Reclaiming Reality

by Cheryl Kasdorf | Mindset | 0 comments

Trapped in a Hyper Real World

This is advice from Chase Hughes, a psyops expert. I ask you to think about it in regard to your health and the information that you encounter through mainstream media, social media, and the internet in general.

The hyper real world does not distinguish between a war where people are getting killed and a viral tick tock dance. Both of those exist as content and meaning becomes flattened.

An advertisement sells an idea or a lifestyle instead of a product. If you’ve seen a perfume commercial recently, nothing describes how it smells. It just evokes these notions of desire and power.

So what is real?

This is coming from a psyops expert! What are we? What are we identifying as real?

We’re looking at a time where we have deep fakes and AI generated Only Fans accounts and CGI news anchors. So technology exists to create completely fake realities that are hard to distinguish from real ones.

But what happens when we can’t trust our eyes anymore? We see a video of a politician saying something crazy, crazy. Maybe they didn’t say that it at all. If all information is equally suspect, the truth becomes irrelevant. This isn’t an accident.

So if a memory of an event is shaped entirely by news clips and social media, do we even need the event itself anymore? This might be the biggest one of all these things. I’ll say it again. If a memory of an event is created entirely by these news clips and social media that we’re looking at, do we need the event itself anymore?

And Jean Baudrillard saw this coming way before AI, and his idea was that the more advanced our ability to simulate reality, the less we will need reality itself. So what should seriously terrify you is that we’re already at a certain point where it doesn’t even matter if something is real. It only matters if it feels real.

I’m paraphrasing this quote from Baudrillard, because I don’t remember the exact one. In this world where instant reaction replaces deep thought, true real meaning can no longer stabilize anyone. Truthful, real meaning can no longer stabilize a person.

So everything I just said sounded really bleak and really storm cloudy. But I’m not trying to make anybody depressed. I’m trying to challenge you.

So if you know that we’re trapped in a hyper real world, the question is, What are we supposed to do about it?

Let me give you this recipe now

I’ve got no agenda except to help you. I’m not pitching you at the end of this or anything like that. I want to help you, and I want to get this to everybody.

Number one, stop consuming mindlessly. Make a decision now and simply stop. Just because something’s trending does not mean you need to care about it. Not every news alert deserves your attention.
Slowing down is a rebellion. Slowing down is a rebellion. Allow your ideas to mature before you start forming opinions. Once you form an opinion, remind yourself that no matter what, if I have an opinion, I have been misinformed to some degree.
Seek out and actively look for real experiences. Instead of taking pictures of the sunset, watch it. Instead of reacting to headlines, take time to research something deeply. If it’s important to you, pick up a pen or pencil. Instead of relying on a documentary to show you a country, maybe go there.
I guarantee there’s someone within driving distance of you who can teach you something you want to learn, not on Zoom. Even if it’s tomato gardening or how to harvest wild plants, or what edible plants are on your property, even the weeds in your garden, playing guitar, editing video, healthy eating, interior design, for learning that kind of stuff, there’s somebody within driving distance.
Question everything, especially what feels obvious. If something feels very obvious, question the shit out of it. If you saw the most recent Instagram post I did with everyone saying the exact same thing, and this happened from the left and right, ask: Who benefits from the narrative?
This is important. Maybe write this one down and keep it on your phone for a little while. Is this event happening or is it being produced? Am I engaging with something real or a layer of something simulated? Ask what an image is hiding, not just what it shows. What is this image or presentation hiding instead of showing? What is the video concealing or failing to show me?
And finally, maybe finally, bring back some kind of depth in your life. Slow living, slow living. Read books instead of just skimming a bunch of articles. Just get away from blue light as much as you can after 4pm and as often as you can. Spend time in the sun in the morning. Have real in-depth conversations instead of reacting to sound bites.
Embrace uncertainty instead of rushing to adopt the loudest opinion. Remember that no matter what your opinion is of something, you’re misinformed to a degree. The smartest thing that you can do for yourself is realize the more certain someone is in your life, the more you should be skeptical, including yourself. The more certain I am, the more skeptical I should be.
Jean Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation (1981), his warning was not just about information, it was about attention. We’re not just overloaded with content; we’re being actively trained to process that content shallowly. So here’s the one thing, if I could make you write it down, force you to write down: We have traded wisdom for engagement, we’ve replaced understanding with reaction, and we’re becoming flooded with stories and still starving for the truth.

So the question isn’t just, how do we handle this information? it is: how do we reclaim reality and depth in a world that is manufactured for this freaking deception that’s going on?

Maybe the most radical thing that you can do today is slow down and unplug.

WHO IS CHASE HUGHES?

“Success will come down to a person’s understanding of human behavior. EVERY TIME.”

Chase Hughes retired from the US military in 2019. After a 20-year career, Chase now teaches interrogation, sales, influence, and persuasion. He developed the NCI system for intelligence agencies, which is now the gold standard in Tradecraft.

Chase is the author of the #1 Bestselling book on behavior profiling, persuasion, and influence, The Ops Manual