We cannot have a healthier environment until we understand our current forces of dissociation, and learn to resist them.  Yet we cannot restore our contact with reality until we are confident what reality is.  Ultimately, therefore, the most important action we can take is to become more self-reliant in the ways we apprehend the world around us.

This essay will assist in that process of discovery.

A word of caution: it will not do so by presenting a startling wealth of new data. Our lack today is not of information, but of a clear and cogent sense of what all the data adds up to. To gain such a sense requires mainly that we take a fresher and deeper look at things that we have come to take for granted.  

This will involve regaining the art of actively discerning what’s beneath the surface—a skill that may run counter to the numbed defensiveness we have learned through years of being smacked in the face with wave upon wave of the latest “amazing factoids.”  

To begin to discover the world on our own after being encouraged to just passively ingest what is presented to us is a bit like changing hobbies from watching televised professional wrestling to learning to fish.

Unlike the WWF, with its constant flow of attention-grabbing and easy-to-digest images propagating a kind of restless petulance on our part, a lake or stream does not exist primarily to entertain us. It demands both more action and more patience on our part. We must first take the active steps of going to the water and setting up our gear in just the right way; then we must be quiet while skillfully reading the subtleties and nuances of the surface.

Ultimately, though, when sunlight sparkles off a spray of water as we pull in our wriggling silvery prize, there is an excitement, a satisfaction, and a sense of connectedness that can simply never be matched by any experience had sitting on the couch watching scripted body slams and put-on rants.

Like a trophy fish, a useful insight requires skill to extract from its context. It takes focused attention and observation, as well as a bit of patience. And it can help to have the right equipment—such as an ability to discern the humor or irony in our own desires and motivations, which are the ultimate source of even the mightiest perception managers’ powers.