I came across this BUTTON the other day while posting on StumbleUpon, upon clicking it and seeing the below message, I thought it quite funny.
{{{Everything is OK now. If everything is still not OK, try checking your settings of perception of objective reality.}}}
But then I pondered, what exactly is this thing called objective reality? I knew, simply put, that our perception of things around us is not reality based but is defined by our brains, using past experiences.
After reading this wordpress blog http://benafia.wordpress.com/my-pages/conservative-reality-avoidance-necessity-appearance-reality/ I found out ONE AMAZING FACT (which I believe I already knew but not in, oh so, accurate phrasing) The GOP/TP Republican Conservatives have a Gargantuan Disdain for Objective Reality.
Of course they do, they would not win or be allowed to steal elections if the populous was even partially aware of this cognitive philosophy. This Party of NO, must dumb down its voters, or they won’t have a chance in any election. But, I believe an odd (maybe a better word would be LIKELY) consequence occurs when they attempt to stifle good judgment, they themselves become ignorant to the realities of life. Their focus thus becomes clouded with money, power, arrogance, and greed; their attitude towards others is of indifference, believing all other humans beings (along with every other form of life) exist solely to make them materialistically superior, and nothing else. They are a very dangerous entity, not upon reality because reality will always prevail, it is beyond the scope of mere mortals but the Republican mindset will be lethal to us who live in this time and space. If they succeed in winning the election, come November 2012 another generation will suffer their disastrous hegemony for years to come; And that in very plain language… STINKS! thinkingblue
What is objective reality?
Over on The Motley Fool atheist board, someone recently posted the question: "Could somebody please explain the term 'objective reality' to me?"
We don't view the world as it really is; we interpret it with our senses and filter it through existing patterns in our brains. For instance, when I think that I see a blue racquetball, I am not really perceiving the ball directly. White light is striking the surface of that ball, all the wavelengths are absorbed except for those that we recognize at the color blue, and then the light bounces back to the surface of our eyes. The cells in our eyes transmit the pattern of photons back to our brain, which then looks at the pattern of light and dark shading, interprets the slightly different information from each eye to estimate distance, and then creates sort of a computer simulated model of a ball. Your brain tells you "That's a blue ball!" and that's what you think you see.
But senses can be fooled or misled, and your brain's program can screw up and misinterpret what it's reading. Then you can get a false impression of what you are seeing in the world.
Furthermore, you interpret a lot of things based on your memories of things that have happened to you in the past. If you see or hear about something that conflicts with the world model that was already in your head, you might reject the new information or file it wrong in your memory, because your brain doesn't like to completely reorganize its existing patterns every time it sees something a bit odd.
So there's a "real world" out there, outside your brain; and then there's the "virtual world" that has been built inside your brain. The real and the virtual world never match up completely, but they can correspond to a greater or lesser degree. When you see a blue ball, you can be pretty confident that there really is a ball and it really has the property of being blue. The color blue is not really a "thing"; it is just a word that we use to label light at a certain wavelength. But there really is light, and it really has different wavelengths, and it really does bounce off of things like balls to show you the color blue.
When we talk about "objective reality", we are talking about the world that's really there, unfiltered, outside your mind. Our beliefs do not change the world, except to the extent that they lead to actions that alter reality. So I can, if I try hard enough, go around all day sincerely believing things like "That blue ball is actually an orange artichoke"
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Why Does The Right Wing Need Reality Unhinged?
Essentially for the same reason the round earth reality was opposed by authorities, or the sun as center of the solar system was opposed; to keep control of the authority paradigm under their thought control, is a conservatives first imperative. For that they will deny evidence from observed reality that seems to constrain their authority. They are then compelled by emotion, to demean new or opposing information, particularly by shaming the messengers of contradiction and their message. We can be most passionate over that which we least know as fact.
They right wing often seeds irrationalism into the national dialectic to keep corralled, those dependent upon blind forms of trust, as opposed to more verifiable scientific analysis. We are figuratively then cast into the debate between the right wings modern versions of an obviously flat earth (appearance’s) , and the intellectual elites ideas of a round world which requires thought and rational interpretation. The conservative right spends much time on shame, blame, and attacks on science and intellectualism in general (their own excepted). Ignorance becomes the prime conservative currency they can take to the bank, made by trust in their authority and its “invincible” ideology.
Conservatives need to control Appearance Reality, always have. In effect, tantamount to metaphorically supporting a kind of pseudoscience, for they must offer their “real” evidence why they cannot be wrong. They operate from the assumption, then, that their view is reality, truth or fact, and other views wrong or fantasy. For this they must shame deep inquiry as tantamount to a kind of obfuscation, or complicated mental based fantasy. If you control how things seem by controlling emotions through fear rather than conscientious reason, a public diverted from objectivity will be primed to “get” the conservatives absolute surety.
Appearance Reality is the appearance “truth” of how things seem. Today’s conservatives see the economy, as well as their social values, as these kinds of inviolable right truths, and questions from you or I are automatically (if challenging their conceptual paradigm), felt by them as being wrong. We appear wrong to the narrative of their dogma. Since we seem somehow willingly wrong to them, they tend to invoke shaming in order to stop critical thinking abilities from functioning fully—in the conservative faithful.
-Science Itself Must Be Debunked; Kinds of Faith Overriding Evidence and Rational Theory
Objective contextual rendering of complex social and economic issues, such as theorized from science, must by necessity, be perceptually tarnished, often by pseudo-scientific emotionalized debunking. It is out of conservatism’s control mind-frames, to allow intellectual theory or controversy to spiral out of their control narratives. Conservatism relies on the appearance of a-priori knowing of unquestionable “truths”. Contrary ideas can then be declared spurious and wrong merely by existing, without the need of any objective-like truth finding or further research.
You will notice conservatives emotionalized ad-hominem attitude’s of contempt and shaming as primitive authoritarian manipulative identity control mechanisms. Conservatism depends upon select self-serving rationalization to define their apparent unquestionable group defined consensus reality. To question them is perceived as offending them, the questioner is perceived as being on the side of something inherently wrong. The manipulative tactic of The Thought-terminating cliché, is widespread across the conservative right, serving the purpose of emotionally diverting questions regarding beliefs by placing identity boulders in the way of perceiving cause and effect..
http://www.indopedia.org/Thought_terminating_cliche.html
This opens the door to proselytizing demagogues from soapboxes in the mass media. READ MORE HERE: http://benafia.wordpress.com/my-pages/conservative-reality-avoidance-necessity-appearance-reality/---
Is There a Difference Between Memory and Imagination?
If you remember something wrong, is the label “memory” still accurate? Does the label of memory necessitate a 1:1 correspondence with the past? If not 1:1, how much correspondence with the past is necessary for us to still be comfortable using the label of memory? More importantly, if we can talk about a memory being in error, or even completely fabricated (i.e. – “false memories”), then at what point can we then say there is a meaningful difference between memory and imagination? READ MORE HERE: http://cognitivephilosophy.net/consciousness/is-there-a-difference-between-memory-and-imagination/