content within my illusions
Content within my illusions. The line has been rattling around my brain for the last little bit, announcing itself like an overloud party guest.
There is a school of thought, one I visit when the need and whim takes me, that says just about everything is illusion, built on perception and perspective, not reality.
How do I know that you, dear reader, actually exist? It is possible I receive many times more or many times less readers than my statistics say. It is possible that you are not whom I assume you to be, even when I am dealing with the specific.
It's been done before, to me and others. The Internet is rife and ripe with people wanting to come from a different reality than they really do. They change their face, their name, their age, even their gender, as they want to be something else, at least within the purpose of the moment. They lie about their motives.
I have always considered this ineffably sad.
But whenever I encounter deceit, am I bound to rip it apart and find the truth or should I be content within my illusions, even if I know somewhere that this person is not who he or she says they are, this situation may not hold up to scrutiny?
It is, on the surface, a simple choice. But, as the nature of reality itself may be subjective...do I get to choose what is real enough for my purposes?
Perhaps. Perhaps.
2 comments:
Hi William,
You make a good point (there was a story about this on wired.com not too long ago). The internet world does blur the line between what is real and what is fake, and makes trusting more difficult and challenging. But, paradoxically, it also provides us with tools to uncover deceit. For example, I have an invisible stats-keeper on my blog, and can tell if those who frequent my blog are being honest about their whereabouts, etc (ja, I'm paranoid).
That said, there are things that are impossible to 'rip apart', at least not without making a whole lot of assumptions and accusations that may actually be false, thereby needlessly alienating people.
At the end of the day, it's a tough choice, but I think that deceit almost always ends up being exposed, because most of the time people can't keep up with their lies anymore.
But then again, is there any real dilemma there? Does it matter at all? The only time that it matters, in my opinion, is when you 'know' the person doing the deceiving.
By the way, for what it's worth, I like you.
You seem pretty worthwhile yourself, Ed.
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