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 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.”
“Inner Kaleidoscope”
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. Its 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. By extension, 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 the fantastical), are incubation grounds for socially constructed harms.
Collectivity is what balances and centers the paradox.
<aside> ♾️
Paradoxes are never solved, only balanced and centered.
</aside>
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 “solve” 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.
See The Ephemeral Journey entry for more like the above.
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 shielded 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 amplify certain subjects or preferences, including via the imagination.