DOORS OF PERCEPTION UNHINGED

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. -Eric Hoffer

Based on the notion that displeasure with the happenings of the present is the basic motivation for action to “do something about” whatever changed us from being happy to experience life just as it is, I began breaking down the kinds of sensations that discomfit me in an attempt to analyze the difference between cultural and genetically inherited preferences.

Genetically resisted sensations are those signaling threats to one’s existence by triggering some variation of fight or flight reaction, the most immediate means of survival in nature. Within the only culture I have experienced, this basic survival instinct has been conscripted into the service of a basic status achievement instinct where it is no longer enough of a gift, much less necessary, to be conscious of existence and the ways of nature; where who and what the world perceives one to be describe the entity upon whose survival, nay, thrival such purpose oriented instincts focus, reducing the reality of one’s being to a totally dependent sycophant to their own reputation’s facade.

Herein lies the madness driving western civilization. Much collateral damage

Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like. Will Rogers

I was in the midst of a post to my other blog when AWAD sent be the Hoffer quote for today. Having just typed “Heren lies the madness…” I was persuaded by the synchronicity to justify posting it here as comments on the observations of others.