‘Fake News’ & the Tapestry of Time
Epistemology of the real
For more than twelve thousand years, human civilisation has been reconstituting itself as an interconnected web of peoples, working together in concert, by mediating meaning and information to one another, gradually creating and recreating everything we know.
The higher order architecture that allows this seemingly magical cooperation between billions of people to take place lies in the mediation of information, from the high level abstract to the low level and concrete, creating a continuum of creation and destruction that mathematically can be described as a fractal pattern through time, by some described as “as above so below”, to which we all contribute by expending energy.
Subjectively, we create reality as we experience it from our own cognitive levels of abstraction, meaning we understand languages that convey information at our level of understanding. The more abstract we can think, the higher level languages we can understand. As such, higher level languages may seem either unintelligible to the optimist, or deceptive to the pessimist, whence they are simply of a level that may be inaccessible to us for reasons related to our consciousness. How we perceive higher level languages is thus subjective and by definition in most cases subject to misconceptions.
‘Perception is reality’
The adage ‘Perception is reality’ is a simplification of a subjective truth, whereby our sense of what is real is build by our information ecosystem, often framed by biases, preconceptions and validated by the attribution of emotions to our memories.
We are building our own virtual realities in our minds, each at our own level of consciousness and understanding. The simulation theory is true, but it may not be what you think it is.
Of Simulacra & Simulations
Sources of information that trigger emotions trap people’s consciousness in cycles of either optimism or cynicism, resulting in either utopian or dystopian world views.
The problem is in both in how most humans allow their emotions to be triggered uncontrollably, and how most humans become entangled in thoughts that feed into and build up world views and subjective realities. These “virtual realities” in our minds can be optimistic or pessimistic, with widely diverging subjective outcomes.
Though it may not seem like it, you and almost everyone you know is very likely cognitively captivated by a bespoke mental simulation. The entire world view and sense of reality of most people is continually, and often without conscious control created subjectively.
Upwards and downwards spirals.
A positive feedback loop between perception and reality, to an optimistic mind results in a hopeful and optimistic world view. A negative feedback loop, to a pessimistic mind results in a cynical and increasingly pessimistic world view. With the latter, unless one consciously breaks the cycle, the cycle will break the person.
Temporal disruptions
Through our collective thoughts, how we communicate and our actions, we mediate information and forces, weaving fractal patterns in the tapestry of time and reality, because of the continuum of information mediated and fed back upon continuously from the tips of the fractal at high levels of abstraction, to lower levels of reality.
The development of civilisation is thus naturally predicated on a reward system that intrinsically and justly benefits higher levels of understanding, driving existence forward and upward in places that conform to the natural order, leaving behind the places that deviate from reality. It is thus a challenge to us all to find truth in a world in which we find ourselves limited by the creation of our own simulations.
This being the case, corruption and ‘fake news’, constitute deviations from the natural order of this continuum, resulting in dark patches in the tapestry of time that can trap people in futile feedback loops.
Information mediated by any means creates deviations in the physical patterns of the universe, all driven by natural forces. As such, the acceptance of ‘Fake News’ may in the grand anthropological scheme of things become an evolutionary selector, casting one to either the light or dark side of the fractal pattern of reality.
Maybe it’s you
Whether you understand how you are in a simulation of your own making or not, whether you believe it or not, here are some basic things you can do to immunise yourself to fake news.
Raise your consciousness on how your emotions are triggered by the information ecosystem around you.
Consider the fact that the only thing that is real is your conscious experience of your present physical environment at this moment. The rest of your thoughts, your sense of the real, are imperfect memories feeding into simulacra and mental simulations built on older simulations. Is the world really a scary place, or have you allowed information to build a warped version of reality in your mind?
Meditate and learn to resist the emotional triggers of your information ecosystem, curate your information input, knowing that others are also experiencing simulations, and subdue the cycle of thinking using your own imperfect simulation, that perpetually occupies your mind, building on a more imperfect simulation.
As evident by our current social and ecological climate, the subjective simulations in people’s minds and their implications can absent self control and guidance grow highly deceptive and toxic.
Take a deep breath. If you’re feeling anxious or fearful, consider the following: Why choose to be trapped by essentially reacting to an imperfect cognitive simulation? And one built imperfectly by your mind in an attempt to understand the world, enforced by a thusfar uncontrolled acceptance of external information, biases and emotional feedback loops?
Curated experiences on social media are making things worse
Humans are social beings, naturally wanting to be part of something bigger than themselves. Unfortunately, social media companies have recognised the power of the social fabric and the weaving of patterns in the fabric of time. As such, they have conditioned their users to curate their social media experiences, trapping them in virtual realities, emotional feedback loops and cognitive patterns beneficial to distinct commercial, political and sociological agendas and interests.
Users naturally see those in their curated circles share similar content and thus become convinced that their thoughts and behaviours are in line with their natural environments, when in fact they have unconsciously curated an experience and existence that enforces the means of their own mental self-captivity.
Ironically, even a quest for freedom, truth and justice on social media can absent guidance unwittingly trap people in toxic behavioural feedback loops and misleading cognitive simulations.
Cataclysms and creation
What we do in life ripples through eternity, and what we do is predicated on what we believe and how we view the world.
One needn’t fully understand the relationship between higher order complex systems and the material world to see that fear based world views are futile, destructive and isolating by nature. The dark patterns created by ‘fake news’ in the tapestry of time untimately lead to ignorance and destruction should they be followed. The interconnectivity of civilisation cannot work absent trust and optimism.
We thus find ourselves in a world held stable by the curation of a balance between those who operate out of fear and those who operate out of optimism, collectively weaving a tapestry into reality, wherein some spiral to the bright colours that create this world, and others to darkness and oblivion.
