perspective’ therefore, it’s an inversion of perspective.
When our perspective gets inverted then this means that we’re now seeing the world in accordance with an entirely different principle from before — ‘what’s true becomes false and what’s false becomes true’. When we can’t see the abstract representation as being ‘only an abstract representation’ (when that information is unavailable to us, so to speak) then the abstraction straightaway becomes a straightforward ‘statement of fact’, it becomes ‘the way things are’. This is obvious enough when we say it, but it’s worth emphasizing all the same; the point being that once we do see the abstract representation as simply being ‘the way things are’ then absolutely everything we (calculatedly) do is going to be based on it as assumed (or unexamined) premise. Our lives become therefore nothing more than an extension of this premise, an elaboration of it.
It is become — in other words — impossible for us to do or think or perceive anything that doesn’t fit in with the premise that we’re acting out of; this wouldn’t matter in the least if the premise were true, if it were above-board, if it were bona fide, but the whole point is that it absolutely isn’t. It is true that the abstract representation is an abstract representation but it’s not true that the AR ‘is what it’s representing’ — that isn’t true at all! That’s an out-and-out lie. It’s true that the formal notation I am using as a symbol or signifier is a symbol or signifier, but not true that this formal notation actually IS the reality that it is supposedly notifying us of. Again, this may seem to be a somewhat redundant point to make but this isn’t the cause — this is precisely the error that we do fall into in everyday life and — as we have been saying — there are drastic consequences when we consistently ‘act out of an error’ in this way. The error we’re talking about here isn’t called ‘an error’ for nothing — there’s an absolutely massive mismatch going on (the biggest ‘mismatch’ ever) between what we imagine to be true and what actually is…
We make this error every single day of our lives and we never know that we’re making it. It’s not merely that we don’t know that we’re making a mistake, it’s more that we don’t seem to have the capacity to know such a thing — that’s just too radical a jump for us to make. Small errors we can acknowledge and recognise (since we — along with everyone else — make mistakes all the time) but an error this big is bound to be invisible to us (which is of course the point Hitler made in his Big Lie principle). When our error is ‘all-encompassing’ then it ceases to be an error (in any practical sense of the word) and — instead — it becomes the world that we routinely deal with every day, which is — as far as we’re concerned — the only world there is or was or ever could be. When the error is ‘all-encompassing’ then we’re obliged to adapt to it (since there’s nothing else there, since it’s the only option on the table) and whatever formal system it is that we have adapted to immediately becomes real, immediately becomes ‘the world’. What we have adapted ourselves to becomes — by virtue of the fact that we are adapted to it — perfectly unquestionable.
We can’t see anything (or do anything) in any other terms than those that have been supplied for us by the assumed basis which is our ‘frame of reference’ and if this assumed basis, this assumed FOR, were a real thing then everything would be fine and dandy. There would be no problem with it then. But because it absolutely isn’t ‘a real thing’ but (as we’ve just said) just ‘an idea floating around in our heads’, then things aren’t fine and dandy at all. Things are far from being fine and dandy. There is a problem, but it’s a problem we can’t see, a problem that we have no awareness of. The problem is that everything we see as being true isn’t true at all, whilst what actually is true has now become something that we’re perfectly unable to relate to, perfectly incapable of recognising. We are incapable of seeing that the error we’re trapped in is an error (and not just ‘the way things are’) and so we are fated to go on repeating it, mistakenly imagining that by repeating this error over and over again on a continuous basis we’re ‘living life’ (when we’re not living life at all, but simply getting caught up in our distorted view of what we mistakenly think life is).
All there is for us is ‘the assumed premise’ and that assumed premise doesn’t exist. It’s just an idea in our heads. The AP is ‘a fixed point in a universe of Never-ending Flux’; it’s a fixed point that we are fated to keep on orbiting around forever (or until a time comes when we wake up and start paying attention to what’s really going on). The Cosmic Flux (or Holomovement) is the only thing that’s ever going on — it’s the only show in town! Anything else is ‘just our imagination’; anything else is a ‘solipsistic delusion’. The solipsistic view of the world — we might say — is when I realise that ‘everything is me’, and that there’s nothing other than me. I’m stuck in a private universe of self. In a provisional sense there’s truth in this insight — there’s truth in it because when we’re identifying with the static ego-identity then the world (for us) really is ‘nothing but a projection of the self’ (or ‘nothing but a projection of the mind’). Just as long as we are identified with the ego then it is perfectly true that everything I see is just ‘me reflected back at myself’, in a horrifically claustrophobic fashion. The ‘narcissistic delusion’ — we might say — is ‘the error that we almost never spot’.
The solipsistic view of things isn’t the ultimate truth, however — it’s only the ‘ultimate truth’ in relation to the conditioned sense of self that the imaginary framework of thought has provided us with. There is truth in the nightmarish solipsistic vision therefore, but only if we understand it fully and not just ‘partially’. If we were to look directly into the experience of ‘being trapped in one’s own mind’ (instead of constantly distracting ourselves from it, which is what we almost always do) then we would see that the problem is a purely virtual one, which is to say, if it were to be the case that the abstract representation actually were the same thing as the reality it purports to represent (or if it were to be the case that the simulation were in no way different from what is being simulated) then the problem would be real and not virtual. If the ego is real then so too is the nightmarish solipsistic vision, and we’d just have to put up with it (utterly intolerable though this reality may be). The idea that the ‘arbitrary abstract representation’ is the same thing as reality is completely ludicrous, however. How could we ever be crazy enough to imagine that this is the case…?
