As we understand and relate to reality more objectively, it is possible to envision more. Why then does it become problematic? Conspiracy-mindedness and psychedelic risk-taking, for example, are products of the objective desire to envision “more than meets the eye.” The desire to acquire easily dips into this territory as well. In science fiction, we get The Matrix and endless other cautionary tales where objectively-enacted visions often go awry. So why does the curious and engaged query “is there more than meets the eye” take on darker tones?
Just like simple imagination, when a person is “inside” the experience of conspiracies, mystical union, or acquiring for example, they are able to envision more than ordinary, day-to-day conditions present. Inside-the-imagination starts to qualify as its own sort of “more”. In this way our own imaginations are womb-like, incubating everything from real possibilities to pure fantasy. Suspending real limits and embracing more ambitious forms of imagination, the psyche both gets in touch with unseen truths and generates, to a greater or lesser extent, the psychic illusion, if you will, that one’s envisioning is bound to be not only true but effective as intended. Effectiveness in this quite real sense arises from the vague, womb-like “eye of the beholder.”
The meta-possibility arises that visions having their basis in generative illusions enact in reality, though unlikely in ways beholden to the generator’s necessarily limited ability to reason about consequences of so-amplified visions.
Something known in OKIC as transformative imaginal capacity is afoot. It’s connection to Envision More is also a paradox. For instance, at a practical level, conspiracies, even cleverly conceived ones, are not always true, and mystical unions are not always mutual or lasting. Acquisition of “enough” as often as not spirals needlessly.
What Envisioning More is actually effective at is amplifying one’s sense of, or simply longing for, other possibilities. Due to its paradoxical nature, Envisioning More includes potentially untrue amplifications. Thus incubating possibilities through Envision More, while often spun as innovation, is risky.
When we reflect on various social constructions instituted by humans throughout time, we appreciate the diverse ways that possibility-making through such amplifications leads to both innovations and undue risks. Well-meaning though ultimately misguided socially-constructive humans furthermore comprise the historical “they” we pledge to not repeat, only to repeat again with more sophisticated labels and/or subtleties of delivery.
Many if not most imagined endeavors are not correctly perceived by individuals in terms of real risks, such as for serious harm or waste, that they carry. The naiveté in suspending real limits as we Envision More leads one to a paradox of imagination and possibilities that, when not balanced with real possibility (as opposed to imagined only), are incubation grounds for socially constructed harms.
Collectivity is what balances and centers the paradox. (Paradoxes are never solved, only balanced and centered.)
To deal with the Envisioning More Paradox, we must understand how, once objectivity is achieved, true collective awareness has to be cultivated. Without objectively relational awareness, the listening-to-others limit referred to in OKIC as shielding leads people to “solving” the paradox through better, different (yet more) social construction schemes. This can be useful surely, though only to a point.
Without the point being true collectivity, we are entrenched in this seemingly harmless Envisioning More Paradox, swimming in same stuff different day, because despite what we hope, Envisioning More in collaboration with certain others is not automagically true collectivity.
One way to define social construction is as shielded collectivity. Which begs the question, if there is such a thing as true collectivity, how can it be shielded?
The answer is subjective idealization of objects. One ubiquitous and readily recognizable example of this phenomena is money. Others are listed in the table below.
The “objectivity” available in bound collectivity is driven by distinction-making, such as through selective listening, and implemented through discretization. Re-experience gives the opportunity to embrace being a shielded objective observer, meaning, re-experience listens so as to objectively amplify certain subjects or preferences via the imagination.
Social construction re-experience is a reconditioning of the self, envisioned using Shields, for the purpose of confidently ensuring the new condition will not have one suffer obscurity. Seems reasonable, except in light of the Sane Participation Paradox.
Lack of confidence in objective reality leads one to subjectify re-experience. If humanity is not a or the source of love and worthy of trust in the universe, reality seems stark — collective experience comprised of subjective channels of universal, yet only vaguely objective, truths.
From awareness of the objective-subjective tension, which is also informing reality as representational, we can construe the category of non-real though highly collectively consequential reality constructs — Defended Objects Structuring Referent Illusoriness (DOSRI)
DOSRI, while hugely useful as collective binders, are the “why” to a sobering question — Why is reality vulnerable to distortion in the first place?
| Re-experience | Shield (selective listening, distinction-making) | Boundless objectivity selected towards social construction (bound collectivity) | DOSRI | Referent-stabilized |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flux | Indifference (null) | Allow emergence “objectively” by way of indifference | possibilities | natural context |
| Goodness | Specialness or lavishness | Generate goodness “objectively” by way of specialness | aesthetics | easeful focus on “other” |
| Confidence | Superiority | Allow flow “objectively” by way of superiority | ratings | truthful context for scrutiny |
| Willingness | Romanticism | Associate freely and take risks “objectively” through romanticism | gambles | easeful focus on “influences” |
| Connectedness | Confirmation bias | Allow change “objectively” by way of confirmation bias | facts | truthful context for relatedness (accurately contextualized information) |
| Valuable | Stereotype, caricature, or cliche | Notice the variety of values “objectively” through stereotype, caricature, or cliche | categories | easeful focus on “self-image” (accurate mirroring) |
| Responsiveness | Manifesting for gain | Allow actualization “objectively” by manifesting for gain | currencies | truthful context for changes |
| Vision | Well-meaning | Clarify vision “objectively” through well-meaning | meanings | easeful focus on “reality modeling” |