Twitter thread from @visakanv:
1. Reality is whatever you want it to be
2. Reality is also whatever everyone else wants it to be
3. The ensuing infowar of all against all leads to consolidation…
4. reality now seems quite a bit more constrained than (1)
but the underlying power of 1 is still real…
you can repeat this whole thing with
1. you can do whatever you want
2. everyone else can also do whatever they want
3. ensuing conflict leads to consolidation – laws, enforcement, jobs, bills…
4. it appears that you can no longer simply do what you want
however…
the tension between 1 and 4 is uncomfortable to hold within oneself – (man is born free…) – and so a lot of people conclude that 1 is simply false, ie no longer true, that the era of action and initiative etc is past.
It’s less stressful to live like that in the short run…
… but in the long run it can be a kind of self-abdication, self-abandonment, like giving up one’s freedom, sovereignty, self-respect, etc etc. one becomes Institutionalised by Society, come to depend on the very walls that one resents
the opposite of being Institutionalized is to see how reality is just a sort of temporary consensus, full of chaotic noise and nonsense, and that you can hit Inspect Element to study it, examine it, and figure out opportunities that everyone else is missing bc they’re not looking
There is no spoon.