Reality is a b***h

BlazerBob wrote:

LOL wrote: Friends, please try to stay on topic.

while the writer used the VA as his vehicle my take away is the bigger point he made. That is what drew me to the piece. It is not just the VA and it is not just politicians on the left. I think he used it because it is just the latest example.

"If you flip enough bits at the level of the primitive, the whole system state in its entirety flips. In that vast anthill, no individual clerk could run counter to the narrative. “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated”.

But if so, why did the Borg Cube explode just now? Because there is in every system, even the Federal Government, a parallel apparatus is always in effect which one can call Reality. We forget that it exists, but it is there in the background, like some top level object to which we barely pay attention. Whenever the variance between the narrative and reality becomes too large, the narrative loses. The top level object throws an error and the narrative is garbage-collected. The Borg Cube, however powerful, can never ever beat Arithmetic. "

One of the first quotes I ever had as a sig: "I can think of nothing more gallant, even though again and again we fail, than attempting to get at the facts; attempting to tell things as they really are. For at least reality, though never fully attained, can be defined. Reality is that which, when you don't believe in it, doesn't go away." -Peter Viereck, Last lecture, Mount Holyoke College, 1997. (Quoted in Profile, New Yorker, October 24, 2005, by Tom Reiss)

How can we be so cavalier about the facts? Perhaps one of the worst things about the “post-modern” age is the pervasive belief that lies are harmless, that in other words the truth doesn’t exist; merely something you create by issuing talking points, faked memos and bogus facts. We are taught it is endlessly malleable and smugly told you can explain away an attack on a US consulate in Benghazi by blaming a video produced in LA.

All the right people believe truth is fake, but interestingly enough the lie never extinguishes the truth. Rather, by pushing against reality, it compresses a spring which sooner or later will give up its energy in an explosive way. Kicking stuff down the road doesn’t make it go away, it simply stores up the junk in the top shelf of the hall closet. One day you open the closet and …

The Obama administration would do well to realize that it isn’t the pathetic GOP they have to worry about, but Reality. Reality exists, and that spring is wound up about as far as it will go, and then Reality is a b***h. Everyone learns this in the end. Max Planck once sadly observed that progress was rarely made by comfortably extending cherished routines but through “acts of desperation”, seemingly achieved against our own will. We learn because we have to.

I wonder if this author knew he's describing the anti-global warming movement? Lies are not harmless, and the spring is winding. It's human nature to try reset the bureaucracy rather than address the actual problem until it becomes a bitch. And before you point out that I bring up only another smaller example of the overall problem, because that is in essence true, I truly believe it is the most dangerous elephant in the room not being addressed. Why? "Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death." -ERIC HOFFER, Reflections on the Human Condition

In the bigger take-away, it's not the Obama administration only that needs to worry about Reality, but ourselves and how we are repeating our own mistakes, un-evolving, turning a blind eye. As Viereck said, "reality can never be fully attained" - we will, at some primitive level in order to protect ourselves, protect our psyche, deny reality - delude ourselves to the Truth. Whether we will continue to do this, through an increasingly corrupt system until it collapses under sheer weight of ineptitude or rebellion, before irreversible harm to our way of life, is the question now. Empires and civilizations tend to come to an end in violent, devastating ways, even catching those who seek to gain enough power and influence to rise above the suffering. The increasing wage gaps and wealth disparity we see are the manifestations of those who see the Reality, or as the article says "Even when an administration lies, it must itself know the truth." It's not just the administration, but those perched at the top who manipulate the game, avoiding Reality as long as possible...

It is one thing to lie, knowing the truth. It is quite another to lie, not caring.

Good article Blazer Bob, thank you for sharing.