Para-Realism

This is one of the foundations of my personal philosophy. It’s why I can’t fit into any political camp. I am looking at things from a different perspective than most people. I call my philosophy para-realism. The first part of my thesis is the article below.

One of the principals of para-realism is understanding reality in a new, fresh, unfiltered way. It is almost impossible for humans. But we have to try.

The way our mind works makes it extremely difficult to perceive reality clearly. Most of us are emotional beings. Our memories are tied to our emotion centers. So many of our perceptions are colored by feelings. And feelings get in the way of clear, rational thought. Without a clear mind we are often incapable of seeing with clarity as we seek to understand complex situations without some kind of bias or “editing” on our part. We tend to view the world the way we want to, even if we don’t like what we see.

But the truth is reality is independent of what we want it to be. It will exist long after we’re gone just as it existed since time began. There is more to it that our surroundings, there are things we can’t even see. But as humans were mostly concerned with our interactions with the world that we’ve made for ourselves. The people in our lives, the government, the society. Etc. Even then, we tend not to see those things with unclouded eyes.

This is because, depending on our mental and emotional development, we’ve trapped ourselves in what I like to call a layer of reality. Let me break it down for you.

Each layer of reality defines our advancement as a intellectual being, and as such defines our ability to see around us maturely. The human mind will control you if you don’t control it. You often act impulsively, drive on autopilot, do things without thinking because you trained yourself to do that or were trained. Many times we don’t even think about what we’re doing. This is when the mind controls you. But when you want to analyze a situation, you have to get completely out of that state. Your consciousness has to take full effect. Your awareness becomes amplified.

Here are the five layers of reality. I have conceived of a sixth and seventh layer, but they don’t concern us because they are beyond our current abilities.

1. The Child Layer: When you’re born and up until a certain age, your perception of reality is mostly emotional and open. You believe anything you are told. You see or imagine all kinds of things like monsters under the bed, imaginary friends. Your parents often tell you simplified answers to questions about the world and you believe them because they are like gods to you at that stage of your life. The child layer is the most basic layer of subjective reality. It is very emotion and fantasy driven.

2. Adolescent: You begin to think for yourself, to be obstinate. You discovered Santa Claus wasn’t real awhile ago and now question a lot of things you were told by your parents or society. This is the stage where your consciousness begins to really develop, but you are still naive and lacking a lot of important information. The ego at this age tends to go from extreme highs and lows as your emotions fluctuate with your developing hormones. Since a lot of people think their teen-aged years are a highlight of their life, many people see reality through the lens of this layer and switch back and forth with this and the next one. This is a very immature state of mind. It’s also very gullible. Because teens think they suddenly know the “truth” because they no longer believe the things they thought as a child. This is why so many teens think they know everything, when they in fact know very little. This is where many people form their earliest ideologies. Some take them to their grave, but many abandon them when they enter later stages of thought, if they do.

3. Adult: At this stage people are having to deal with a job, family and other facts of life a teen or child has little or no experience with. Because they’re forced to deal with reality more than the earlier stages, people who live in this state of mind often believe they now see reality clearly. They’re wrong. They are only seeing it better than they did before. People at the adult layer tend to form their life-long ideology here. Adults can be influenced by their emotions, but they’re not as easy to fool as the first two layers. However, they can be manipulated by telling them what they want to hear, by figuring out what their hot buttons are and playing to them. People at the adult level are often running scared. The two primal emotions people have is the desire to possess something and the fear of losing something. Adults go from one to the other. They focus on their families if they have one, their job, their wealth or lack of same. These are the things people in the adult layer tend to think about. Sometimes they go in and out of other layers. Usually the lower ones depending on their emotional state of being.

4. Rational: The Rational level is where people are able to step back from their emotions and instincts and look at a situation more dispassionately. A rational person can still maintain an ideology, but they are willing to listen to other ideas and not automatically discount of dismiss them. They do not immediately get emotional when they hear something they don’t like. Because they’re willing to try to understand things better. To see where someone is coming from. But rational people also have the tendency to rationalize. To construct a new reality in their minds, or “rationale” to explain things for themselves so they can go on believing what they want to believe. In other words, they are more capable of seeing reality than people in the other layers, but they have an inclination to create their own fictional frameworks rather than deal with something they don’t want to accept.

