If you aren't out in society you don't realize what's going on in it

[Flowerfaeiry]

So I'm unsure how clear of a picture one can actually get about what is going on in society, the world, their city, simply through media and being online. 

Not necessarily that the news sources and internet are painting an inaccurate story about something, more that things get lost in translation so to speak, and that the whole picture is just not reachable. Even through reading multiple stories and sources. 

It just seems to me that so much is lost unless one is physically in person at a place. So much so that it's possible to have only a small fraction of what is actually going on. 

For example, we can read that a large majority of Americans are obese and take multiple prescription medications, but we don't realize the depth of that, and how it actually shows up and what it looks like unless we see it in person. 

This might seem kind of obvious but I think it's a bigger thing than we might originally think.

[Michael569]

1 hour ago, Flowerfaeiry said:

Not necessarily that the news sources and internet are painting an inaccurate story about something, more that things get lost in translation so to speak, and that the whole picture is just not reachable.

Of course they're not painting the true picture. You, the consumer/listener/reader are a product not a customer and they are trying to sell you to people who pay for the adds, just like they do on social media. That's the point of mainstream media in large. Either that or you pay for their subscription services after which you are partially exempt from that (e.g. youtube premium). The aim is not true, the aim is to make money so they monitor you to see what you like and you'll see more of that. Simple and effective business model. 

It is impossible to remain informed about everything, not even your country. Hell not even region with so much shit going on. They'll indeed show you a fraction but position it in a way to make it feel like the whole world is going to hell...-caugh - covid - caugh-

1 hour ago, Flowerfaeiry said:

For example, we can read that a large majority of Americans are obese and take multiple prescription medications, but we don't realize the depth of that, and how it actually shows up and what it looks like unless we see it in person. 

Couple years ago, during research for one of my school assignments, I went into ER room, sat in the corner and observed for 4 hours. I was pretending to wait for somebody so was not questioned. I wanted to get sense of what it feels like to be in these places. I have never seen so much suffering, blood, fear, pain and stress in my life. This was a more profound experience than any study I could have read. Hard real life experience of seeing paramedics and ER doctors upo their sleeves in blood. Sometimes direct experience speaks more powerful than thousand articles. 

[Hello from Russia]

Yeah, I totally agree. You need to really drop out of society for a while to totally comprehend all the sickness that we live in. Otherwise you'll just be like a fish in the water without being aware of the water

Recognizing the contrast is key

Edited June 29, 2021 by Hello from Russia

[Matt23]

4 hours ago, Flowerfaeiry said:

It just seems to me that so much is lost unless one is physically in person at a place

I can agree that being in person would change one's perspective, and without it there wouldn't be a "complete" picture.  But also consider that stuff that's on the internet, like news, articles, and forums, can also shed light on things that you wouldn't see, or would be hard to see, if you were there physically.  

The first thing that comes to mind is the opinions, beliefs, and attitudes of the people.  Forums provide increased social safety to express one's views and opinions which, if you were talking to them in person, might otherwise go unsaid.  

I suppose the physical domain creates a different set of conditions which will effect how people think, feel, express, behave, and interact than conditions online.  I can see this making for a different, yet potentially equally valid and truthful, view of the people or community in question.  

It's almost like using Ken Wilber's AQAL model on a "single" subject.  Like put a group of people under the "physical-domain" microscope and then observe those same people/situations under the "online-domain" microscope and you might get quite different pictures.  

Sort of like the fable of the blind men and the elephant.  Each blind man "sees" an incomplete slice of the whole.  

It seems to me like it would be wise to not jump to the conclusion that one perspective (i.e., physically being somewhere vs. interacting online) is better or more truthful than the other, as you may glean slightly different data points from each one.  Of course I'm not saying all the time they are always perfectly valid and truthful; you might come across a forum full of lies, or you might be conducting interviews with prison inmates who lie and only tell the truth via the internet to protect themselves.  

Taking these different lenses towards determining what the truth of a situation or group is seems, for me anyways, raise the issues of 1) what then is the "actual" thing itself if there is even one? and 2) that which you're looking at (e.g., a community) may be constantly changing depending on which lense you view, so saying it's one thing and not another might be inaccurate and a more accurate way to look at it might be an ever-changing "entity" or thing (including not only the change that could happen when viewing it from one particular lens, but also the change that would occur when viewing it from different lenses. And to make matters even more complex, the change that could occur from cross-referencing and combining the info from the different lenses as they continuously change through time !!!!   hahahaha... I guess reality to me just seems like an infinitely complex-ever-changing thing that putting it into a "it's this and not that" context feels not quite the best way to view things... or maybe, i dunno.  just seems like not the most accurate way.  

