Social media is not the real world. Rarely does anyone express the full embodiment of their real self over the Internet. At most, you get to know slivers of people here, like the flat characters in a novel. We don’t become rounded, fully inflated human beings until stepping back into the real world.
© 2021 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
In the movie Castaway, Chuck Noland, played by actor Tom Hanks, creates an imaginary companion from a Wilson soccer ball, by painting his own bloody handprint into the shape of a face, and then naming him Wilson.
Chuck’s traumatized psyche exploits the resources immediately available to him, to restore some semblance of normalcy and emotional balance, giving him the wherewithal to survive his predicament. The soccer ball and Chuck’s own blood were the most accessible mediums for creating his temporary, anthropomorphic companion – a split off portion of his own psyche, projected onto a red faced soccer ball. If something more human appearing had been available, such as a puppet or doll, he most likely would have chosen that over the bloody soccer ball.
In the era of social media, we are packed together like a billion sardines competing for visibility and validation. There is little space to individually define and express ourselves, without a mob of discontents taking notice and attempting to modify what we want to believe about ourselves and our world.
To be yourself, often comes at the “imagined” expense of how others define or think of themselves, and so these “others” fight back to regain or preserve what they think is being lost or threatened by your existence, including their cherished delusions and comfortable lies. Merely expressing your opinion, will cause “some” virtual strangers to fear being invalidated as to their own opinions and beliefs, and so they will employ any means possible to invalidate you first, or worse.
© 2021 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
We live in a linear, results oriented world; the theory of cause and effect being the dominant paradigm and ideal. Do good, or pretend to be good, and good will come back to you, including wealth, health, perfect partners to fulfill your every need, a good seat in heaven, a better set of circumstances in the next lifetime, etc. You get the idea here…
Which is:
Free will reigns supreme, or should, according to the go-getters and do-gooders out there. You reap what you sow, as they say. Make the right moves, and this will CAUSE good EFFECTS to come your way: in this lifetime, the next lifetime, or on judgment day. Or suffer the effects of using your free will the wrong way, which means doing dumb things or being too weak, lazy, or narcissistic to make the right choices, thus CAUSING your downfall!
I felt “watched” whenever the moonlight streamed into my bedroom window at night, paranoid that God used the moon as his lookout – probing me from there with his powerful flashlight. I didn’t want “him” to see what I daydreamed about in my bedroom. Not that it was anything bad or abnormal for a 12 year old, but I didn’t want my parents finding out and meddling in my private stuff.
Notes from David 