2 Another vivid example of constructionism comes directly from Science Fiction. It was best put in words by Stanislav Lem in Solaris: "We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous: we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when page is turned and that reality is revealed to us––that part of our reality which we prefer to pass over in silence––then we don't like it any more." If you look at most of the Science Fiction works (especially movies) this notion ("we don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers") is omnipresent. You can begin noticing it in aliens looking like humans and (or) speaking English, but it's really more deep than just that. The whole idea of Contact is perhaps part of the same notion. Sure, one can argue that we simply project limits of our own experience on outside world. But if this is not construction of reality, then what? 2009-08-27T22:28:43+00:00 8 sci-fi, solaris 2009-08-27T22:32:10+00:00 2 Is one of most intriguing constructions of the mind. Regardless of its source it is very stable and often lethal. Why people choose to view a world in a hopeless manner is beyond my understanding. I never really was able to reach this point. No matter how deep I submerge into my despairs a sense of stability, well-being and goodness is always there, on fringes of my perception. At the moment I tend to think that suicide (this topic arouse from recent readings on Wittgenstein's family) is always an accident. Because the depression is so stable it allows exploration of its "space", and where one walks one will inevitably trip, sooner if the surrounding area is unknown or simply dark. This trip can then be realized when a person is already between the bridge and the water. A psychedelic experience can, perhaps, be a real assisted "suicide", a safe-net for an experience of death, an ultimate border–wall of any depression. When one experiences its own destruction the whole experiment is concluded, there is nothing else that can be done and a spiral of downfall should change its direction (Dante?). 2009-03-03T08:42:21+00:00 7 death 2009-03-03T08:42:21+00:00 2 So, let's think about the construction process for a moment. We can clearly classify people into two groups: those who can easily visualize images and those who can not. For example I can rarely do it with my eyes closed. But I know people who can do it with their eyes wide open. I should immediately direct your attention to Shulgin's definition of a hallucination. When you see something and aware that it might not be real you are not hallucinating. There are many strange things that our mind produces and not all of them should be alarming or verbally connected to any psychological illnesses. Most of the people I know, however, can visualize with eyes closed and in a calm state of mind. This (ancient term) hypnogogic imagery is a direct pathway to more interesting states of consciousness, like lucid dream or so called "out of body" experience. But that's a subject of some other post. Question now is: how is that possible, that without any visual stimulation we can produce precise ( or completely irrelevant and phantasmic) representations of real objects. So no wonder there is a lot of bullshit literature about the "third eye". I mean, it is only natural to live 5 hundred years ago and thing, that if you can see with your eyes closed, then you must have some special invisible eye. How else would you able to see? So many people are still stuck in this silliness, it gets on my nerves! Especially when I try to find any coherent thoughts or empirical evidences in a pile of rotten dogmatic anachronisms. 2009-01-23T07:50:30+00:00 6 visualization, imagery 2009-01-23T07:50:30+00:00 2 !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3130/3190857728_7afe12a677_o.jpg! We look at the world around us as if it exist the way we see it without our involvement. 2009-01-11T22:32:47+00:00 4 image 2009-01-11T23:24:58+00:00