Veil of Ignorance

Mar 202514 min read

In a time of profound noise and change, yet an abundance of information, the veil of ignorance is markedly thin. This meta-analysis attempts to succinctly reflect on reality, and to provide greater awareness in our time.

Notice

In our era of internet and technology, wars are not waged with bombs and bullets, but with information, subversion, and by shaping discourse.¹ Many struggle to observe this covert war for the mind, largely because of its very nature.²

Divide and Conquer

When information bubbles divide society across incompatible false realities or worldviews, then nuance and diplomacy become rare skills. One may give up on empathetically persuading others out of their false reality, failing to recognize that their own reality is equally distorted.³ Echo chambers deceive many into attributing more credibility to their own distorted worldview, neglecting to reflect on what shapes it.

In our era of nation-states, division weakens nations whole. A divided group is easier to control or defeat than a united one. This age-old tactic remains relevant in both politics and warfare.⁴ When an in-group is fractured, then an out-group often benefits.⁵

Many do recognize that our time is unusual, yet struggle to resist the void of polarizing debate regardless. This will inevitably come at the cost of society itself.⁶ While complex, those open to scrutinizing their own worldview and reality do have the opportunity to navigate this time more aware and less fearful.

Veil

With the rise of the internet and social media, dissemination of information significantly shifted from traditional education and broadcast news to a small number of dominant businesses. As such, people rely less on an authority to curate their worldview, and more on commercial algorithms to do so. In fact, many express skepticism toward official narratives, fueled by a perception of repeated misrepresentation of truth.⁷

Whether its revelations are organic or not, the internet has made information and diverse interpretations more accessible than ever. From whistleblower revelations about widespread unconstitutional surveillance, to the MeToo movement allegedly exposing elaborate institutionalized blackmail operations to control the influential.⁸⁹

However, more insight can often be inferred not from discourse and information directly, but their relations, presentation, and suppression.

Choice

With information more accessible than ever, practically anyone can choose to either conform to the status quo in ignorance, or critically examine reality to find deeper truths. Given everyone is impacted by objective reality, the choice is not whether to be impacted by it, but to know it.¹⁰

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a well-known depiction of enlightenment, where prisoners chained in a cave mistake shadows for reality, only for one of them to eventually discover that a world outside the cave is in fact true reality.¹¹ When the enlightened prisoner returns to the cave to share his newfound knowledge, he is met with resistance and hostility, as the other prisoners prefer the familiar shadows over the uncomfortable truth.¹²

False realities persist through such conformity and antagonization of critical thought.¹³¹⁴ Crucially, a reality must be observed, and cannot be truly understood from explanation alone.¹⁵ Various films, like The Matrix, may be considered contemporary adaptations of Plato's analogy.

Reflect

Most people live in frameworks built by others, such as society, culture, or family, and mistake these scaffolds for reality itself. Reality is layered, and unearthing ever deeper layers of reality requires honesty, responsibility, and a willingness to repeatedly challenge one's own perception and identity.¹⁶¹⁷

Mind the Gap

Democratically elected leadership is often perceived as a well-intentioned representative of its population. However, no form of government is immune to corruption, blackmail, subversion, or other perverse influences. In practice, the authority of democratically elected officials is often limited. Instead, a largely unelected bureaucracy shapes policy, balancing various interests, sometimes at the expense of society itself.¹⁸

In our globalized world, such unelected bureaucracies present as a globally interwoven construct of incentives and leverage over regions or organizations by more influential ones. Its inherent instability, and the allure of influence, inevitably attracts malevolence, which in turn often contributes to the eventual decline of civilizations.

Today, the West's working class is trapped in a form of debt slavery,¹⁹ reliant on fiat currency with no intrinsic value,²⁰ its very banking system at the root of inflation.²¹²²²³ As a result, true wealth flows upwards, and inevitably produces a powerful ruling class and a powerless populace that possesses just enough rights and distractions to not revolt, until that becomes impossible anyway.²⁴²⁵ This effectively captures the majority of the populace in an elaborate simulation of an organic existence, with a set outcome.²⁶

This unelected bureaucracy and its tendency toward malevolence, often referred to as the "deep state", is frequently dismissed as a "conspiracy theory".²⁷

Manipulation

Recognizing that some stand to benefit from division, and that authority attracts malevolence, can make conformity unappealing. It highlights how the uninformed and unnuanced are prone to manipulation, at the expense of themselves and society.²⁸

For example, in the 1960s, the CIA issued Dispatch 1035-960, aiming to discredit critics of the official JFK assassination narrative by branding them as irrational. This campaign effectively transformed the term "conspiracy theory" from a neutral descriptor into a dismissing insult that gained traction as such ever since.²⁹

As a result, the CIA shaped public discourse and maintained its narrative. Kennedy repeatedly spoke out against lucrative forever wars, secrecy, and other perverse dynamics, providing ample motive for his assassination.³⁰³¹³²

There is every incentive to shape the population's worldview, for example, to maintain social cohesion or promote opaque interests. However, irrespective of the true motives, blind trust in authority never yields objective truth.³³

Similarly, the BBC documentary The Century of the Self explores how the ideas of psychoanalysis, particularly those of Sigmund Freud, have been used by those in power to shape modern society and individual identity from the 20th century. Notably, it critiques the "American Dream", created to promote individualism and consumerism, for its emptiness of pursuing material success as a path to happiness.

