Human beings are drawn into an ocean of delusion between Scylla and Charybdis. They prefer to believe that they are living reality, should this lead to a good life, that would be perfect. Unfortunately, for most people, this only propels a couple of mental exhaustion and anxiety for various upcoming reasons.
Having a couple of doctrines to impugn, it is indispensable to gossip about the word ‘delusion’. The word comes from the Latin ‘delusio’, denoting a false belief or opinion about oneself or his/her situation (Oxford Dictionary). Another crucial synonym for the word is ‘chimaera’; it was derived from the name of Chimera, a female monster with a goat’s body, serpent’s tail, and a fire-breathing mouth in a lion’s head. This monster seems unrealistic, considering its strange combined extremities, which is why its name was endowed with the denotation of delusion as something unfeasible.
Delusion Equals Subjectivity
Philosophers have had their take on defining ‘delusio’ or ‘delusion’. In his book Critique of Pure Reason, Kant (1781) indicates that one’s subjectivity is the transcendental delusion while objectivity can be the key out. This subjectivity may be known as a distortion in perception and is argued by psychologist Karl Jaspers (1913) to be demolished through self-reflection.
Similarly, other philosophers relate delusion to one’s entourage, which will play a salient role in this essay. Nietzsche (1886), in his renowned work Beyond Good and Evil, envisions societal values as a delusion. He considers those as a cover to the harsh reality, the same way as morals. To get closer to the herein hypothesis, we ought to synthesise the perception of Schopenhauer (1818) in the framework of the world as a will and representation. The German philosopher reckons that life is an atrocious cycle of desire whose atrocities are to be overcome by living the delusion.
Living the Delusion
Most philosophy readers must have been through philosophers urging folk to quit delusions. Have you ever wondered what do they mean by the delusion? Have they concisely explained the principles or distinctive features of a delusion? – In this perspective, Descartes thought he could leave the delusion of senses by emptying himself of any prior knowledge and start analysing everything anew. Thereafter, he jumped to his principle, ‘I think, therefore I am’, which portrayed the conclusion about him being sure only of his own existence proven by his process of thinking.
Nonetheless, there is no tangible evidence that Descartes could empty himself of all his delusional thoughts. Perhaps he might have quit what I may call ‘micro delusion,’ but it is certainly still within the chains of the macro delusion (to be explained in the following paragraphs). It is significant to observe that our brains, as formulated by John Lock, are blank pages in what he calls ‘Taboola rasa.’ Ergo, our behaviour is constructed by the accumulation of experience, which is perceived through processing elements based on genes and inherited natural features.
Later, when one grows, s/he starts acting in accordance with the aforesaid elements, and accordingly, his/her view is shaped by them. It is nigh impossible to think of objectivity when one’s internal operative system is functioning through subjective conditions. How can we think that the subjective may ever produce the objective? – Should one be forced to wear coloured glasses, how can s/he ever see other colours?
Micro-delusion Vs. Macro-delusion
In this context, it is crucial to elucidate two terms, ‘micro-delusion’ and ‘macro-delusion’. The former is based on false beliefs that may be known to be wrong or fallacious through the mental experience. They may also be uncovered through the limits of natural observance or by comparing them to other beliefs and digging into their origins. On the other hand, the macro-delusion is the natural boundaries that cannot be escaped. They are the essence, the ethos, and the Alpha and Omega for the functioning of human beings.
The micro-delusion is the subjective of the subjective. Let us speculate on a fictional story to further comprehend this. One person, ‘A’, was anaesthetised, taken from his house and put into a studio that resembles in every way a plane’s inside. At first, it was all dark, ‘A’ woke up, and nothing felt changed for him. He thought only that he was still on his bed, yet when putting his hand left to turn on the light, there was no light switch there. In this phase, no sooner had he quit a micro-delusion (thinking he was at home) than he moved to an upper one when the made-up planes’ lights switched on.
He presumed he was on a plane somehow, and when he opened the windowpanes, he had only seen darkness. Thereafter, he tried to open the door and see what was outside, to his surprise, the door was not open no matter how hard he hit it. Here, he is shifting to a macro-delusion, but why? At first, I said that he was in a micro-delusion because he could, after moments, realise that he was not home – which was the micro-delusion in this anecdotic evidence.
Nevertheless, when he saw the plane’s inside, he would move into a macro-delusion. This is because he had no choice but to believe that he was on a broken, tightly closed plane. His attempts to break outside were all curbed, which serve to reflect the natural limitations that will not let us leave the macro-delusion. No matter how much we try, we will always be leaving a micro-delusion to an upper one as our environment is all we have to think of and in accordance with. We may reason, invent and be creative to our maximum, but in the end, this is all a product of the macro-delusion. In other words, it is all a regeneration of what is already in nature and being so, we cannot gossip about nature outside its limits – should there be ones.
Conclusion
Human beings should live the delusion. They must accept the fact that they are deemed to dwell in a delusion that cannot be escaped. Their environment is the integral glasses through which they perceive reality. People may leave numerous layers of delusions, such as myths and lies. Yet, their brains are made of a paradigm generated by the macro-delusion, which is a result of what Men were constructed from. The Tabula Rasa principle determines that one’s brain is an empty page filled by his/her environment, forming how one will reason and make sense of things.
References
Jaspers, K. (1913). General psychopathology. Springer.
Kant, I. (1781). Critique of pure reason (N. Kemp Smith, Trans.). Macmillan. (Original work published 1781)
Nietzsche, F. (1886). Beyond good and evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the future (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Vintage. (Original work published 1886)
Oxford University Press. (n.d.). Oxford dictionary. https://www.oxfordreference.com
Schopenhauer, A. (1818). The world as will and representation (E. F. J. Payne, Trans.). Dover Publications. (Original work published 1818)