Reflections related to my practice

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or

On constructed reality,

the social paranoia of mankind

and our anxiety of the social structures

by Michael Würtz Overbeck

In the realm between reality and fiction, there is a tendency to draw a very sharp line which divides and separates the two. Reality is one entity, while fiction is another. Does this sharp line however exist? Isn't everything just a man-made construction? Reality becomes fiction. Fiction becomes reality. It becomes a blurry grey area in which reality and fiction are constantly intertwining without clearly manifesting themselves. A constructed reality emerges through this.

Once in a while reality crumbles up and becomes confusing, dense, and impermeable. Does reality remain the same, when walking from one room to another? Perhaps the world is not what one expected it to be, when opening a door and peeping through it. And having walked through the door, entered and looking back, does the world remain the same where one left it? Thus, the reality of the individual can come to appear as a web of mental states; a map over the mind, that explicitly manifest itself physically, in the individuals surroundings through his or hers optics.

As an individual our recognition of the world is a completely subjective perception of the world and how we view it. Through private experiences, curiousness, explorations, and selective personal interpretations is reality constructed, as one and only one individual perceives it. Reality, as the individual person perceives it is different from one person to the next. The only perception of reality that can be trusted is hence, only our own. However, as individuals we are constantly influenced by other individuals, which influences the way we recognizes the world. And thus is the individuals reality transformed into a collectively perceived reality which everybody has a congruence and effect upon. Therefore, any individual who wants to be part of, and act within the commonly perceived reality, must fit, and subject oneself to this realitys values, in order for the realitys foundation to remain stable. This is not necessarily a conscious choice or a choice at all, but more a unconscious submitting to the social norms. 

The individuals subjective conscience is thus being influenced, both consciously and unconsciously, by his parents values, other peoples values in the social sphere, societys general values, the rhetoric of these people, the media and politicians. This contributes to the creation of the individual as a person, and creates invisible social structures that the individual automatically acts within. But through this constant flow of exogenous impressions and influences, that influences how the individual recognizes reality; it is possible to be influenced in a direction that cannot always be said to be positive. We do not necessarily have any actual control of the social structures that we are born and raised into. Even though one might like to, it is impossible not to be influenced by these social structures.