Information, media, perception, manipulation and discernment

An apparently inconsequential article on Bloomberg.com led to this writing on the issues around perception and sharing information, along with the distortions that a manipulative intent bring into play.
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Perception is thought and can be manipulated, but the medium by which that is effected can and does turn against the manipulator.

Perceptions and thoughts can naturally share as expressing a sense of value or truth of an undistorted experience of life.

Whereas the payload of a manipulation is hollow once the halo wears off, and has to be repeated and maintained as a promise of value in order to 'survive', true communication expresses a tangibly shared sense of worth and connection that is already present but is illuminated through the sharing.

These issues are at the core of our own self or mind, which is conflicted in the attempt to have both, and so loses the capacity to tell the difference and suffers its own illusions.

The 'Information age' will be short, because its foundation is divorced from wisdom and discernment. However, it's failure will provide the conditions for their advent.

This isn't about Apple - (or any corporate entity) - and the media, (which is now fragmented and yet in mainstream sense is a corporate entity with its own agenda).

The issues of privacy and control, trust and integrity are implicit in all that we do - but in the rapidly changing world of today, they can no longer be templated and enforced in the way that worked before.

Learning to discern is not a 'better handle on the world' but an awareness and wisdom in which to transcend and harmonize - and even heal - the divisions of self. It isn't just for dealing with crisis or applications of rebranding our identity with 'out of the box' ideas - but a living framework that holds and extends a true sanity and abundance of being.

Big promises! - but really its simply that the foundation determines all that comes forth from it - and a false foundation cannot be gotten to work even if one spends the whole world in trying. Even our best thinking tends to substitute for an actual checking in. Running on a template identity is already a loss of the immediacy and vitality of living.

I don't write to set up a right and wrong mind and then position myself as its owner, so much as desire a world in which communication and manipulation are discernedly not the same.

Another word for manipulation - in the sense I am using it - is war. This is the personal sense of prevailing over or suffering attempts to be prevailed upon. Backstage, it is a collusion in which truth is ignored in order to play the part and take the ride.

Truth is not a weapon. When we attempt to use truth or manipulate, we are used by deception and suckered into dancing its tune.

"Truth is the first casualty of war" should read, "of the war-mind". Because it remains true regardless of our subscription. But once we take the bait we tend to run with it until we wake up some time later.

Thanks for hanging in with an opportunity to reflect if you feel moved to. Concepts are crude tools for sketching the qualities of life that can never fit in the database template of which concepts are. But that is also where our attention is accustomed to seeking information and answer, so I try to open a perspective that hasn't got a voice in the accepted thinking or culture or our times.