Last night like many other nights, I climbed on to the roof to watch the stars after a cloudy day, as I lay there observing the firmament…a little thought caught my attention.I wondered if anyone had ever looked up at the universe and started comparing which stars were right and brighter and which ones were wrong and uglier, or had even had the urge to rearrange the constellations because in that precise night, he didn’t like the angle they were in.Silly huh?
Yet we do that in our daily lives all the time…, we compare people with qualities that don’t really exist, the same way we we attribute the quality of brightness to the starts when in fact they all shine the same and some only appear brighter in comparison to others due to their proximity to Earth in contrast with the rest, we admire some people for their beauty when the truth is…their beauty only depends on who they are surrounded by to compare them to, and trying to rearrange the constellations angle sounds a lot like a human civilization that is always changing its perspectives, where 140 years ago treated blank people as slaves and now have one as the President.
So if our perception of comparison influences us that much, what else does it affect?
Relativity Is The Jealousy Of Comparison
As I’ve already mentioned before, I infrequently did some part time modeling, a few months ago in one of those occasions, I found myself standing in a room full of gorgeous people and felt rather intimidated and out of place, I mean…all these people were incredibly stunning, but then an idea started tickling inside my head.
Their beauty was relative to who I was comparing them too, like everyone else…I’m use to interacting with your average day to day looking people and by comparison all these individuals seemed to excel in the “looks” area, but as I didn’t want to just leave my thought unfinished…I pondered, what if the whole world population was composed of people that looked similar to the ones in this room? how would these individuals stand out now if there was nobody to use as contrast of their beauty? If we used this logic, even a homeless person could be considered rich in relation to another homeless person who has less…
I couldn’t just stop there, in what other areas could this apply? We all know someone who we consider to be really smart, but what if you put them in a room with NASA scientists, MIT Engineers and University Professors? Would you still think of them like that?, or did you only think of them that way because they were smarter than the average amount of people you knew in your environment? This theory could also apply to someones wealth, you could be considered rich for your countries average income, but what if they sent you to Dubai? or put you on an island with Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Tiger Woods and Oprah? (poor Oprah…)
One of the things I like about movies is the basic ideas they can sometimes bring, and if you know how to watch movies characters in the right way and don’t do it objectively but subjectively, you can ask yourself some strange questions, like watching “I Am Legend” you could wonder, what if all humanity disappeared and you were the last person in the world? All those qualities we value so much of being rich, smart or good looking wouldn’t exist because there would be no one left to compare yourself too.
The Definition of “Relative” on Answers.com:
1.Having pertinence or relevance; connected or related.
2.Considered in comparison with something else: the relative quiet of the suburbs.
3.Dependent on or interconnected with something else; not absolute. See synonyms at dependent.
The scary thought is, none of the “qualities” most people admire in others or spend the majority of their lives trying to gain, really exists…all our perceptions of them depend on the environment we are surrounded by, and these qualities can’t exist or be true at all, because if a quality can change depending on the perspective, angle or the eyes you use to look at them, then It’s a mental illusion.
Judging Other Cultures By The Standards Of Your Own
We all live in societies and cultures that exist outside of us, exterior qualities that aren’t a part of us cause they can easily change with the purchase of a plane ticket, your interior though will always remain the same.Close your eyes for a second, what do you see? I see nothing…I’m neither bad nor good, beautiful nor ugly, young nor old, rich nor poor, black nor white.
How could you know you were black if you didn’t know about the existence of white people? It’s something you don’t even think about…, In India for example the concept of suicide didn’t practically exist because poor people accepted being poor and were happy, even though to us their lifestyle seems inhumane…if you grew up surrounded by crap and poverty, you think of it as something normal and joy or happiness can be found in any situation which our minds perceive as normal, don’t serial killers enjoy the pain of others? in their minds it’s a normal sensation…it was only when the media started bombarding them with ideologies of wealth bringing true happiness that they started comparing themselves with other cultures and the suicide rate increased 300%.
