Saturday, July 24, 2010

"The rabbit theory"

This was posted in the same Pantheism group as the Modern Pantheism stuff. Since it's referenced there, I'll post it here too :)

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What we call reality is just a consensus, there's lots of other possible ones that would work just as well in practice.
Our perception of reality is just a practical one.

We see things upside down. Our brain compensates for that, that's one reason we take so long to be able to take a spoon to our mouth when we're little.

We give someone a
pair of glasses that turn the image upside down.
Within a few days his brain has learned to compensate for it and he can function again. Take away the glasses, it takes a few days again to readjust.

You can try that yourself with your computer mouse, turn it upside down and see how long it takes to adjust to it (very little) but also how long after that to readjust again (very little, but not much less).

Reality is just a consensus. It's not "real". :-)
(You can get another hint
here.)

It works in "practice".
Try achieving an "open" state of consciousness.
In that state, it's easy to see lots of nice things, how everything is interconnected, how small you are and how that's not a problem.
It's so obvious and clear.
You try to catch and skin a rabbit in that state. Not very efficient.
Not to mention cooking it.

So get into a practical, efficient state. Relatively easy to eat the rabbit, but somehow all those nice things seem a bit less obvious, come to think of them.

Thing is, you got to eat, whether it's rabbits or people's time to get the rabbit for you.

So you agree on a "reality" that lets you eat, even if it has to make you blind to some pretty obvious things.

It works, by consensus it works pretty well, it's still arbitrary, one of many possible ones, shouldn't take it too seriously though.


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