A Kaleidoscopic Reality

My soul has been agitated and restless lately. Too much doom scrolling, perhaps. Being too involved with things and gadgets that steal my attention away from the now. Too engrossed in people’s opinions and seeing how divisive media and entertainment are, and how it all can be monetised.
It’s a shame that two perfectly pleasant people who would otherwise get along fine will engage in a violent display of keyboard jousting whilst others spit and add insults from the sidelines, cheering them on.
It’s the Colosseum. Entertainment. I don’t think we are mature enough to handle this level of technology…We might be ready to handle 80’s tech now. Maybe we should bring cassette tapes and Walkmans back for a decade or two. I digress…

The thing about online arguments is that they rarely, if ever, solve the problem being argued, and secondly, they’re likely to cause friction in the real world should the two meet. I’m not saying that things aren’t worth standing up for or speaking out against, but is it worth it when so much of it is triggered by intentionally divisive online media, A.I generated content masquerading as news, or even mistaken satire and “trollery”, and that’s exactly what it is meant to do – trigger and grab your attention, generate friction, views and interaction, regardless of how vile it gets. In fact, the more divisive the better – it doubles as entertainment…
and
we
keep
“scrollin, scrollin, scrollin!”, shouts out Fred Durst from the back of the sparsely lit room, before dropping the mic and exiting on a sleigh pulled by a business of ferrets.
Nothing but the ticking of a grandfather clock and a single cricket can be heard before the voice continues…and adding data to the almighty algorithm, and thereby creating, shaping and maintaining online communities.

After I peeled myself away from the phone and regained some of my stolen attention, I started thinking – what the fuck is reality?
And the best way I can imagine it is as if we are looking through a kaleidoscope with one eye, while the other is closed.
Imagine this kaleidoscope consisting of people, each person is like a mirror, all at varying angles, and each person has the ability to reflect and refract light entering from outside, causing a display of colourful opinions and chaotic fractals – interpretations of the truth. And outside of the kaleidoscope, shining in? That’s reality. If you look closely, you can sometimes catch a tiny glimpse of a reflection of it within the chaos of patterns and colour. We all affect and add to the shared perceived reality within the kaleidoscope.
I do feel it’s getting too chaotic to tell what “reality” is (humans are not equipped to deal with true reality). Or even what it means to have humility in a society with seemingly diminishing compassion. It’s becoming more and more abstract. More crazy shapes and patterns moving about, and it has us mesmerised and entertained. I’m completely glamoured at times, but it is not the now, and it is not reality.

The kaleidoscope is colourful, intriguing and mesmerising, but it makes navigating close to impossible with one eye closed. For the love of god, at least try to open your other eye before you walk into something or someone…or crash into oncoming traffic.