The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Time | A Harsh Reality About Fear and Anxiety

Plus some thoughts from Mark Fisher on Capitalism and other things I have found interesting of the past few days:)

Jan 26

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So…let’s enter the labyrinth.

A new podcast episode is up as well…

Talking about the problem with Aubrey Marcus and consumerist-based spirituality…when you read today’s quotes I included from Mark Fisher keep that idea of consumerism in spirituality in mind!

New Podcast Ep

Apple Pod Link

In my early twenties…I was a hardline libertarian. Not an Ayn Rand objectivist libertarian (the worst kind)…but a libertarian nonetheless…

Over the last year, I’ve been diving back into political ideology and societal analysis of power structures. Thus, here are a couple of quotes I’ve found interesting and thought-provoking about Capitalism.

I hope you find them poetic or thought-provoking, even if you disagree…

“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism.” — Mark Fisher
“Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us.” — Mark Fisher
“Žižek’s counsel here remains invaluable. ‘If the concept of ideology is the classic one in which the illusion is located in knowledge’, he argues, then today’s society must appear post-ideological: the prevailing ideology is that of cynicism; people no longer believe in ideological truth; they do not take ideological propositions seriously. The fundamental level of ideology, however, is not of an illusion masking the real state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuring our social reality itself. And at this level, we are of course far from being a post-ideological society. Cynical distance is just one way … to blind ourselves to the structural power of ideological fantasy: even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironical distance, we are still doing them.” — Mark Fisher

These are pulled from Mark Fisher’s book Capitalist Realism.

The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Time

“Time waits for no one.”

Time doesn’t heal.

Time doesn’t bring wisdom.

Time is nothing but a space between past and future.

It’s up to us to decide what we’re going to do with that time.

Whether it’s worth anything or not.

What will you decide?

We allow ourselves to fall under this strange illusion that time allows us to figure things out.

But with the time we have, we must utilize mindful and intentional introspection, otherwise, we remain fools that have simply allowed time to pass.

Time doesn’t heal wounds.

Time doesn’t absolve grief.

Time simply passes, nothing more, and nothing less.

Time is a false promise.

A lie we have been told from the beginning.

Time simply passes. From moment to moment and after our inevitable death.

So, what will you do with your time?

There is no change without action.

And it’s in our action and introspection that we begin processing those wounds we wish to heal.

If you break a bone, what do you do? You take action by going to the doctor. You take action. You process what happens and take action.

What would happen if you did nothing?

It might partially heal with time, but that broken bone will heal incorrectly. Thus, that physical part of you will be incomplete.

Your emotional wounds are no different.

You must take action. You must utilize introspection, otherwise, your wounds will remain wounds. This is the road to processing those wounds.

Time doesn’t heal, so start taking action.

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” — Andy Warhol

A Harsh Reality About Fear and Anxiety

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives, a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” — Oscar Wilde

Here’s a (possible) harsh reality: anxiety is our default state. We then spend life discovering ways to suppress our anxiety. And a form of suppression is creating objects of fear because fear is always attached to an object, whereas anxiety is attached to emptiness and uncertainty. So the pandemic, economic collapse, conspiracies, and/or global warming become necessary illusions of fear keeping us sane.

Okay, so what is this not saying?

I’m not saying that the objects of fear are an illusion; it’s the fear itself that is a subjective interpretation that is an illusion, but a necessary one. The pandemic is very real; a potential economic collapse is an actual possibility; global warming is happening and we are causing it. These are truths that we create fear around.

So, let me raise this question. Do you think a foundational part of reality is our uncertainty of it?

If yes, then maybe we must face that our uncertainty, which is a foundational part of existence, is something that creates our anxiety. Thus, if uncertainty is the default then so is an anxious state.

We then create objects of fear to create necessary illusions and distractions from that default state of uncertainty and anxiety.

So, should we be placing our fear in the idea that lizard people run the world?

Or the likely, much more important worry that global warming is occurring and we should do everything in our power to slow it down?

This is my point: I think we often give our fear to objects that become a waste of time because we do not want to accept much of the fear we imbue into something is another illusion, a distraction.

A foundational part of reality we all face is the fact it’s uncertainty all the way down. Truths are meant to be constructed and then deconstructed.

And this is what I’ve been wondering about: If uncertainty is a foundational part of our existence, how would the world look if we came to accept this foundation together? By sharing in the anxiety this reality creates, we could have more fruitful discussions on what is best to deal with this paranoiac noise.

Maybe a good place to start is keeping our external reality alive and well, so we can cultivate better illusions to keep the chaos of our inner worlds in order.

The crisis continues.

“We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.” — Slavoj Zizek

“Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don’t know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves.” —Slavoj Zizek

A Philosopher's Stone (Brenden's Labyrinth)