The belief that manipulation of one's mind does not occur, or that one is immune to it, fails to recognize one's humanity.

Vulnerabilities

Humans evolved to have a uniquely advanced mind and social abilities. However, while our traits made our species so succesful, they also present vulnerabilities. Humility, and awareness of learnt and innate vulnerabilities, reduce their implications.³⁴³⁵³⁶

For example, many people are familiar with concepts like "peer pressure" and "groupthink", yet in practice may prioritize social acceptance over objective truth.³⁷ Similarly, many may be familiar with terms like "propaganda" and "censorship", yet fail to recognize that they are subjected to it, assuming such phenomena are of the past, occur only elsewhere, or that they would recognize it.³⁸

Objective reality is never found by relinquishing one's responsibility to define it to an algorithm or authority.

For example, blind trust in history books is irrational, as it is not uncommon for history to be revised in light of new information.³⁹ Additionally, history is often written by the victors and a representation of a consensus interpretation rather than objective truth.⁴⁰⁴¹⁴²

Blind trust in science is unscientific, as it undermines the critical thinking and skepticism that are essential to the scientific method. Additionally, the financing, interpretation, and publication of research are subject to various influences. For example, corporations may cherry-pick studies to sell their products, or researchers may struggle to secure funding, for healthy people do not generate profit.⁴³⁴⁴⁴⁵

Blind trust in broadcast or curated media often involves some form of authority bias or confirmation bias.⁴⁶ While perhaps striving for integrity, commercial journalism is primarily incentivized to profit, state-funded journalism tends to align with authority, and editors have personal biases. At the same time, social media typically operate for profit, not for informed citizens, yet opaque algorithms shape the worldviews of the masses, impacting society as a whole.

Information is frequently distorted or fabricated, before selectively accumulating in information bubbles. The very term "misinformation" is often used to dismiss alternative viewpoints as gullible or shortsighted, enabling anyone to maintain their distorted perception of reality, perpetuating division and manipulation.⁴⁷

Similarly, the term "critical thinking" has become somewhat of a misnomer, with many believing they are engaging in critical thought when, in fact, they are merely picking sides based on distorted perceptions. As such, critical thought can be misled into accepting a false or controlled narrative as genuinely critical.⁴⁸

Radical Nuance

Instead, radical nuance is an antidote to blind conformity and the manipulation of beliefs for the agendas of others. It is crucial to engage with topics critically and with humility, while simultaneously resisting alignment with any particular group or narrative, regardless of how controversial or counter-intuitive this may feel.⁴⁹

Controversy promotes conformity, for it is harder to resist the majority view.⁵⁰⁵¹ However, by stepping back to understand the implications of the propagation of certain information and genuinely questioning assumptions, one can seek truth over tribe, leading to deeper understanding and greater agency.⁵²⁵³

Critical thought is an essential aspect of our humanity, rooted in our subjective experience. However, our humanity is to be cultivated, and never taken for granted. In an age where machines become more like humans, and humans become more like machines, it is one's humanity that differentiates and gives meaning to life.⁵⁴

Morality

At first glance, the most prominent division lies in politics, where those seeking to divide benefit greatly from factions infighting underneath their flag.⁵⁵ Good leaders recognize that unity is essential. A leader's inability to unite, or active efforts to divide, reveal either incompetence or malice, respectively. This exposes a deeper duality. No matter how a group is partitioned, there are people with either good or bad intentions.

Origins

Most people strive to lead fulfilling lives, making the most of the cards they are dealt. Throughout history, morality and ethics have been fundamental to the human experience, serving universal fullfilment and well-being.

Ancient scriptures often provide comprehensive guidelines for moral conduct, and have evidently stood the test of time. These promote values such as love, compassion, forgiveness, humility, and remorse, while recognizing actions like greed, envy, and pride as sinful or wrong. To this day, these teachings are revered across religious and spiritual traditions. Even in contemporary secular societies the most irreligious people still recognize, consciously or not, such guidelines for a morally just life.

Divergence

Understanding that everyone is subject to the duality of good and evil also highlights the inherent risk of being led astray, both individually and collectively. Blindly rejecting traditions as outdated can allow the very problems they were designed to address to reemerge.⁵⁶ While ancient scriptures warrant scrutiny, they often bundle millennia of wisdom, offering prompts for thought that are foolish to dismiss without consideration.

