Consensual Reality

If enough people believe that something is true, it really doesn't matter whether it is true or not. The important thing is that everyone is on the same page. That's what makes everything work. Being on the same page is what keeps everybody happy, healthy and functional, and that's what's really important. In this life, it is far more important to be effective than it is to be right. And though effectiveness is often contingent on being right, more often it is not. Especially in a complicated social system, where effectiveness of an individual is tied to the effective functioning of the society as a whole, "truth" is what is true for the society as a whole.

So the functional "truth" of a thing is determined by the number of people that agree that it is "true." Likewise, a thing stops being "true" when enough people agree that it is not "true."

This is the essence of Consensual Reality. It is a set of beliefs which form the core of a society, as well as subsets of beliefs which are inferred as logical and natural implications of those core beliefs. This creates very complicated strings of perceptual relationships, and numerous disciplines arise to keep all those perceptual relationships organized, pristine and "true." Out of those disciplines, parameters of thinking and perception arise that keep everybody on the same page and espousing the same, consistent "truths."

If an inconsistent "truth" emerges, the immediate and most devastating consequence of it is the impact it has on the Consensual Reality. Far from anyone being excited about new vistas of understanding being opened up, the thing that gets everybody riled up is the extent to which the new revelation invalidates the existing belief system.

That's when the fireworks start. 

A new "truth" can't be "true" until enough people agree to accept and integrate its "truthfulness" into their system of belief, because that's what really makes it effective. Sadly though, it still doesn't matter if it's really true or not. The connection to reality is almost utterly inconsequential.

Y'see, "truth" is a valuable commodity. If you've got a corner on the "truth" market, then you've got power. You can make people that believe do just about anything to maintain validation of that belief. Politicians, terrorists, cult leaders, con men - they're all about getting a corner on the "truth" market, and they'll go to extreme lengths to leverage their position. 

That's their job. They will deceive, seduce, threaten, beat - even kill if they think it will help expand the acceptance of their "truth" and give them a larger share of the market.

When you get right down to it, it's all bullshit. Some of it works better than some other, and so the world keeps turning. 

But the real, underlying, functional "truth" is that it's all bullshit. You just need to decide which of it that you're going to call your own, and that's what life is really all about.

Influences

Okay, I admit it. I don't read very much. I don't make a serious study of authors or directors or actors. I can't quote passages, and I can't footnote and cross-reference my casual conversation. 

I'm not proud of this, and I know it often makes me seem kind of stupid and unenlightened. But there it is.

I open myself to be influenced by everything and everyone I come across. I don't really have a very sophisticated "filtering" system and that often makes me appear kind of gullible, pliable and even submissive.

Because of all of this, my internal reality is a swirling melange of ideas, perceptions and experiences that form up into little chains of consistency, and that's what comprises my intellect. But these "chains of consistency" are constantly breaking and reforming into new chains and patterns of relationship consistency. The core parameter which keeps all this conceptual chaos in check is a constant evaluation based on what works.

I am kind of proud of that particular conceptual mechanism, but I am aware that it often makes me appear shallow, waffling and somewhat bogus. 

Many times in conversation about things I really don't care about, I'll take the opposite position just to have an argument. If the conversation stays on the "high road" with valid logic, I'll generally let the other person win the argument. Sometimes, I'll turn things around so that in the end we're both saying the same thing, and actually just arguing about the words being used. As much fun as it is, I realize that it makes me look like an asshole. 

It's all good though, nobody's feelings really get hurt. I can always be dismissed as bogus, waffling, shallow, submissive, pliable or gullible.

That really doesn't bother me much because it just puts more input into my database of influence. One thing that does bother me, though, is that in this swirling melange of influence and shifting patterns of relationship consistency, I'm never sure if I'm having an original idea or not. Many times, people will credit (or accuse) me with saying something that I can't remember having actually said. By the same token, I'll come up with an idea that I think is totally original, and people will swear that they've heard it somewhere before.

That can be very disconcerting, and I end up wishing I could make a serious study of authors, directors and actors, and quote passages and footnote and cross-reference my casual conversation.

But I can't, I don't and I won't.  

But what I will do is offer this partial list of names of famous people which have had more than a casual influence on my basic patterns of relationship consistency. H.P. Lovecraft, Martin Luther King, Aleister Crowley, Madam Blavatsky, Papa Doc Duvalier, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Mother Theresa, Cotton Mather, Tomás de Torquemada, Heinrich Himmler, Simon Wiesenthal, Robert Silverberg, Richard Matheson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ozzy Osbourne, Albert Einstein, and the guy with the hair from "Ancient Aliens."

But these people are just footnotes. My real influences are the people I've met, loved, fought with and ultimately pissed off. I carry all of them with me all the time. There's the weird kid who picked on me (and everybody else) in kindergarten, then disappeared. There are the kids who lived at the top of the hill, and taught me how to shop-lift and tried to teach me how to fight. There's the kid that lived down the road and tried to teach me how to play baseball and football. There's the mean little girl who always wanted to play doctor or teacher. There was the fat kid that nobody liked who ended up getting run over by a piece of heavy farm equipment (a disc for those of you who are in the know about such things). 

Those are just from the first ten years. I could go on for page after page, cataloguing almost every person I ever met and the little slivers of life I got, and keep, from every one of them. 

Kind of creepy when you think about it. 

The Night Song Promotional Video

Click to view video

The last few months have been pretty rough. In fact, things have been so unusually difficult and phenomenally bad since I published Night Song, that I was starting to think that it might be cursed. But in conversation with other people who have had absolutely no connection with Night Song, I've found that it isn't just me. Lots of people has been having exceptionally bad luck for an especially long time.

At any rate, I haven't been able to do much on the blog, as there's just been too much death, disease and depravity swirling all around me. It's been an ongoing process of dealing with one catastrophe, and then immediately getting slammed with another one. But things seem to be settling down a bit now. That's not to say that the troubles have abated, any - quite the contrary. But I seem to be getting used to it, so upward and onward.

But even though I haven't been keeping up with the blog, I've not been idle. In the midst of all the mayhem, I've been putting together a promotional video for Night Song. It's a fun, little 2 minute animation that kind of conveys the gist of what the story is all about. I had actually planned to be finished with it before Christmas, but things didn't quite work out. Instead of it taking 6 weeks to complete, it took more like 16. 

But better late than never, I guess. Here's the link.

http://youtu.be/DqSNd2Qk_W4

Also, I'm pleased to report that Dave Patten gave Night Song a great (and totally honest) review on amazon.com. Thanks Dave!

You can read the review and add one of your own (if you're so inclined) at 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LXBPS0W