Perception and Observation: We Are Our Own Reality Show

Just Children Left to Raise Ourselves 

Here we are again, stuck choosing between being bitten by a venomous snake or drinking the Kool-Aid. Except we don’t know when the snake will strike, and we’re pretty sure the Kool-Aid has been in the back of the fridge since the 1940s. When you look back throughout history, not only in the U.S. but worldwide, you’ll notice trends. It happens time and time again: every country has faced tyrants, dictators, incompetent governments, war, famine, and collapse. That’s just one of the many cycles of life, of evolution. We, as a species, must transition through these phases, no matter how uncomfortable or ugly they become. Sure, we’ve evolved in many ways since our ancient ancestors, but in other ways, we are still those scared children hiding in caves.

In today’s world, it’s painfully easy to observe most of the happenings going on all over the planet at any given moment, but it’s also much easier and quicker to perceive these events in our own ways. Through advances in technology and the sheer volume of people with the ability to record their experiences and these events, it’s no wonder we can witness all the monstrous and heroic things we as a species are capable of. Then we somehow manage to measure our own lives against it all, even when the scales are grossly manipulated to always outweigh the mass. We have created our own distorted version of reality, a ‘reality show,’ through social media, live streaming, FaceTiming, and 12-second videos.

 "In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."  — Friedrich Nietzsche

We all desperately want a grand scheme by the government to be at fault, or one villain mastermind, or the reptilian overlords, or, or, or – when instead it was us. We did this to ourselves, as much as we know to be true anyway. Through our own human behavioral instincts, the millions of years spent hiding, the conditioning, year upon year of built-up cultural oppression, slavery, ancestral trauma, and misdirection, the list could go on. We are a traumatized species, with no one else to blame and no one else to learn from but ourselves. No matter how high and mighty we may feel, or the advances we make, we are still those people hiding from the night and fearful of those who do not look like our kin.

What more would you expect from a child that was left to raise itself, with only the last few years of experiences, nature, and the stars as guidance? History is a mirror, and society is an echo chamber of our own creation. If we want things to get better and change to happen, then we must be better than those in power, as a whole species, and not allow the trauma we’ve endured or the current events to misdirect or control us. We are in control of our own reality show, and we can change the channel.