Have you ever sat next to a person of a different race and immediately smelt a strange body odor? Some Indians smelling like curry with sweat? or some white people smelling like garlic? We all get use to our own cultures body odor but can’t stand others…even if you’re well showered, every culture has a special scent, that’s an example of how well we adjust to our own environments and believe ours are the right ones ignoring the existence of all others when it comes to perceptual comparison, Muslims feel disgust towards western culture the same they find their culture antiquated and demeaning to women.
But changing our mentality completely is very difficult, because we are born into these so called perceived enviable cultural qualities, these “perceptions” (wealth, beauty, brains ect…) though are totally irrational because they’re practically hallucinations, I had a relative who suffered from schizophrenia and on the rare occasion he had a psychotic episode…it was impossible to convince him that what he was seeing, wasn’t actually there, because he could obviously see it.We can see beautiful people, we can see smart people, and we can see rich people…we’re obviously seeing hallucinations as well, should we all get medicated?
Speaking of insanity, in the 15th century, when King Henry VIII reign supreme, obesity was considered a sign of beauty, in a time were peasants could barely find bread to eat, someone who was fat was perceived as being wealthy to afford such a luxurious body and therefore was found attractive, now we find slimness and muscles appealing because we have unlimited access to food…in 1860, there were still black men, woman and children who were forced to slavery and now a black man is the most powerful person on the planet…imagine if Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan had been born in the cotton picking days :S, a few centuries ago our culture valued your ability with a sword and now they value our intellectual capacity, and only a few decades ago we made fun of geeks and nerds and now they rule the world of business and entertainment.We live in a culture that’s always changing what us as a society should perceive as a valuable, admirable quality…they can’t make up their minds of what they want, yet the ones who don’t want to follow any of those mediocre ambitions are considered “weird/freaks”?
Whats Is Real And What Is A Perception?
In my family there’s an old saying that goes, “Nada es verdad ni es mentira, todo es según el color a través del cristal con que se mira”, it basically translates to, “Nothing is true or false, it all depends on the color of glass you choose to look through”.In my opinion, anything that can change with time, by contrast to another thing or is a perception influenced by your environment isn’t real or true, a great example of this is money.
To me money is the biggest proof that everyone in our society suffers from insanity and hallucinations, I find the idea of humans and money fascinating, because it’s hilarious!, we all know you can buy things with money, but what really is money? they are colorful notes (Australian currency is very homosexual…) that somehow have ended up with a value that doesn’t exist and we can’t see, yet you can get anyone to do just about anything for them, even take someones life…, “how can this bill be worth $50??” I asked, “it’s paper!!!”, “you mean I can swap you this piece of paper that has the illusion of having some type of value in exchange for all this food and goodies??? =o”, is this paper made from some melted precious stones? and even those are just rocks that we have stipulated they are worth something, diamonds are crystal rocks…with enough crystal rocks you can exchange them for a house, but does that take away the fact that they are still just rocks? Peruvian Incas had so much gold that they made their kitchenware out of it, for them gold was a worthless metal but then the Spaniards came and imposed their illusion that gold was worth something…yet another example of perceptions being tricks of your mind.
Another example of the illusion is fashion, something that is out dated now was fashionable 20 years ago and and something thats fashionable now will be outdated in 10 years, but then become fashionably vintage in 30 years more, how can something that changes its charm and beauty so easily be considered something real? Invisible border lines around every country to claim land…though easily reshaped through war? Even happiness, when I say I’m happy, what exactly am I saying? am I happier compared to before? happier compared to someone? or happier than I will be in the future? if my moods change as well…they are also illusions, illusions that I can feel, but insane people can also “hear” the voices, because feelings are also relative, lets analyze an argument with someone, arguments are essentially caused by different interpretations of the same circumstances, ie, different delusional perspectives debating the same situation.
So what is not an illusion but actually something real? There is only one truth in the world, with many perspectives of it, around 6 billion actually, because there is no more to truth than a personal or cultural belief, the example of something real would be a butterfly, because a butterfly is a butterfly…it will still be a butterfly in 20 years and was one 200 years ago, there’s no angle or perspective you can look at it that makes it anything less or more, if your a rich person and you look at someone less fortunate, you see them as poor compared to you, but if a poor person and a rich person look at the butterfly…they will see the same butterfly.
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