occasionally i get people being like “hey QC why do you talk about your internal experience so much, try talking about external reality for a change”
in large part this is a deliberate effort to avoid projection
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that is, i think much of the time when people try to describe external reality they end up describing projected bits of their inner world anyway. so i figure i personally might as well cut out one layer of indirection
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nevertheless, if only as an exercise in revealing the structure of my own projections, here’s some opinions about external reality as i see it:
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1. we live in a dangerous, confusing time full of subtle bizarre harms and dangers we are not adapted to and have not evolved robust norms against. technological progress has far outpaced cultural progress and the consequences have been disastrous
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2. technological progress has also given each one of us far more power and freedom than we know what to do with. we have just begun to collectively grasp the significance of the existence of the internet and what is possible on it
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3. the cultural fabric is barely functional and out of date and this is extremely bad actually. nobody knows who they are, what to do, how to date, who to marry and raise children with (and when and how). the cultural fabric is supposed to answer these questions
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4. the culture war is a war where factions are vying for control of the cultural fabric. we no longer have a single shared cultural fabric, instead we have this federated balkanized landscape of reality tunnels. the subreddits of the collective unconscious
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5. increasing interest in psychedelics, meditation, therapy, etc. reflects a growing awareness that something has gone deeply wrong with the cultural fabric(s) and that it must be broken out of to be seen from the outside and repaired. this is what shamans and art are for
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6. the structure of the internet (the sensemaking apparatus of civilization) is largely in the hands of the people who run 4 or 5 specific tech companies. any confusions these people have about human nature or the good will get reflected in their products by default
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7. part of the increasing lack of a shared cultural fabric is lack of agreement on whose job it is to know things and who can actually be trusted to actually know things. Recent Events of the last few years have seriously degraded trust in this area. again, maybe obvious
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8. overall the time is ripe for some kind of spiritual revolution but i don’t know if it’s actually going to happen. one way or another we need god, we need the dao, we need direct perception and experience, we need ways to break out of the traps of outdated cultural conditioning
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9. in other words, what happened in the 60s needs to happen again but better this time. better ideas, better techniques, better visions of a future worth fighting for. reconstruction and not just deconstruction
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