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Originally Posted by Gem
Well, there are different sorts of narratives through which people understand their place in the universe... but some people think their own 'version' is truer or 'more superior' to other people's, which actually brings about misunderstandings in the sense that we can mathematically determine cause and effect and accurately predict outcomes, but tend to implement this knowledge in a destructive way. We have strayed too far into the symbolic space and taken up residence in it, taken it to be true, and lost connectivity with life in the natural world and personal connectivity with our selves; choosing, apparently, to remain conscious only on a personal level, which is a construct of conditioning and thought, and because that is 'all we know' - that's how we 'take ourselves to be' - we strive to survive in the sense of preserving symbolic structures which reflectively indicate a false identity. It's a huge problem, but it's ultimately self destructive, and it will sort itself out through a sort of self annihilation. This a very frightening to a majority of folk, because there is a imagined ghost like figure who pretends to be 'who we are', without which one would have no knowledge, nor definition, nor narrative, to describe their living being.
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I moved your response to me from another thread to this one because it fits-in so perfectly with what I'm pointing to in this thread. Our understanding of this process of (almost absolute) self-identification via our own definitions, via practiced assumptions, forms a container around our perceptions that we rarely, if ever, leave. If we attempt to adapt to something "new" we will do so as an extension of what we're already assuming. This holds true for our dreaming self as well as our wakeful-navigator interpretations.
Each of us perceive independently, but we do so based on the imagery that floats by us while being raised, educated, and cajoled by parents and culture. Anything we deem "new" will actually be a retrofit, and will generally serve as an expansion of our already established assumptions.
These interpretations may be challenged to some degree were we to involve ourselves with the natural world, by having to adapt to it's needs and not ours. We will have to go outside ourselves to some degree if we're raising plants or adapting to a new infant (neither plants or infants will adjust to our programming since they are locked into a rhythm of their own exclusive needs).
So generally we inhabit a self contained fantasy. This, in itself, isn't bad, it's perhaps necessary for the purpose of navigating among others, but it's highly informative if we keep this in mind. This illuminates that much of what we do involves projection, self-contained expectation, and a persistent catering to our internal dialogue.
We form religions in this way, we set-off on spiritual inquires from a programed perspective, we will interpret dreams and encounters based on pre-contained assertions, much of which was culturally inspired.
I do see the 'realization' of this as good news! A great deal of our thinking is dedicated toward adapting to a seesawing between our own inner expectation and with how we perceive the nagging expectations of others. And since we are now mostly defining ourselves in relation to cultural-mentally-created-components (and yet somehow we survive :) we may loosen our binding toward taking it all serious. We may fully drop the pretense of assuming that our interpretations are based on the natural-real and fully realize that we're floating, perceptually, on artificially created clouds.