5: Para-Realist: A para-realist isn’t afraid of reality. A para-realist has to deal with it in order to understand it. Therefore, a para-realist cannot afford to subscribe to any ideology. They can have a set of principals and beliefs, but they have to be willing to change them if the information shows they were wrong. But, of course, they also have a high standard for proof because they understand that any information they get from other people is tainted by their agenda or perspective. They seek to see all forms of thought in order to glean the most objective view. A para-realist can have a point of view, but they must be able to back it up. By nature, a para-realist must be agnostic about everything because they must accept that they could be wrong. Therefore, they don’t believe in absolutes. Only the possibility of them.

Here is a chart of the layers. The lower down you go, the less you are able to see, thus the “view” becomes more restricted. Para-realists have the widest view humanly possible, but it is not limitless. There are other layers above 5 but they are mostly beyond human ken at this stage.

This is a simplified explanation of the layers. But I will explore them in more detail and why they matter in a later post.

After looking over all kinds of political views over the years, I realized than none of them totally fit me. I am not a follower, so I never looked for something to follow. I was looking for something that satisfied my views of the world. There are many things that came close but not enough for me to say that’s what I am. For a while I called myself a libertarian, but I don’t agree with everything that party believes either. Though I think the classical liberal view is closest to what I subscribe to. And libertarians are the closest political party to classical liberalism. They are the “true” liberals these days.

The short answer for me is I believe in limited government. The reason for this is simple, it’s the only kind that seems to work well. I explained my reasoning here.

Human nature prevents a Utopian society. Those who believe in big government always see it fail because the bigger a government gets, the more corrupt it gets. And that is because there are more people with power and power is a corrupting force. Limited government keeps leaders in check and prevents them from doing things that are damaging to everyone else’s freedoms and liberties. Big government always leads to some form of tyranny, and eventual economic collapse. History has shown that time and time again.

It may take hundreds of years, as in the case of the Roman Empire. But it falls. And in the process a lot of people endure all kinds of trials and misery.

I call my philosophy para-realism because it seeks to see beyond the reality that human beings perceive. Para-Realism means “beyond realism”. Everyone’s reality is subjective, not objective. How we see the world is largely based on our own personal experiences, prejudices and emotions. That is how our brains are wired. But true reality stands apart from what we see. It doesn’t matter what we want it to be, or what we think it should be. It is what it is. So it’s important that we deal with it rather than pretend it’s something it’s not.

In order to do that we need to be able to step outside ourselves and look at things dispassionately. That’s what I have always sought to do. I have not always succeeded, but that is the process I seek when dealing with the state of things.

As a result, I don’t care about political parties or partisan politics because that is all an invention of people with agendas. I only care about what is or isn’t true, from what I can tell. I always question the information I get and check it for veracity. I am willing to admit I am wrong when it’s proved that I am. By the same token, I am not swayed by group think of any kind. I am opposed to ideology and reject any notion that starts with the fallacy that “everyone believes”. It doesn’t matter what people believe. It only matters what’s real. What’s true. The axiom.

So how do you do that? Well, this is one of the fundamental features of my philosophy. I will explain it in the next post. I call it the “Layers of Reality”. Once you know what they are it’s easier to work with them.

What people need to understand about me and my views is that I am not an ideologue. I am an anti-ideologue. I am not interested in what people think I should believe. I am constantly searching for the truth. The truth is the only thing that really matters in my world. The truth will set you free. Those who try to obscure it are not on your side.

The reason I do my political cartoons is to point that out.

The final chapter of my series on statism vs a free society is now up on Big Journalism or you can read all the essays collected by checking the essays link above.

Here is a political primer for two terms people need to understand. There are only two kinds of society. Top Down and Bottom Up, or as I like to say, Big Government vs Limited Government or Negative and Plus.

