I usually start the day by skimming the latest Digg submissions. If you aren’t familiar with this social news gathering group, it is a worldwide community of people sharing what they think is interesting. The linked articles run the gamut from newsworthy to laugh worthy. The Digg site link. It is also the place where I find new connections to interesting sites.

Today’s newsworthy stories were…

From Wired. US Senate Votes in Favor of Retroactive Immunity for Telecoms that spied on citizens. (Link) If you don’t know what this is about or the implications for freedom and democracy – yours – then follow up and read. I would also encourage everyone to read Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm as a matter of self-defense. They provide the context for an intense paradigm shift for anyone who doesn’t already have a context for the implications of what is happening on a worldwide basis. The Rawstory news site also covers the issue. (Link)

The Wired story led me to the Home page which in turn added this interesting tidbit to the database from which I draw my reality – What Will They Think of Next? Record Labels’ Ridiculous Antileak Tech. (Link)

Back to Digg where I bypass stories like the following. Hey I only have an hour or two every morning to add data to my brainbase. I include these three just to show you the broad range of offerings.

• iPhone 3G will Ship in Potato Boxes (Link – Wired)
• The 7 Creepiest Real Life Robots (Link – Cracked)
• Atheist Soldier Sues Army for Religious Discrimination (Link – NY Times)

The second site I try to check daily is Techdirt where some good analysis of news from a tech perspective enriches my context of understanding. The story that caught my eye was Americans Watching More TV Than Ever (Link – Barron’s)

“In May, Nielsen reports, the average American watched 127 hours and 15 minutes of television, which comes to something just over 4 hours a day.”

A quick bit of arithmetic tells us that they watch over 1 full day per week which in turn tells us that they watch 60 days (24×7) per year. That is two full months of life out of every year watching mind-stimulating shows that enrich and fulfill. Or maybe not. The top 10 according to WhoAreAmericans.com are (Link)

• The Top 10 ‘Regularly Scheduled’ TV programs:
  1. American Idol – Wednesday
  2. American Idol – Tuesday
  3. Dancing with the Stars – Monday
  4. Dancing with the Stars – Tuesday
  5. Sunday Night Football
  6. CSI
  7. Grey’s Anatomy
  7. Samantha Who?
  9. House
  10: CSI: Miami

The truly frightening thing – and the one that explains the state of US intelligence at the moment – is the top 5 on the list. Pure brain pablum without a single nourishing ingredient in the mix. Looks like the US has learned something from the early Romans who had celebrations on more than half of the days of the year on the principle that a happily distracted citizenry won’t feel the need to revolt.

From Markham's Behavioral Health Website

I don’t know who to credit for the cartoon, but I found it on Markham’s Behavioral Health along with other articles about the effects of TV.

It is easy for me to scoff and act all self-righteous because I saw TV as the most insidiously pacifying electro-drug five years ago when I canceled my cable and turned it off. Now that I see the new US numbers I am thankful for my choice and wish I had done it sooner. Of course, using these numbers to form a “whole reality” picture is somewhat depressing – hell, it’s a lot depressing!!!

• The Years of Our Lives
  (Based on a 75 year lifespan)
  12 years spent watching TV (4 hrs. per day)
  25 years spent sleeping (8 hrs. per night)
  6 years eating (2 hrs. per day)
  22 years working (7 hrs. per day)
  6 years commuting (2 hrs. per day)
  ———————————-
  71 years total living the “routines” of life

This leaves us with a grand total of 4 years out of 75 to truly be alive, to experience the world around us and to explore the mysteries of life – or play video games like so many do. And this is what we call life? I somehow don’t think God (whichever one you believe in) is proud of his/her creation. And that doesn’t even address the damage we are doing to the planet, the number of species becoming extinct every year, the depletion of the oceans, the…oh, hell, the list is far too big to reiterate here.

One of the side-effects of becoming informed and filling your mind with a lot of raw data to think about is that it is easy to be overwhelmed to the point of depression. Don’t be. The more people “awaken” to the concept of a multifaceted “whole reality” filled with millions of colors instead of black and white choices, the more there is a chance that the depressing status quo can be changed.

Speaking of change, I am realizing that writing a blog has cut my data input time in half, so we’ll call it a day for now and head off to fulfill item #4 on the above list.

More of the sites I visit in subsequent posts…

About the author

Let me start off by saying my view of the world is bent. I have lived in Europe, North America and Asia, so consider myself culturally confused. Broad experience leaves me cold to the whims of monochrome views of reality – a term I still refine on a daily basis.

Before discussing what reality is I think we need to first ask…

Where is “I”? In other words, where is the entity located that is our conscious self?

We refer to ourselves with regularity as in I went to work, I hate”those people,” I want you.

So what makes up the “I” and where are we located. The make up of the conscious “I” is nicely summed up by Buddha as “We are what we think.”

Makes sense that we are the sum of every thought we have ever had, right? Our personality, belief system, turn-ons, phobias, etc. are all creations (sometimes dark demons) of the thoughts we have had as a result of our experiences. In this definition, an experience isn’t just a physical occurrence, such as falling out of a tree, getting bitten by a goat, or having good sex (not with a goat). It is also day dreams, wet dreams and nightmares. It is every sentence we have read, conversation we have had or idea we have imagined. Anything that our mind has considered is an experience. And the sum of all of these thoughts is what formed us, shaped us, and made us into the confused mess we are individually. Kind of explains our inability to coexist peacefully doesn’t it?

“The world” is a concept. It isn’t objectively real. It is a personal construct we define and refine as we absorb it through the bias filter of past experiences. Every new event is colored and interpreted by our reactions and afterthoughts to previous events. This is why a hundred people will react differently emotionally to the same event, such as a snake slithering under the blanket, an animal or person in distress, or a declaration of war on another nation.

Let’s take the last one for example. If we have lived through a war or lost family in war we are less likely to blindly support the decision to inflict the same tragedy on others. If on the other hand we have been draped in our nation’s flag since birth and taught that we are the good guys, the likelihood of objecting to devastating another nation’s people will be justified by our good intentions. As in we are liberating you (our view v.s. killing you, their view). The broader our individual experience (giving the mind a much larger internal knowledge database) the more likely we are to demand evidence and accountability. And the more likely we are to disregard two-tone black v.s. white rationale and us and them thinking. Only by challenging the basic argument of the opposing viewpoints can you find the real reality usually somewhere in between.

The more limited the scope of an individual’s life experiences (naivetee through ignorance) the more likely we are to be drawn into an emotional reaction rather than the rational one. Racism is a good example. If you hate someone because of their skin pigmentation it is time to realize that below the surface they have a similar bone structure, the same number and type of organs and the same frequency of heartbeats. Consdering we all bleed the same color blood, why is skin color the deciding factor for hate? Because the perceiver doesn’t have the thought depth to see the deeper reality.

Getting back to the reality of war, ask yourself why it is old men who declare wars, but young men (and women) who fight and die in them. Are wars fought for gain or for altruistic reasons? Skeptics and patriots will never agree.

This brings up the thorny issues of mind manipulation through limited education, news editing and censoring (do we really believe embedded reporters are capable of objective reporting), and the role of governments and corporations in taking advantage of those whose reality is poorly formed and subject to easy modification.

Coming back to the starting point, where is the “you” who just read this post? Where is the center of your consciousness, the “I” that animates your body in the morning and drives the body while it drives to work?  No effort to define reality can occur without also exploring the creater of reality – the “I” inside us that decidess what we like or hate without worrying overmuch who, what and where our “I” really is.

Confused? Welcome to the club.