 

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by Matt23

[Milos Uzelac]

We live in age oversaturated with images and signifiers that should in theory correspond and inform our meaning of the the actual physical world and events taking place in it but as the French postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard points out these are in actuality just signifiers and images that get their own reality and meaning for us just from other images and signfiers that we viewed and got meaning from that are only meaningfully connected to and exist only as signfiers for the latter. He explained the maintenance of existence in our collective minds of this 'hyperreality' existing only within the media space of images and signfiers only connected to other images and signifiers that we viewed, consumed and got our meaning from previously as being a with he termed 'simulacra' a simulation existing and gaining its meaning from only another presented simulation of the actual physical reality itself. I hope I didn't overcomplicate this and that I have explained so it can be fairly easily understood as concept to explain some of the mechanisms and effects of our hypermediated global media culture.

Edited June 29, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[Danioover9000]

@Flowerfaeiry

5 hours ago, Flowerfaeiry said:

So I'm unsure how clear of a picture one can actually get about what is going on in society, the world, their city, simply through media and being online. 

Not necessarily that the news sources and internet are painting an inaccurate story about something, more that things get lost in translation so to speak, and that the whole picture is just not reachable. Even through reading multiple stories and sources. 

It just seems to me that so much is lost unless one is physically in person at a place. So much so that it's possible to have only a small fraction of what is actually going on. 

For example, we can read that a large majority of Americans are obese and take multiple prescription medications, but we don't realize the depth of that, and how it actually shows up and what it looks like unless we see it in person. 

This might seem kind of obvious but I think it's a bigger thing than we might originally think.

   I definitely agree with this. In fact this is one area in my life I'm both thankful and a bit blessed on, to have been able to travel to many different countries while I was growing up, experiencing how some countries handle schooling differently than other countries, and seeing a variety of human bodies. I think due to the variety of world experiences I had early on, I was much more open minded and more sensitive to different forms of changes to narrative. Probably another source for why I like stories and drawing a lot.

[Flowerfaeiry]

9 hours ago, Michael569 said:

Couple years ago, during research for one of my school assignments, I went into ER room, sat in the corner and observed for 4 hours. I was pretending to wait for somebody so was not questioned. I wanted to get sense of what it feels like to be in these places. I have never seen so much suffering, blood, fear, pain and stress in my life. This was a more profound experience than any study I could have read. Hard real life experience of seeing paramedics and ER doctors upo their sleeves in blood. Sometimes direct experience speaks more powerful than thousand articles. 

Yea! This is the kind of thing I'm referring to.  It's cool you did that, must have been heartbreaking. 

I work customer service in a fairly rough part of town and oh my god the amount of shit I see...such a wide range of people and things going on. It reminds me how easy it is to get stuck in a bubble, thinking that the rest of the world just operates like that. 

[Flowerfaeiry]

10 hours ago, Hello from Russia said:

You need to really drop out of society for a while to totally comprehend all the sickness that we live in. Otherwise you'll just be like a fish in the water without being aware of the water

Dropping out of society can be good. But there's a lot to be said about dropping in to society. And doing it consciously. That will really show you how messy things can get.

5 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

to have been able to travel to many different countries while I was growing up, experiencing how some countries handle schooling differently than other countries, and seeing a variety of human bodies. I think due to the variety of world experiences I had early on, I was much more open minded and more sensitive to different forms of changes to narrative. 

Totally! People who travel do tend to have a broader understanding of life. 

[Leo Gura]

Folks, take a field trip to your local Walmart. Observe your fellow chimps in the wild

[Preety_India]

I think travelling helps a lot with that, especially in a multi cultural environment.

 

[kieranperez]

@Flowerfaeiry this is a similar case to how the human mind can't really compute numbers like 100,000 or a 1,000,000 or 1,000,000,000. Social media and the internet, though is helpful in many areas of life, is a very poor tool when it comes to quality sense making. It also gives a very false impression for how one genuinely comes to know something. For instance, have you ever gone to a foreign 3rd world country you heard had all this crime and what not and then actually go there to find that your experience there was nowhere close to what you imagined it would be given all the reports you read and came across? This isn't to demonize or poo poo news media outlets. We can say perhaps that mind is left to do what has to do, namely resort to abstraction. News media outlets have a very difficult job to create a system that distributes quality sense-making and has good epistomeicalical and ethical checks and balances. Which, doesn't take into account that there are bills to be paid and dollars to be made and corners to be cut to make sure they get enough viewers and what not. Even then though, assuming there was such a quality system that distributed good sense-making (whatever that would even mean), that still doesn't take into consideration the fact that that would still resort to the problem of indirect knowledge, belief, faith, hearsay, etc. Quality sense-making is matter of how one genuinely comes to know something and that is only found in experience. Nothing short of that will suffice if the goal is direct experiential knowledge. 