TOP DOWN is the oldest and most common form. It can be as small as a tribe to as large as an empire. It goes by many names: Fascist, Socialist, Totalitarian, Communist, etc. But they are are the same. It is only a matter of degrees. Even the softer ones become harder over time. Their similarity is in the fact that they’re ruled by a small group of elites at the top. And they restrict the freedoms of their citizens. In a soft BG society the restrictions may be things like limits on free speech or the government taxes everything. They use the tax revenues to bribe the populace with alleged “benefits” which could easily be handled by a private sector, and better. But governments in these societies are competition for private enterprise and they tend to push companies around through excess regulation. Alas, the US is a BG system now. But we have the potential to legally turn it back around. The window to do that is closing, however.

Top down societies are negative because they only serve the people at the top, and their greed and the bureaucracies they create limit success and thus send the society into a slow decline until it collapses and is replaced through violent revolution or social change.

BOTTOM UP societies have been very rare in human history. They are societies where the people have power over their representatives. The constitution of these nations limits the power of the political class. Such societies have been enormously successful where they have been practiced. For a short while in Ancient Rome, in a more limited way and in the United States for the first 120 years or so. The designers of our constitution understood the weakness of human beings and their tendency to take the path of least resistance. They knew that they would entrust others to govern and some of those leaders will be corrupted by the power they wield. And thus the founders of the US created a constitution that limited each of the three branches of government. It has made the US government an incredibly stable society that has lasted 235 years, longer than most governments on Earth. Nations may be older, but not their governments. We have also created the most prosperous and free society in the history of the human race. However, all of that is changing for the worst. We need to get back to our core principals.

Bottom Up societies can theoretically last indefinitely until they are corrupted by those who want to change the system to a top down state. That is where we are now.

For more info here is my essay on the subject.

I’ve been wanting to develop my own brand of philosophy concerning human existence for many years. While I have sampled many of the world philosophies, religions and political beliefs, I find that they are lacking in some ways. What they lack is an ability to deal with reality fully in some way. Because each has its own agenda and some don’t even include a desire to deal with reality, or their perception of it is one I can’t fully sign on to.

So I call this philosophy “para-realism”. Which means beyond reality.

Humans see reality in a limited way. It is clouded by their ignorance, emotions and perceptive abilities. They often can’t see the big picture because they are focused on details, or if they see a big picture they miss important details that are very relevant.

In order to deal with reality in a way that’s constructive you have to divorce yourself from your wants, opinions, prejudices and other human traits in order to see it dispassionately. That is almost impossible, yet it is critical to figuring out the proper course. If you look at human history for the last several thousand years, they have accomplished much, but in fact, accomplished very little. Because they have held themselves back constantly, with the foolish ideologies, politics and agendas of their time.

We still have wars. We still argue about things that are for all intents and purposes absurd. We are still holding ourselves back. In fact, it seems we are on the path to regression not advancement.

So I want to do a series of articles that explain how I think humanity could move forward. Without dealing with the things that prevent us from finding greatness, we will keep missing the mark.

The first thing you need to understand about para-realism is that it’s first rule is it doesn’t matter what you think, what you want, what you believe. The only thing that matters is if its true.

But truth is a variable that changes. What may be true one second is not the next. This planet has been here for billions of years. But someday it won’t be here. Once upon a time, it didn’t exist. Every truth is temporary.

Since the earth has been here so long, it will always be true for us, in our lifetimes, because if it didn’t we wouldn’t be alive. So that is a truth that is fairly constant. Some truths are temporary like rules that change pending on who makes them that day. Some truths outlive us, and others don’t last the day.

When it comes to politics or religion, it gets more complex. I will deal with that at length later.

What’s important is finding a way to see it and then deal with it in a constructive manner. Too many people cling to a truth that no longer exists or never did. They become emotionally invested in perpetuating an idea over a reality, rather than trying to make that idea a truth that matters.

The next article will be about the layers of reality. How your perception of reality depends on what layer you are looking at.