THE PRISM (PRISON?) OF OUR REALITY

 

THE PRISM (PRISON?) OF OUR REALITY 

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D. 

© November 24, 2020 

READERS WRITES

You and K supporting Trump is fascinating. I don’t hate Trump.

However, Trump is a liar and a cheater.

Now he refuses to concede that he lost, and he continues to say he won.

Every legal suit he brought on about the election has been thrown out of court. Then he tried to get republicans from various states to select electors so he could become the dictator which is what Putin and many other dictators would do.

Election officials in various states have been threatened. The election official in Georgia had to have police protection. However, Trump continues his shenanigans to cause people to distrust the election system. I also find interesting that most republican senators have refused to acknowledge that Biden won. They too have no backbone. How you can continue supporting such a person is very interesting.

R

K REPLIES

R

You fall for the CNN story of Biden and the Trump. According to the media-adapted story . . .

Biden is this nice guy candidate who has done nothing in 47 years and was only elected because he pinned the pandemic, economic downturn and civil unrest on Trump.

Trump is this lying-cheating-dangerous mutt who was narrowly defeated because democrats successfully harvested votes from everybody who wants more money and benefits from government.

They want Joe and his socialists to take care of them. But Joe is an empty suit, a promoter of false promises.

K


TO MY CORRESPONDENTS, I WRITE

Some time ago (1996), I wrote a book in which I saw our failure to “be on the same page” but instead inclined to talk over each other was something, alas, apparently endemic to us. The problem?

We all view life through our own unique personal prism, while society attempts to have us view life through its. The same is true individual to individual. Of course, this doesn’t work and so, at best, it is difficult for us to communicate with each other.

The media, change masters, politicians, academics, parents, writers, philosophers and, yes, friends want us to see things as they would have us see them through their respective prisms because in that manner they attain some personal credulity and collective reinforcement.

From my book:

The difference between today and yesterday is we “flaunt our stuff” rather than apologize for it. We see the world through rose colored glasses, or more precisely, through different prisms. Whatever the prism that is the reality we staunchly defend, and sad to say, a reality far afield from that of a different prism. None of this is dishonest, but it leads to a painfully comic and counterproductive society, a society which has little sense of the rhythm of the universe or the thematic poetry to it all. With clashes of prisms, we have clashes of cultures – a morose if moronic hypersensitivity on display, but little poetry.

An obsession with prisms leads to inescapable tension which finds the individual the enemy of his own society. It places him in an impossible doublebind. If the individual acquiesces, and conforms to the crazy quilt montage of societal prisms, he suffers the loss of personal freedom and identity. If the individual parks his prism at the door and views life with objective discernment, he suffers anomie, or personal and societal disaffection. He can’t win for losing . . .

Viewing life through the prism of government idolatry is fashionable. Government, as ubiquitous therapist reveals a paradox: the American people keep ceding more and more of their sovereignty to a government which they trust less and less. The public is angry but unwilling to take responsibility for anything that has gone wrong – from the National Debt to escalating crime; from decline of the family to the rising rate of illiteracy.

Today, public passions are essentially unfiltered and almost always acted on. It is government by Gallup Poll. Congress is far too responsive and politicians far too solicitous. Government by polls is not democracy. It is exceedingly dangerous. The public often is wrong regarding its best interests because its view is often through a very delimiting prism, the prism of simplicity . . .

The youth of the day view life through a prism of cynicism. This tells them that the best is past and they are being weaned on leftovers. This generation born between 1961 and 1975 is a product of too much too many too soon. Over exposed to stimuli, it is a generation uniquely savvy to the marketing that foists celebrities on the public (The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend, 1996, pp. 10, 27, 36).

Jim