Delusions in Illusions

Buzz Submitted by : Dr. Ali Anani
Buzz : Emerging Illusions
In his buzz "Emerging Illusions" Ali Anani explores the relationship between influence and the impact of illusion on that influence

"Emerging Illusions" is a brilliant buzz from Ali 🐝 Anani, Brand Ambassador @beBee He covers various forms of illusions that go well beyond studies of bias. He covers the effect of networks and covers them through lens of different illusions, including assumption illusions, conflict illusions, leadership illusions and the most widespread illusion of all, which is what I am focusing on here, which is the marketing illusion. Our delusions stem from that and no one is free of those so long as one remains conditioned by a marketed society.

Marketing in itself is the illusion but our delusion does not derive from marketing, but our dependencies. We are not independent even though we like lying to ourselves that we are. These lies we tell ourselves are easy to prove because if we abandoned societal existence and chose to live in a wilderness untouched by our society, we will soon realize just how dependent we are on the functions and services that society provides that is built into the phrase "making a living". In that dependency we exist in our animal rather than human state.

One day we will become more self-sufficient in our ways and while we engage green delusions that mimic self-sufficiency, all of us are integrated into the network and the fragility of the network begins with basics like electricity, water and logistics. Through that dependency we have created creative illusions. Not all illusions are bad, some illusions of freedom serve us to inch us in very tiny ways to a freedom that may in reality be impossible, but it is an illusion of freedom, which is better than having no freedom at all.

The starting point of understanding delusions in our illusions is recognizing what we really fear and the extent of our vulnerability. That vulnerability while a source for delusions, are only delusions because we do not like to stare into the face of that vulnerability, though art, comedy and music are vehicles we express that vulnerability more easily, it is still a challenge for many to face such truths. This can be exemplified in the lyrics of a song by VNV Nation called "Illusion" :

When a song like this touches our vulnerability, we move beyond our usual delusions that we express through celebrity and even pithy quotes that provide us a surface coating of "positive thinking", the very lacquer we use to hide painful realities. Yet the honesty found in YouTube comments are often not seen because we spend more time criticizing the banal comments - yet again another delusion that keeps us from lifting the lid on a societal pandora's box of unexpressed pain. Nor is it wise to open that Pandora's Box of pain because our society will be just consumed and overwhelmed if the full extent of that pain erupted as a societal schism that divides those who want to be real about life and those who are not psychologically prepared or remotely ready to come face to face with their own vulnerability.

So while it is a good idea to "KNOW THY ILLUSION" we as a society are very far removed from Socrates refrain "KNOW THY SELF'. We are therefore accepting of the marketing illusion cast around 24/7 because the core of marketing is move us from pain to temporal relief. We can buy ourselves an illusion that can at the same time mask our own delusions. The following TEDx Talk from Dan Simmons covers that illusion context.

The crazy part of getting smart or at least somewhat informed about the nature of societal delusions and the nature of marketed illusions is that it actually separates us more from the madding crowd. The psychological view of the masses is still driven by philosophies of dead philosophers such as Gustave Le Bon. There philosophies are not dead but clearly whatever thinkers there are today have not managed to displace ideas about groups born nearly a 100 years ago :

The truth in our delusions are far removed from KNOW THYSELF as mentioned before and are still evident in the nature of crowds that Gustave Le Bon described so long ago. Our products have evolved technologically but that does not mean we have evolved psychologically and biologically and that is easy to see, because we still encounter modernity with flight or fight reactions that were meant for our prehistoric ancestors. We simply have not evolved from that state of being and that conditioning has not been effected by a conscientious change to our education system. We continue to deliver an education system that takes no account of 21st Century evolution needs. Our minds are still stuck in the rear-view mirror of revolutions rather than the road ahead. That will eventually change when future generations see delusions that our education system foster - and in turn the marketed existence we are mostly ambivalent towards. The reason that in America, thousands of media outlets are controlled by about six giant corporations is evidence of that ambivalence.

We are more invested in entertainment and the illusions of that spectacle (again Guy Debord comes up, but that simply reminds me of another dead philosopher, albeit at least one who died in the last 50 years). Yet we must be conscious of our delusions because we entertain ourselves with them. In this Monty Python clip, the Monty Python team mock our group behaviour that we today cite as polarization. No matter the extent of our illusions, the present state of polarization is a self-chosen (if not self-inflicted) choice. We would rather be entertained and maintain this delusion then face reality :

This is the same as our driving habits, we engage our societal delusions because we can get away with it and we are prepared to pay the consequences because in the size of the whole, they appear tiny and less inconsequential. They are not inconsequential to those who lose loved ones due to drunk drivers, but our context is whatever it is we are momentarily paying attention to, which is usually the news of the moment, before some new news grabs our attention. Yet the irony here is that while in the present time the illusions created through an overly marketed society make those illusions a comfort zone, that in turn make them "unsolvable", we need those illusions to prosper and we are prepared to make it from cradle to grave without coming face to face with our own delusions. When I look at thinkers who actually used truth as their compass, I discover just how individual they really are, rather than the group dynamic nearly all of us are a part of. Here the name Jiddu Krishnamurti comes up again and again - at least as my own reference of a person prepared to face these things. Yet Krishnamurti's thinking today is only there because it too had to be processed through the vehicle of group dynamics. These groups do with Krishnamurti what he was most against, which is they present him as a guru or world teacher - the very thing he renounced, because his goal was simply to have five people find freedom, just five people because Krishnamurti was under no illusion how challenging truth is for the society we all belong to :

Addendum from Share by Bill King

Bill King (Comment #8) shared a brilliant video from Beau Lotto. What I got from the video was a comment was a different quote that I particularly liked

"How we see is by continually redefining normality"
Beau Lotto - TEDTalk on YouTube - found at 11 mins 56 seconds of video. Thanks to Bill King for this Link Share

Ultimately I come from the same direction that Beau Lotto is attempting to take us, which is an embrace of uncertainty, in a world where the practical is actually defined by certainty.

Certainty here should be viewed as the optimal illusion and ironically the very fact that I am quoting Beau Lotto is not an embrace of uncertainty, but quotes is a process of certainty.

The video from Beau Lotto is amazing. Now this video as far as I am concerned should not take anyone to distrust our senses because distrust is not at all uncertainty, distrust is another optical illusion, just a much as trust is - and ironically much of our conversations about trust are actually conversations about distrust.

Uncertainty means we don't know and that brings us to what Bill King pointed out in his Comment #8 below which he utilized to make his point. Again this is compounded by irony because "making a point" is in the field of certainty - and our nervous system rewards certainty.