[whatishappeningtome]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Folks, take a field trip to your local Walmart. Observe your fellow chimps in the wild

https://www.reddit.com/r/peopleofwalmart/

"People of Walmart" the subreddit. God has a sick sense of humour. 

[trenton]

I go for a lot of walks around my neighborhood.  This is what I see from my experience rather than just from the news stories.

The area I live in is generally very peaceful with no civil unrest.  It is a suburban area which I feel safe walking around in.  There is still crime in this area.  My parents abused drugs, there were shots fired at stores as evidenced by the broken glass I found, there were people abusing drugs in the public bathrooms as evidenced by the fact that the bathrooms were shut down when I tried to use one and more.  Harrison avenue is more peaceful than the street I am describing.  My dad was a gangster.

I ran into a homeless guy on multiple occasions.  I can't tell if he was a fake homeless guy or not because sometimes people beg for money so they can get drugs.  I ran into a few people who asked me for a lighter.  There is an addiction to smoking which affects many people in this area.  I have not seen anyone die because of it, but there was a man who told me that he feels like he has less energy and he is not breathing as well.

Alcoholism affects my area as well.  I went to alcoholics anonymous once and heard about some of the horrors people experienced because of the addiction.  There was also a middle aged man who hit on my teenage sister at the park.

In my schools I witnessed a lot of sexual harassment and sometimes I was the target.  Many students, myself and my brother included, at some point had suicidal thoughts.  I developed various coping mechanisms to help me, my brother, and others in the community deal with these emotional episodes.  One of my coping mechanisms comes from enlightenment through the deconstruction of morality when we think of ourselves as bad people.  Through realizing that these judgements are fundamentally false, we do not need to hold guilt against ourselves as this is unproductive.

I encountered a trans woman on one of my walks and my cousin is a trans male.  These trans people are fed up with the intolerance of others and argue that some trans children are encouraged to commit suicide because of it.  They are dissatisfied with democrats and republicans because neither of them appreciate the complexity of the issue and they are just doing what they think is good.

I can relate to trans people through autism.  People often assumed ill motives because of my abnormal behavior.  The suicide rates in autism are also very high (granted I googled the statistics.). In any case I never felt like I belonged in my community and some people could be driven to suicide because of the prejudice of our community.  The common factor between transgenderism and autism is the negative reaction toward mental abnormalities.  Abnormal does not mean bad, just different from normal.

At Kroger I have a co-worker who was a victim of predatory loaning when she tried to go to college to learn about criminal justice.  She lost all of her credits when the school was shut down and she was left with all of the debt.  This student loan debt is unfair and I think it should be completely forgiven if a college gets shuts down for predatory loaning and you lose all of your credits.

I ran into some Mormons and atheists.  The Mormons asked me on multiple occasions if I would convert.  I declined every time because religion is a paradigm lock which can prevent me from seeing the world from various angles.  I don't want to limit myself to one way of thinking.  As for the atheists, they argued that religion was superstition and none of it was based in reality.  I told the atheist about what I read in the bible about Christian rituals and he thought it was insane.  I also ran into a non-relgious spiritual person who thinks that we know through not knowing.  This is the guy I am drawn to the most.  He had an abusive girlfriend and my mom had an abusive boyfriend.

Most people in this area obeyed the mask mandates.  There were a few people who refused to comply when my job was to ensure that everyone wore a mask. Nobody was belligerent, they just ignored me.

I also saw a lot of Trump propaganda because of the Trump train outside my Kroger store.  The state of Ohio when to trump during the election although I voted for Biden.  I asked some trump supporters why they liked him and they said it was because of the economy.  They argued that Bernie Sanders wanted to put us in communes.  My grandma is a Trump supporter who thinks Biden ruins everything.  She is anti-trans because God created adam and eve.  She also doesn't like gay people and she is racist.

There is also a lot of construction going on constantly.  The streets and sidewalks are torn up a lot and rebuilt.  There are some new buildings being put in place, and electric poles being replaced.

