I am a filmmaker… it’s official.  What follows is a commercial I made for a Doritos competition with the help of my wife (Cinematographer) and the sister-in-law (the ho who gets slapped).

I submitted this video to win $20,000 and it was made at home on a Macbook Pro using: iMovie HD, Boinx TV and Garageband and I used a Kodak V1073 ($300 HD digital camera).   It was the most fun I have had in a while (being a star and all ).  When I submitted it to Doritos, they raised a question about the violence.  Personally, I think it’s funny but I am fan of comic violence.  What do you think… too violent?  The word, “pimpslap” didn’t really help I don’t think…

When I think of reality… I think about Dick.  That’s right.  Phillip K. Dick.  He was the master of frying our collective non-consciousness by attempting to unravel the fabric of reality.  So what exactly is the fabric of reality? Polyester?  I remember watching Dr Katz and seeing the visual cartoon representation of David Duchovny reflecting on how he couldn’t tell the difference between his dreams or reality and how he had often thought reality was a representation of his dreams rather than the other way round.  Or put in words that I can understand reality is a simulation of our dreams and our dreams are the reality.

I find this interesting because in a way David, and probably a dozen or so solipsist philosophers, have a point. We can create realities from somewhere (the guts) that harm us… terribly. We can believe we are worthless or not of any value which is dangerous.

Why a false concept is dangerous

A false concept as Roy Bhaskar and someone else once said, is one that does not appear to reach a sense of what we call reality.  I shall it the Matix (I have filed the patent).  If our concept of our personal Matrix is false it too can be dangerous because it can put us at odds with our fellow colleagues, friends, neighbours, reverends, cheese, and the most important thing… life itself.  That aside, I think we fail to represent reality to ourselves with the wrong meaning, one that poisons our minds, we harm ourselves.

Low self esteem as a concept is dangerous par example…

We can believe in things that are harmful.  If I believe that I am worthless then to me I have that ‘reality’ as a false assessment of myself.  If I think of myself as useless then that false concept harms me  It will create in your mind a hotbed of lies about what people think about you, what they say, how they act and what they do.  More to the point this false concept is DANGEROUS.  It makes you think about things that may or may not actually be what other people think… it could be that people think you to be a toss.  If that is so, and it may be, is it any business of yours?  Probably, but I digress.

What I am saying here is that there are some “things” we believe which harm us dreadfully.  When you agree with people who create false concepts for you to believe in,  you are saying, “yes I am useless”.  You believe it then VOILA it is so.   If you believe it, it becomes reality to you.  You then take false reality to work, to bed, to the shower, to the toilet, to the kitchen, to the car, to the shops, to the doctor, to the lawyer and so on.  I am haunted by plenty of false realities… yet I am hoping through the use of my mind, spirit, body and will I overcome these ‘demons’ and begin enjoying life.  No false concepts here… keep moving.

In concluding this post I want to encourage you not to believe your own press… if it’s bad.  Bhaskar, for all his vagueness and Theosophy has a point… we shouldn’t believe false concepts.  Things we know that don’t help or cause us to lack effectiveness.  I implore you, don’t let the evil people in this world of asshattery convince you of false concepts.  You have value… and not just transcendent value either (I am looking at you Roy), I speak of actual value.     Some concepts are false, bad, evil, wrong, sick and nasty.  Don’t allow your reality to be invaded by them.

So what are you doing for Easter?  I am staying at home… watching movies and feeding my friends cat.  I like cats.

Courtesy: http://www.austinabney.com

Whatever it is… have a safe easter and if you live in Queensland avoid the Bruce Highway.  The traffic lately has been horrendous.

All the best

Luke

courtesy http://missdebbie.net/

A while back I started reading self-help books.  Now, I need as much help as the next guy HOWEVER… I am starting to wonder why this phenomena has become so successful.  Yeah I know (potential flamers) that thousands of people realised this long before I did.   Anyway, as a preclusion to the following let me say that I think that you can get a lot of value from reading self-help books.  But, one thing has bothered me… so much so that I am about to say it in CAPS:

I DON’T HAVE A VISION!!!

