Night Walk

Tonight, while walking around aimlessly it occured to me that things seem differnt at night. Not just the physical world around me but the thoughts in my head.

Dr. D told us a story in Physiological Psychology about patients with brain damage who, when shown their own mother, would vehemenitly argue that she was a spy and not actually their mother. The problem was the connection between the region that recognizes faces and the emotional centers of the brain was broken. So, when the patient looked at their mother they saw someone who certainly looked like their mother but created none of the same feelings that their mother used to. To reconcile this situation, the brain created a reality that made sense: it wasn't their mother it was a look alike. Who would do such a thing?... a spy.

There are many more examples. A woman with her corpus colosum, the bridge that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, severed was subjected to several tests in which commands were selectively sent to either the right half or the left half of the brain. Since the language center lies in the left half of the brain, the woman we communicate with is basically now only the left half of her brain since we have no way of interacting with the right half. So, if an image or command is sent to the right half of the brain she will have no knowlege of it. In one such case the command to "laugh" was sent to the right half of the brain. The left half of her brain, in response to a confusing situation, created it's own reality.

Since learning of this I have been very weary of the devices my own brain employes to make the world around it "fit right". The only problem is, how do you recognize when it has happened? You have nothing to compare it to because it is your reality. Its like seeing the world through colored glasses. How do you know the world isn't red if that is all you have ever seen?

There is something about walking at night that makes everything seem a bit odd. Almost as if I were walking through the set of some grand play. This is expecually the case on still nights when the sky is clear. Then, the street lamps light the motionless trees in such a way as to make them look fake and yet all the more substantial and real for it. This psuedo world, I think, jars my brain out of it's comfert zone just enough to get a glimps of the world it has woven for me. It is as if I was walking, with my tinted glasses, and came across something I hadn't seen before. Everything else is, and always has been, red. This I can accept. But why must this new object also be red? a.k.a. A reason to suspect something is not right here.

I never come out of these walks knowing the color of my lenses. But I do come away with the precious feeling of doubt. Its as if I live in a house where people have put up painted screens in front of my windows. Every day, I look out and see the same scene but think nothing of it. One day I go up to the second floor and see the same scene! I don't know what is really beyond those painted pictures but I do know that there is something. That is the feeling I try to hold on to.

What can I do to see reality in the harsh cutting light of truth? Nothing, I suspect. I think the only battle we can hope to win is to know that we can't. We shoud realize that whatever truths we hold self evident are our own personal truths that are exist in a reality that is as unique as the mind that percieves it.

We are lucky that our realities overlap to the degree they do. To a large extent the world serves as a calibration point and the effort to keep ourselves alive drives us back towards that point when reality starts to drift. It isn't to hard to see then how the nation can be so easily and cleanly divided amongst the blue and red. Each has a collective reality that differes from the other and which can sustain different truths. The experiances of a college student living in Cleveland will differ greatly from a factory worker in rural Indiana.

This has great relevency when though of in conjunction with the group think discused in a previous post, Religion II: Posers.

I wonder then, is there a way to creat a common reality? How close is good enough? Do we want a common reality? Can we manipulate the reality of a group and hence the truths it accepts? If yes, how?...

That last one bears contemplation by the Demicratics. Perhaps hope is not lost...

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Why I Blog: This post reminds me of why I chose Mirari for the title of my Weblog. When I started this I ment it as a way of seeing through the BS I have a way of feeding myself. In much the same way as looking in a mirror can surprise you with how different you look in your minds eye. Somehow, the process of both writting to someone and reading what I have written forces me to see my crazyness for what it is. These entries rarely if ever end up how I planned; I have yet to have a single entry for which I don't have to change the title because the point had completely changed by the time I finished. In a way I think this is why I enjoy it. What fun would it be if I knew what I was going to write and then just had to type it? It also serves as a way to have those conversations on deep topics that are so hard have and yet so satisfying. It takes a very special relationship to be able to talk about such things and I have been lucky to have several while I have been at case... although most are gone or no longer that accessable. And I am rambling so it is time to go.