My family often argues about racism, abortion, and other issues.  I do research into these topics and I discovered arguments that both sides in my family often overlook.  I am interested in political discussions when they are educational, but they quickly devolve into emotional games of manipulation and lying.  I suspect my mother used the n word to intentionally provoke people.  I prefer listening more than speaking when there is something of value being said.  My second grandma is much more conscious than my first grandma and my mom.

Most of the issues are beyond my control, but there are a few things I can do like convince people not to commit suicide, fact check the fake news people fall for, educate myself on the discussions people have, and more.

This is what is going on in my community from experience rather than just need and research.  I probably forgot something, but it is a start.

[impulse9]

You don't need to know everything and sometimes knowing too much is a burden. Funny how this works.

[DocWatts]

As an aside, not going out and engaging with the rest of society is a huge problem I see with the likes of a number of popular Intellectuals (such as Sam Harris), who massively overestimate the influence that Academia has on the rest of society, and subsequently use Academia as a distorted (or more charitably a highly partial) lens to evaluate all of SD-Green (or just to theorize about social trends more broadly).

When in actuality if they spent more time among the lived realities of ordinary people they would understand that a large portion of the country (at least in America) living hand to mouth, with the feelings of anxiety and resentment which that entails, is a much more relevant attractor point for societal trends than what's taking place on a handful of college campuses (or in the online debate space).

Edited July 1, 2021 by DocWatts

[Flowerfaeiry]

23 hours ago, impulse9 said:

You don't need to know everything and sometimes knowing too much is a burden. Funny how this works.

You're actually so right about this, thanks for the reminder.

[Flowerfaeiry]

1 hour ago, DocWatts said:

As an aside, not going out and engaging with the rest of society is a huge problem I see with the likes of a number of popular Intellectuals (such as Sam Harris), who massively overestimate the influence that Academia has on the rest of society, and subsequently use Academia as a distorted (or more charitably a highly partial) lens to evaluate all of SD-Green (or just to theorize about social trends more broadly).

When in actuality if they spent more time among the lived realities of ordinary people they would understand that a large portion of the country (at least in America) living hand to mouth, with the feelings of anxiety and resentment which that entails, is a much more relevant attractor point for societal trends than what's taking place on a handful of college campuses (or in the online debate space).

Wow exactlyyy!

I remember when people were debating wearing masks in public and I would bring up the point that people are just too stupid to wear them properly. And someone said "it's actually easy to train people how to wear them". Obviously this person didn't realize just how stupid a large majority of people are. 

[Flowerfaeiry]

On 6/29/2021 at 11:12 PM, Leo Gura said:

Folks, take a field trip to your local Walmart. Observe your fellow chimps in the wild

Honestly, it might not be a bad thing for some people. 

[flowboy]

On 29/06/2021 at 8:26 PM, Michael569 said:

They'll indeed show you a fraction but position it in a way to make it feel like the whole world is going to hell...-caugh - covid - caugh-

That is indeed how it works, but the results depend on what you click on.

My YouTube homepage makes me feel like the world is being spiritually uplifted and everything is unicorns and rainbows.

It's filled with Terence McKenna, psychedelics related things, functional medicine related healing stories and podcasts, and videos of animals being friends with animals of different species. Not much else.

I only click on what makes me feel good and relaxed, and I'm rigorous about it.

Edited July 1, 2021 by flowboy

[hoodrow trillson]

2 years ago I went on vacation to my parents home country and spent almost 2 months there in the jungle.  No internet, no wifi.  Bugs, mosquitos, random animals, no luxury of running water, no nice cars, nice climate, lots of crime, extreme poverty etc.  I had to bathe and wash my ass with a bucket of water lmao  

I actually got used to it fairly quickly and I realized how "physical" their society is there.  It's like you're in the now/in the moment since you don't have the luxury of vegging out on your phone every 3 minutes.  Or reading about the rights of a squirrel are being violated or something.  Or hearing about some rich fuckhead doing something zany like going to space. But you pay the price in feeling more tired since you're always focusing on something with your senses more.

When I came back, it was jarring how weird it was to assimilate back into a 1st world society.  Everyone is in their mind going crazy 24/7.  Looking from the outside in and actually seeing it it's incredibly weird.  Of course, I'm back to "normal" and I now identify with everyone else but I'll always have that experience of finally seeing society for what it is from the perspective of looking from the outside in.  It's all an illusion that's being served to us but we actually have it incredibly good here.  It's almost like we're being lied to about how terrible this place is yet it's not but the wheels of society need to keep turning and keep that illusion going and us little workers are what ultimately turns the wheels.