Phew.  That’s better. Nine out of every ten self-helpers will promote the idea of ‘manifesting’ or ‘having a vision’.  What if there’s nothing there?  I stopped (as in put the book back on the shelf and closed it NEVER to open again) reading a book that began with … all you need is a vision.   I suspect that I have dreams, passions and desires.  I sure as hell do (read this for more information).  Nevertheless I have been thinking about this for a while… I have no great desire to do anything much.  Sure, if I could land an agent and sell my book to a willing publisher that would be good.  Getting promoted recently was also pretty sweet and having children is lots of fun.  Yet, inside the great vast of my spirit is the essence of nothing.

I am not alone.  I know of heaps of people that are clueless about the reason they exist.  From the time I was sixteen until now I have had desires, only to find out after a period of time that I no longer wanted to do that.  Perhaps I am a transcient?  Anyway enough glamourous navel gazing let’s think outside the box.

Visions for sale

Perhaps the core part of the problem lies in the belief that our lives are said to have a grand ‘awesome’ plan to them.  What if we decided to anti-vision?  OR Anti-plan?  Let’s imagine that there is already a plan and the plan is to find out how NOT to plan?  I feel at peace the most when I am relaxing and not worrying too much about what tomorrow will bring.  Maybe anti-planning is the answer?  Planning to not have a plan… living by … emergence?  As things cross our paths we can deal with them and begin to build a better existence for ourselves.  Why do we need a vision?  Yes, I know, I have said having a vision is important… but hey MAYBE I AM WRONG!  I think what we find in the majority of self-help literatures is the manifestation of false hope syndrome. We believe in hope and hope lies to us.

We believe in what they say so badly we think we need a grand narrative and meaning to our lives.  Go to a cemetary one day for fun.  Look at the tombstones.  These are ordinary people that died, perhaps they had a dream, perhaps they didn’t.  What’s important now is that they are food for worms.  They are no more.  However, this is not a depressing thing.  It means simply that life can be ordinary.

Life is ordinary… most of time

I can count the amount of times I have had ‘defining moments on one hand.  Marriage, when my kids were born, getting my first real job etc.  Yet, none of these things teaches me about me.  It teaches me, that life is like a punctuated equilibrium with long delays inbetween the spikes.  Why do we strive to work SO hard to have all this stuff that destroys us in the end.  Why?  Is being ordinary so damned terrible that we have to avoid it.  We can’t all be Richard Branson or GOD FORBID Bill Gates.  No, you can’t all be rich millionaries.  SORRY.  Through hard work, divine favour (perhaps), money and good connections you can be something you think you should be… although I am wondering about the hard work part.   Everything I have I worked for, yet in that, the best things I have at the moment were given to me.  Hmm… DOWN WITH WORK!

I guess the point of this post is to highlight the beauty of the ordinary.  There is real worth in being nobody in particular.   Ambition is a double edged sword that on one hand makes you want something but on the other takes you to extraordinary lengths to achieve it. Why do that?  Be normal, be beautiful!

Why should we sell our souls for a vision?

WHAT!  That’s right:

Synthesis as Conception Shifting at JORS

This is a culmination of my PHD.  Now I can’t access this for security reasons *cough* *cough* COPYRIGHT!

I had to tell someone and I only told two people so far.  This is an acheivement for me so I feel awesome about it.

*Courtesy the cheezburger people

It’s interesting to note what people would do for money.  Decieve others, rip people off, sell drugs, hire hookers, snort coke (ok too much underbelly) and the like.  The question is what would you do for money?  How far would you go for cash?

The reason I am asking is recently a thought had crossed my mind to do with some rather dubious online marketing tactics.  After a period of time I realised that if I was going to do the said thing in question… then I would be deliberately have to deceive someone in order to make some money.  The bible has a bit to say about that so do many other books.  But, in my mind the question that I thought to ask was: what would YOU do for money?  I have lied for money before and felt like crap afterwards!  I have done all kinds of things for it.   YES.  Probably the worst thing I did was steal from my parents when I was a kid (hey they had it coming!). What about you?  What would you do for money?