Western society may have diverged from ancient moral principles in various ways. For example, the West has shifted to secularism and materialism, prioritizing politics, consumerism, personal success, wealth, and power over less superficial fulfillment, often favoring profits over health and well-being.⁵⁷ This can be interpreted as the West turning away from deeper meaning, wisdom, and understanding.⁵⁸

The contemporary financial system often involves charging interest, which creates barriers and problems, and was otherwise considered exploitative.⁵⁹

The elevation of celebrities, tech moguls, and political leaders to a status akin to idol worship is another example. This can shift focus to human authority and influence instead of recognizing that we are all united in our mortality.⁶⁰

The West has seen a rise in single-parent households, divorce rates, and alternative family structures, which may be considered at odds with the foundational social structure of the family unit, marriage, and parenting.⁶¹

The dismissal of biological gender reflects a departure from the biblical view of the complementary bond between man and woman, which it presents as part of the divine design for creation.⁶² In this context, rejecting or politicizing the most fundamental truth about our nature, who we are, can promote confusion and division, making society inherently less harmonious and tolerant of diversity.

The legalization and normalization of abortion and euthanasia is a departure from biblical principles regarding the sanctity of life, and can be considered a form of human sacrifice, particularly abortion undermining life at its most innocent stage.⁶³

Values once deemed wrong or evil can become normalized in society, perhaps framed as progress, but instead gradually eroding its moral foundations.⁶⁴⁶⁵

Arbiter

Thanks in part to pop culture, figures like Satan are often misunderstood to embody evil, waging war on good. Instead, it is free will itself that tests one's moral rigidity. By way of free will, the choice of perfection is embedded into the human condition, inevitably demonstrating its imperfection. Consequently, our ancestors observed mankind's inherent dynamics, and gave it names.

For example, Cronus and Saturn in Greek and Roman mythology represent civilization's natural cycle of growth, harvest, death, and renewal. Similarly elaborate depictions appear throughout history, from the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians to more contemporary adaptations like the Grim Reaper. The more nuanced interpretations illustrate how and why civilizations come and go, recognizing humanity's inherent dynamics and its eventual tendency toward imperfection.

Most people favor simple moral guidelines, accepting broader inevitabilities to be presented as prophecy. However, striving to do good without understanding society's underlying dynamics creates a power imbalance where those who do understand them can manipulate society, offering it the comfort of ignorance, while taking control of its inherent dynamics.⁶⁶ Inevitably, people exploit society's inherent dynamics to divide, deceive into sin, or promote war, in order to control and profit. This effects society's very decay, and perpetuates a cycle of destruction and renewal.

Upon the fall of a civilization, the arbiter is able to harvest its fruits, such as knowledge and technologies, strengthening the arbiter's relative power each cycle until it inevitably obtains control over the fate of humanity itself.

In our era of globalization, and with the advent of artificial intelligence and robotics, humanity is undergoing a monumental transformation. When these developments render human labor obsolete, then malevolent power structures may also deem human rights obsolete. Irrespective of who best capitalizes on these novel technologies, our time will prove a pivotal transition period between two vastly different eras.⁶⁷⁶⁸

Integrate

Many people rush through their day, preoccupied with deadlines, status, possessions, sports, and media, blindly accepting the constructs wherein they live. Recognizing the many influences that distort or limit perception and understanding can be enlightening. It highlights that much of what we believe to be reality may be a construct, sufficiently rigid and fulfilling for most, but also gatekeeping deeper truths for profit and control.⁶⁹

While intellectually enlightening, perceiving deeper realities beyond this mind prison is no longer an intellectual pursuit, but a spiritual one, transcending not just the prison for the mind, but the prison of the mind and its illusion of the Self.⁷⁰⁷¹⁷²

East and West

While secularism and capitalism in Western doctrine produced comfort and abundance, they also normalized nihilism, superficiality, and hubris, often embracing the notion that we are a mere cosmic accident, and that Western doctrine is the most advanced.

Despite its many technologies, mainstream Western doctrine still cannot explain many phenomena in the way other traditions can. Western hubris rendered alternative perspectives a diminishing but common blind spot.

Eastern traditions have persisted for millennia, are practiced by many, and can be more readily studied than ever.⁷³⁷⁴ In exploring the nature of existence, one may argue that Western doctrine perfected our understanding of energy, while Eastern doctrine perfected our understanding of time.⁷⁵ The reintegration of these doctrines may yield the most comprehensive understanding of ourselves.⁷⁶

Esotericism

While religion typically externalizes a higher power as provided by an authority, spirituality instead recognizes it more explicitly as part of the Self or universal consciousness.⁷⁷⁷⁸ Despite this, both present many parallels, though spirituality in Western doctrine is often esoteric and quite ingeneously encoded into its scriptures through symbolism and metaphors.⁷⁹⁸⁰ As such, secularism and spirituality can perhaps be viewed as two ends of a spectrum, with religion a gateway to the latter for those in the know.

