August Musings
August in Maine. While the coronavirus appears to be falling in Maine it is heating up in the rest of the country. Once the tourists leave we may find our numbers growing. And still the debate about everything in general goes on.
To quote Anne of Green Gables, “I am well in body but considerably rumpled in spirit.” Just when I think I have adjusted to the new normal, something comes along that shifts me from my center. Recently, it was hearing political comments from several sources that I knew to be half-truths or downright misleading statements. This started me critically thinking, something I am not often accused of doing.
Usually, I keep my earth-plain opinions to myself, or at least try to. In my younger days I protested, worked on campaigns, even helped a candidate for Attorney General develop her platform. In Virginia I worked for and well with both a Republican Governor and a Democratic Governor. My goal was to become the first female Commissioner of Mental Health in Virginia. But life has a way of getting in the way of our best laid plains and eventually, a series of mystical experiences pulled me toward the path I am still on.
These days a quote from the X-Files (one of my all-time favorite TV shows) keeps haunting me: “The best place to hide a lie is between two truths.” It is hard to know what is Truth (with a capitol T) and what is a lie, something planted to draw us in. The rest of the above quote is “Therefore know the sorcerer and his ways. Cloaking a lie is like sweetness to a baby. Enticing one to take a bite.”
Know the sorcerer and his ways. Remember that everything you watch on TV, or read, has a bias. In Let Magic Happen, Larry Burk, M.D. introduces us to Edward L. Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the “Father of Spin.” “Larry says that his clever stroke of genius was to apply his uncle’s theories of the unconscious to the control of the masses.
From his 1928 monograph, Propaganda:
“Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. We are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”
Our connection to our inner self has taken a new turn. It isn’t enough to question the mysteries of our existence, our dream state or our intuitive voice, now we must ask “Is this True,” to everything we see and read.
If fact-checking and science can’t save us… can our inner voice, our gut feelings, come to our rescue? Can we move beyond the unreal reality made up by our brains and directly perceive the true reality, that which underlies everything?
I can only hope.