Our Greatest Delusion

Life vs. The Internet

A great part of our personalities and a huge part of our life stories today can be attributed to the Internet. This is not a good thing, I have realized, off late. The internet, in my honest opinion, has done more harm than good to me personally. I want to elucidate a few things here, and express what I have been realizing in bits and pieces.

An illusion of being connected:

The internet, through social media and messaging apps, gives us a comfortable feeling that we can contact anyone we want, anytime we like. It also gives us a feeling of being in touch. However, as I realize, it is a big illusion.

Social connections online, in my experience, does't increase communication between people, but counter-intuitively reduces it. It, in my experience, it puts a chasm between people who would otherwise feel nostalgic about each other. Miscommunication over text and passive aggressive behavior online, opinion feuds, and false judgement over tastes and culture are other things that go on over the internet social scene.

In real life, we depend on one another in intricate and complex ways. Communication is rather smooth and we see other points of views more clearly. In real life, we try to get in genuine touch with another person by actually taking efforts to get in touch. We get influenced in our decisions, and tend to have less of a herd attitude.

The internet is an illusion of connection, when everyone is separate. Life is the illusion of separateness, when everyone is connected.

The illusion of Smartness

Search engines gave us the power to search anything we wanted when we wanted them. It meant that school and college projects and assignments were nothing more than googleing the term and plagiarizing from one source or another. More often then not, those sources might be plagiarisms themselves. There is usually much unnecessary and impractical information to be found, and this, more often then not, causes an information overload. Ironically, very little of that information is truly retained in memory.

In real life, if we need to know something, we need to study it, feel it and experience it to a more wholesome degree. This might look slow or dumb, but it gives to wisdom and holistic well being of the mind.

The internet gives the illusion of being a smart-ass when in fact, you know nothing. In real life you know it when you know nothing, and thus chances are, you'll make an effort to be open minded to new knowledge.

The illusion of tolerance

If you haven't noticed, everything on the internet, is structured around the way you behave. You views are recorded, your likes and dislikes dictate what you will be exposed to in the future. This is true in both search and media. The result is, the world will seem surprisingly tolerant, since only like minded people are allowed to mingle and express their views.

In real life, we meet all sorts of people and make and effort to accommodate them within our world view.

The internet wears tolerant facade. Real life is tolerance in practice.

The illusion of Abundance

The internet is the home of hype and instant gratification. As is everything is projected in the most flattering light. The lives of people are photographed and uploaded with the best smiles and poses. The best sort of food is always on display. There is food porn, word porn and also porn. There are also cats.

In real life, things are harder to get and are much more gratifying. The food tastes and feels real. The words are more meaningful and come in some context or life situation, rather than just being random quotes.

The internet shows abundance, when truly it is scarce. Real life looks scarce, but is truly abundant.

--------------------------------------------------------------

But clearly, the internet is just a tool. We are responsible for our own lack of discrimination.

Who is Jed Mckenna?

The teachers we need will always be there when we need them; no reason to track down somebody else’s. -Jed Mckenna.

In March, this year, I was going through YouTube videos on self improvement as I often did in those days. One video titled 5 books that will change your life caught my attention. The guy in the video was a well known pick-up artist, Aaron, from RSD.

Now, like most people, I too was tired of redundant self help books and tips, but lately I had liked David Deida's books just for the heck of it. Besides, I had nothing better to do.

So the first among his recommendations was this strange "Spiritual Enlightenment" trilogy having these 3 books:

1. Spiritual Enlightenment: The danmdest thing.
2. Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment
3. Spiritual Warfare

All three written by a person named Jed Mckenna. And since I had nothing better to do, I went ahead and read these books. And it blew my mind.

I have never felt the same about any other book ever. And I have read hundreds if not thousands of them.

Jed Mckenna

It is August now, and I am still reading and re-reading  those books. They have been of such enormous value.

But this post is not about how awesome those books are(which they are). I only want to know, who on earth is Jed Mckenna?

In the narrative of his first book, he is located in an "ashram" known by locals as the Jed-zone somewhere in the central states of the U.S. In the second book, he's somewhere in Europe. In the third, he rents a house in rural Mexico. In another book he wrote, he was back in America, where he had previously rented a mansion. These days, he's living in Cambodia, where he has an ashram. But nobody clearly knows exactly where. There are no photos of his on the internet, despite being popular. No YouTube videos, no book promotions. Nothing.

But all this secrecy, even though clearly on purpose, seems effortless for him.

How does one do that?

I'm not a popular person, but if you Google "Huzefa Saifee", I do pop up. It's a small world,you know. And Here is an author of 5 very successful books, but not a photo to be found, no video, no biography.

I find that amazing.