Shared Hallucinations

[DoomYoshi]

A lot of people have been bemoaning president Donald Trump's sense of reality. They have accused his supporters of sharing a shared hallucination. I find this stark, raving mad because to call him "president" means acknowledging a shared hallucination - that there is such a thing as the President of the United States. All forms of laws take the form of shared hallucinations. There isn't any scientific basis to them (you can't experimentally determine who the President of the United States is, or which county line you just crossed) and yet the form the backbone of our "society" - another shared hallucination.

I spent many years wondering about the intersection between culture and "culture". My question was: "does art influence society or is art just a product of society?" The reason the answer was so difficult is that it was a false dichotomy. Art is a product in society that serves both purposes, but so are all the aspects of our shared hallucinations - el presidentes, laws and all the other products.

All the other products is a way of saying what is usually meant by the "economy". The economy is also a shared hallucination. Nothing on this earth has any value, and modifying it doesn't add value either. Our economy is a bunch of people working jobs generating goods and services that other people don't need so you can afford to buy stuff that you don't need. The only part of the economy that you actually need is the job itself. It isn't a means to an end, it is the end.

It is jobs that distract from the truth bubbling up from under the surface. No amount of further scientific research will ever give meaning to your life. Your life is only as meaningful as your shared hallucinations. Now people also accuse the Church of being a shared hallucination. Even if it is, does that make studying the gospel any less rigorous than studying the law? The Church has 2000 years of the best and brightest minds in the entire world outlining theology. Now people are dismissive of the entire enterprise.

[mrswdk]

[mrswdk]

Have you ever noticed how if you keep saying the same word over and over again it starts to lose its meaning? Try it.

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[KoolBak]

Thought this was another religious thread

[TA1LGUNN3R]

I said, "we cut off your johnson!"

[Dukasaur]

I said, "we cut off your johnson!"

Sick and depressed, Johnson had hoped to attend the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, if only to stand up and take a bow. He needed some warmth and applause, but from Larry O'Brien and others the message filtered back that he had better stay home. The McGovern nomination disgusted him. Nixon could be defeated if only the Democrats don't go too far left," he had insisted. But to Johnson, party loyalty ranked with mother love, so he was far from pleased to find such old colleagues as George Christian, Leonard Marks, and former Commerce Secretary C. R. Smith working for Nixon against other old friends such as Liz Carpenter and Joe Califano, who campaigned for McGovern. Of John Connally, with whom his relationship had long been complicated, and who he thought would run on the GOP ticket as Nixon's running mate, Johnson remarked philosophically: "John sees a good opportunity." But when another close Texas confidant stretched his endorsement of Nixon to include active support for Texas Republican Senator John Tower, Johnson angrily called the offender and exploded: "You're a fat old whore."

Johnson's choice to beat Nixon was Edmund Muskie. In his view, Senator Muskie was "crucified by the press. They zeroed in on him because he was the front-runner and pounded him out, just like they did to Romney in 1964." His disappointment was mollified slightly by his own estimations of the Maine senator, which he had discussed with friends a few years before. "Muskie," he had said, "will never be President because he doesn't have the instinct to go for his opponent's jugular." Prior to the convention, Johnson held long telephone conversations with both Muskie and Chicago's Mayor Daley on the strategy to stop McGovern. He advised Muskie to stand firm and hold out to see whether there would be a second ballot. But he refused to act on Daley's plea that he, Johnson, take an initiative and speak out against McGovern. "Johnson knows that if he takes such a stand it will be counterproductive," a friend said at the time. "If he goes against McGovern, it will only boost McGovern's stock. Lyndon just doesn't carry any weight in the party anymore, and he knows it. It's a miserable fact for a man who only four years ago was President of the United States. But it is a fact."

So Johnson suffered the election in silence, swallowing his nitroglycerin tablets to thwart continual chest pains, endorsing McGovern through a hill country weekly newspaper, meeting cordially with the candidate at the ranch. The newspapers showed a startling picture of Johnson, his hair almost shoulder-length. Former aide Bob Hardesty takes credit for this development. "We were working together one day," Hardesty recalls, "and he said, in passing, 'Robert, you need a haircut.' I told him, 'Mr. President, I'm letting my hair grow so no one will be able to mistake me for those SOB's in the White House.' He looked startled, so I explained, 'You know, that bunch around Nixon—Haldeman, Ehrlichman—they all have very short hair.' He nodded. The next time I saw him his hair was growing over his collar."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1973/07/the-last-days-of-the-president/376281/