The aurora borealis was visible in the city Newcastle upon Tyne last night, as it was all over Britain and much of the hemisphere; but when I say "visible" - this means, essentially, visible to the camera, not to the human eye. "Evidence" that the event happened was then, and is now, essentially a matter of photography (including associated image-editing).
There is a lot of light pollution in a modern city, and this largely prevents our eyes from getting adapted to darkness (which may take about ten minutes after looking at bright light) - and the the Northern Lights were rather faint and blurry colours of pale green and red against the dark blue of the night sky.
I went into an upstairs room (to see closer to the horizon, and avoid exposure direct street lighting), and allowed several minutes of light adaptation; and (knowing which direction to look) I saw slight paling towards green in the north, a sense of (maybe?) vertical lines, with a reddish vertical ovoid fuzz to the east of this.
But I was not really sure I had seen anything, not really. My wife (whose vision is worse than mine) couldn't see anything abnormal.
It was only after looking at photographs of the phenomenon online - pictures in which the colours and shapes were much brighter, more differentiated, and sharper - that I was "sure" I really had seen the Northern Lights.
I would guess that, if it had not been for the fact that most people live secondary to their social media (doing and looking-at what is suggested on media); and that the aurora was depicted photographically with very vivid colours and in sharp detail - the Northern Lights would not have been noticed - at least not here.
Those who did notice something unusual would not likely have been sure that they were watching a natural phenomenon, rather than reflections from outdoor man-made illuminations or various kinds (these occur all the time in a modern city).
Indeed hardly anybody among modern people would have noticed anything at all, since people very seldom look at the skies - and are oblivious of much more obviously extraordinary phenomena.
Like almost everything, nowadays - the Northern Lights was a media event primarily, and was defined by the photographs - not by (un-shareable) personal observations.
Yesterday's Northern Lights were therefore a microcosm of Life Today - in that personal experience is subordinated to media "evidence".
The observations of my own eyes needed to be "validated" by online photographic depiction, before I was really confident that I had actually seen anything.
This is how it works: The mass media tells us what to look-for and what we "will see", social media disseminates this framing perspective, and indeed shows us what we will see.
Only then, after we know what we are supposed to observe, can we perceive it.
And if this works for physical phenomena like lights in the sky; how much more does it work for abstractions such as the birdemic, climate emergency, and specific racial injustice?
Indeed, this is how things work in the most general sense: we perceive only what we conceptualize.
"Reality" itself derives from metaphysical assumptions, many of which we are unaware of having.
Our special problem - here and now - is that so many people perceive as directed by the globalist totalitarian system, which is evil.
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The answer cannot be to suppose we can perceive reality unmediated and direct, without pre-conception; but to examine, reflect-upon, think-about that which frames our perceived-reality. If we desire to be personally-responsible rather than passively-obedient in our lives; we should strive to discover what are these conceptions, from-where and from-whom they derive. Only when these have become conscious, can we decide whether or not we wish to continue using these unconscious framing-sources - whether we choose to affirm making these particular assumptions.
4 comments:
i feel this works even more so the other way around, which is even more terrifying (to me at least): many cannot see what they are not supposed to see. even if it is directly affecting them, physically. the media says it's not there, and they can't see it, or they won't.
@Laeth: "many cannot see what they are not supposed to see" - That is because it is Not There until after it is framed. Raw sensation has no meaning.
yes, indeed and this is in a sense true for everyone. but we do this all the time: our senses perceive and our minds interpret. and nowadays it feels that there is some faculty that is broken in people. the mechanism of interpretation, now outsourced to the media, and when the media does not provide it, it cannot be made to work. i have had absolutely absurd conversations about common experiences, where the most basic connections are just... not acknowledged. they cannot see it. and it's hard to make them see it because the words we have are all tainted, and trigger even stronger blinders. and this is of course not connected to IQ, but rather clearly a spiritual, impossible to measure, faculty. it really feels like what one reads about witches and spells they put on people in old tales.
@Laeth - "the mechanism of interpretation, now outsourced to the media, and when the media does not provide it, it cannot be made to work."
Yes that's it. Yet, why would anyone actually want to outsource to the media - of all sources? On top - there is the problem that *whatever* institution the outsourcing is done to (a church, science, medicine, any bureaucracy...), the assumptions are more-or-less the same - or not sufficiently distinct to make a difference in practice.
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