Mind over Matter

The brain does not perceive the world directly. Instead, it interprets sensory input and hallucinates reality in the mind. Material perception is therefore limited by the senses, typically filtering to a fraction of the available signal.⁸¹⁸² For example, many animals and technologies can detect sound or light beyond human perception.⁸³

More fundamentally, normal matter makes up less than five percent of the cosmos, the rest is invisible, mostly dark energy.⁸⁴ Therefore, the visible cosmos is only a fraction of what we know exists.

While the material world is observed through the senses, phenomena such as emotions, the mind, the soul, and consciousness, cannot be fully explained through material processes. Instead, these represent a deeper, more complex interplay between the material and non-material aspects of existence.⁸⁵ The inconclusive explanation of consciousness in Western medicine and science, which often accepts it as a mere manifestation of neurological processes, can be quite unsatisfying.⁸⁶

Many forms of awareness exist. For example, wakefulness and sleep are the most common states of consciousness, where psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung viewed dreams as a bridge to the unconscious, unveiling insight into inner conflicts and psychological processes.⁸⁷

Near-death experiences, which often include out-of-body experiences, are increasingly acknowledged for their consistencies across reports, some of which verifiable, even though verifiable observations made by subjects occurred during clinical death.⁸⁸⁸⁹

Similarly, meditation and psychedelics are known to alter consciousness or foster heightened awareness of one's true Self and the interconnectedness of existence, often including dissolution of ego.⁹⁰⁹¹

Enlightenment

Meditation and psychedelics have been used in religious and spiritual traditions around the world for millennia, only relatively recently regaining traction in the West.⁹² Psychedelics hasten the effects that can be achieved through meditation alone, with both altering consciousness, and known to occasionally induce psychosis.⁹³⁹⁴

Pathology

Experiences that contemporary Western medicine classifies as pathological may not be interpreted as such by esoteric or Eastern traditions. While Western doctrine favors clinical definitions and treatments, other traditions may instead consider them altered or expanded states of consciousness and an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Many traditions attribute great significance to visions and dreams.⁹⁵ Phenomena like hallucinations, psychosis, sleep paralysis, and schizophrenia, which present parallels with spiritual experiences, may be misunderstood merely because the guiding belief system is not present.⁹⁶⁹⁷⁹⁸

Purification

For millennia, ancient beliefs posited the material realm as an iterative platform for spiritual emancipation, with the journey of the soul a process of purification and enlightenment.⁹⁹ The ultimate end-state is a state in which the mind, enlightened as to the illusory nature of the Self, transcends all suffering and attains peace.¹⁰⁰¹⁰¹

The deepest truth is, the Self one spends their entire life cultivating and protecting is not only an illusion, but the very container keeping one from true freedom. The concept of "me", one's identity, beliefs, desires, ambitions, is a limiting construct of the mind, sustained through habit, memory, and fear. All suffering arises exclusively from protecting this imaginary Self. Ultimate liberation comes the moment one recognizes that beyond the illusory nature of existence and the Self one is the boundless awareness that has always been here.

Enlightenment, then, is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier, but is the crumbling away of everything one is not.¹⁰²¹⁰³

Singularity

The illusion of the Self births free will, the defining characteristic of the human condition.¹⁰⁴ The resulting optionality of perfection inevitably proves mankind's imperfection, for it inherently desires to demonstrate its free will, out of defiance, or simply ignorance.

Recognizing that the Self is to the universe like a wave is to the ocean, places worldly affairs in perspective, and allows one to reflect on perhaps the harshest truth about the human condition.

Mankind's technologies inevitably become too potent, its systems woefully inadequate to sustain it.¹⁰⁵ Its culmination is a clash between spirit and technology, connection and disconnection from the divine, or good and evil, which is itself undoubtedly the most fundamental dynamic embedded in our collective psyche.^106107108

As such, our very existence can be considered a test, for us to show our true character, individually and collectively.¹⁰⁹ However, the real test is perhaps whether one can love the Self, and the Whole, irrespective of its inevitable imperfection.¹¹⁰

Closing Remarks

While ultimate truth consists of many layers, it presents only two key revelations. By way of radical nuance, intellectual enlightenment liberates from the mind prison of societal constructs, and by way of inner inquiry, spiritual enlightenment liberates from the prison of the mind and its illusion of the Self.

Whether you choose this life to follow the river or to become the river, do not fear its rapids, for in the turbulence lies the opportunity to discover the depths of your being. Recognize your inherent agency to effect self-mastery and self-realization, not despite but because of your circumstances. Your consciousness writes the program of a beautifully complex existence.

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