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Subject: "Weird Worlds" - Two Divergent Approaches
From: Robert Morpheal <morpheal@yahoo.com>
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The “Weird World”:
A discussion of how reality frameworks are affected and shaped in different
types of people, noting Dakin and W.S. Burroughs as examples of the two t
ypes.
Dakin's story is a very rare glimpse into something that has some significa
nce to the understanding of the dark side of society, that few ever experie
nce, and that most deny any existence of. A dark side that extends across a
spectrum of exceptional human experiences, ranging from the always ongoing
wars against organized crime, to the world of intelligence gathering and e
spionage. There are various sorts of “weird worlds”. Burrou
ghs' dark vision is of that same spectrum, as is Dakin's.
What has to be noted is that it is not so unusual that illusions are experi
enced, within the context of that spectrum, deliberately created, and inter
woven, into the fabric of what is meant to seem to be reality. It is very o
ften that those are created to divert the experiencer from perceiving reali
ty entirely factually and clearly. They are often deliberate diversions. So
me of those illusions can become delusions, when they become sufficiently b
elieved, and when they influence how other parts of experience are interpre
ted and understood. Some delusions are commonly deemed acceptable viewpoint
s regarding commonly consensual viewpoints as to “reality”.
People typically try to make sense of the resulting mix of deliberately in
duced confusion that they are given to experience. Some find that they are
struggling to do that for the rest of their lives. They are forever trying
to make sense of it all, in a way that the majority of other people will ac
cept. Their deep desire for social approval and acceptance, being a primary
motivator to that effort. That means striving for what might seem to be t
he commonly acceptable “facts” in the manner of a typical j
ournalist. Rooting out what does not fit, and explaining it away, in some c
ommonly acceptable way or other. The idea of applying a very ordinary cooki
e cutter to experiences that are far from ordinary.
To understand this somewhat better one can turn to an extreme instance of a
n entirely different approach. There are other people, far less inclined to
seeking that type of commonality, who are more inclusive of their experien
ces, without feeling that intense need to judge between subjective and obje
ctive, between what is defined as unreality and what is commonly sanctioned
as being acceptable reality. They feel free to fictionalize. A leading exa
mple is W.S. Burroughs, who never sought to avoid controversy, and never fe
lt inclined to stamp his experiences with a mental cookie cutter that would
produce the same sort of shapes as most others tended to produce with thei
r very ordinary, highly socialized, cookie cutters. Drugs are quite tangent
ial to that aspect, and far from as significant as some critics tend to cla
im. Drugs instead became another aspect pertaining to the elements that see
k to induce confusion between a censored, acceptable, reality and its oppos
ite. Not only to induce confusion in the experiencer, but as a public decla
ration as to how any audience is meant to interpret the experiencer's expre
ssions into language. Of course, regardless of the mechanism meant to produ
ce confusion, the results can be highly variable, as to their relative effe
o one coherent and complete package. That does not deny that he too sought
to rationalize, and explain the totality within a framework that determined
its interpretation. That is what people always tend to do. They seek to ra
tionalize, to explain, their experiences, such as they happen to be. Now an
d again a writer appears who seeks to do so publicly. That is the same whet
her it is a journalist or an author of other types of more inclusive and le
ss judgment driven writings.
Exceptional experiences, of a “weird world”, always damage
portions of the psychological framework, that determines individual experie
nce, and the interpretation of experience, of the world and the situation o
f self within that world. The author, whether as Journalist or as author, i
n some other region of expression into language, seeking to repair, and rep
lace, damaged regions of the framework. Albeit in very different ways, as t
o the resulting structure.
The difference is that the cookie cutter that Burroughs applied to experien
ce, in its totality, was one that included the production of what almost an
yone would consider as being strange shapes. Dakin is intent on the opposit
e approach. Dakin seeks to apply a cookie cutter that produces more commonl
y acceptable shapes to her own experiences, which in some ways continually
defy that, in terms of the cookie cutter chopping off various portions as b
eing outside the exclusionary boundaries of what constitutes normative, com
monly accepted, more tightly constrained, socially defined, “realit
y”. Burroughs shared no such concern with the normative. There the
two paths are radically divergent. That does not make either attempt, in es
sence, more true, unless we seek to define truth as the difference between
socially accepted, commonly agreed to, judgments about what can be defined
as a purely subjective versus what is to be defined as commonly agreed to o
bjective, “truth”. Confusion is very often meant to steer
the experiencer of a “weird world” experience toward the la
tter, and to decline inclusion of what the majority of society would define
as being individually subjective, and thus illusion, or delusion, in contr
ast to socially shared “cookie cutter” realities that are t
hen consensually agreed to.
http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42951788
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