Living In Abstraction: Escaping The Shadows Of Truth

My grandfather on my mother’s side died when I was only six. One of the few things I still remember about him was the large scar that stretched down his leg. I can still clearly see him lifting his pant leg to show me. It was deeper than any scar I had ever seen, like a narrow canyon on his pale, hairless calf. It was an old scar. He acquired it as a souvenir from a trip to Tunisia in April of 1943 when shrapnel from a German bomb ripped through his flesh as he fought in World War 2 at the Battle of Fondouk Pass.

I remember thinking about it as a kid, trying to internalize what it meant to have a bomb blow a hole in your leg. What it meant to fight in a war. I played the scenario in my head like a scene from a movie. I envisioned him shooting at the enemy in the distance. I heard the loud boom. I saw him lying on the ground in pain as his fellow soldiers tended to his wound and dragged him to safety. It felt like a real memory to me, almost as if I fought alongside him. I imagined all this as a young child would, without any experience of war outside of television. Nonetheless, it became my own memory; a memory of my grandfather fighting in a war.

Of course, my understanding of the war was no more than a great abstraction of reality. What happened to my grandfather 45 years earlier on the warfields of Africa and what happened in my mind did not relate to one another. The true experiences of bombs and war were incomprehensible to a child sitting on a living room couch in a condo in America. I couldn’t fathom the ringing in my grandfather’s ears from the deafening blast or the searing pain of hot metal fragments shredding through his flesh and bone. I couldn’t imagine the terror of looking down and seeing the blood pouring out or the smell of sulfur or the screams of death as his friends fell all around him. I couldn’t feel the firmness of the ground as he lay there wondering if he might die with them. Even as an adult, all I can do is create a fictitious version of it, albeit a more detailed one. Yet, there was a real version experienced directly by my grandfather and stored in his mind as a life experience that shaped who he was. An event that he could transmit to others, like he did to me. A memory that informed his views on war and life. Still, the two accounts of the event, mine and his, co-existed in the universe side-by-side, one real and one imagined.

The odd thing about our understanding of the world is that we overlook the fact that so much of what we believe comes from abstractions such as this, and not from direct experience. What I now understand from recalling my grandfather’s scar is true of so many of our perceptions. Often our most fundamental beliefs, desires, aspirations, fears don’t, in fact, come from lived experiences; they come from abstracted versions of reality acquired from others. Many of them come from our education systems, family members, and social circles, but by far the greatest producer of abstractions is media. 

In order to understand the problems with media we must first understand its motives. Most media serves one of two purposes: profit by way of corporate revenues or propaganda designed to enhance institutional control. For-profit media monetizes our attention one pageview at a time, increasing revenues with every click, stream, and listen. Because of this, media organizations aim to increase our consumption. They shorten and sensationalize content, focusing on quantity over quality, triggering dopamine output and rewarding our brain's circuitry with each engagement. Frequency outcompetes depth. Whatever gets the most views makes the most money. State-influenced media aims to accumulate or maintain control or dominance by shaping the views of the public. State-media creates content to influence voting (in democratic countries) or suppress/incite dissent.

In this way, media perversely powers our perceptions of reality. The media we consume becomes ever-more abstracted from reality and creates perceptions and beliefs that lack nuance, complexity, and truth. As media becomes shorter and more abstract, we can consume more of it, only reinforcing our already abstract impressions of reality. Over time, we begin to select and filter the media we consume based on our existing beliefs (which are already abstractions), swiftly discarding the bits that don’t support our existing views in order to build and maintain internal harmony and eliminate cognitive dissonance. As we do this, media platforms track our engagement and soon begin to do most of the filtering for us, resulting in an echo chamber of positive reinforcement of our current psyche and belief systems and eliminating the need for critical thought or self reflection. 

This illusory state of consciousness confounds even the most sophisticated psyches. We trap ourselves in a sense of mind that feels real and seems to inform us about the way things are, yet consists of layers of abstraction with little input from lived experiences or in-depth analysis. Our ego becomes a grand mirage empowered by delusions of understanding. This facade also tricks us into believing that we understand the realities of others. It gives us unwarranted confidence to make decisions for people we cannot truly relate to through lived experience. It creates entitlement to opine on matters where our voice contributes nothing of truth or comprehension.

Our abstractions are particularly harmful when they distance us from the suffering of others. And nowhere is suffering greater than in times of war and persecution, which, ironically, is when media most aggressively sucks up our attention. We consume carnage at the most abstract level. We casually drink the headlines, images, and sound bytes of destruction. We discuss and debate each side’s position from a comfortable distance and then withdraw into our daily leisures on a whim while the suffering endures. We know nothing of the pain, terror, and despair experienced by those stuck in the conflict. We can’t account for the consequences and the sad truth that lives lost can never be replaced. Yet we relish in it all. We inhale the fumes of abstraction and intoxicate ourselves with our opinions. We debate and discuss as if we understand what it means to live through such atrocities. 

Never has this been more clear than with the the media coverage and consumption relating to the ongoing war in Israel. How can we comprehend the idea of a terrorist burning a baby alive in front of its mother? Or the daily anguish of a young child being held captive in a tunnel beneath a warzone? Or an airstrike obliterating an entire family as their building collapses on them? Every tragedy becomes a talking point in an information war in the minds of people who will never truly understand what it means to experience these horrors. We gorge ourselves on the flow of abstractions meant to pull our minds in this or that direction. As the mania consumes us, it drags us away from our own realities: our families, our friends, ourselves, and the moments that make life into anything of value - moments that those stuck in war would give anything to experience.

For those of us compelled to engage in a topic as grim as war, we must first acknowledge that every element of our understanding is based on layers upon layers of abstractions: the historical accounts, the moral justifications, the lives of the people impacted, and the life experiences of both sides. We must understand that as passionately as we feel about it, we know nothing about what it is like for those involved. We must remember that without direct experience and thorough investigation, our beliefs are incomplete. We must be willing to let go of biases. If we cannot commit to this task, we must be willing to walk away from the issue. But we cannot fool ourselves into believing that our abstracted views represent the complete truth.

Once we understand our condition, we can combat it across the entire landscape of thought. We can attempt to free ourselves from a life of abstractions. We can identify how they shape our broader worldview, from politics to religious and everything in between. We must look inward and ask ourselves what comes from direct experience. What has been created for us by others? We must examine our consciousness and ask what is in fact real and what is imagined. We must critique our sources of truth - especially our media platforms - and understand their incentives. We must become more than pageviews and tweets and likes and comments. We must self reflect and think critically and be willing to change our views often as we expand our understanding. Most importantly, we must seek to fill our lives with direct experiences. We must detach ourselves from the repetitive flow of media that captures our minds. We must free ourselves from abstractions and live authentically and with purpose. When we do this, we will see the world for what it truly is and receive what it truly has to offer.