We only see what we want?

We live in a time where people’s behavior is being fully oriented towards what is visual, where values, to say something or worthwhile, should be aesthetics and only these. We are trained and domesticated to seek everything that is beautiful and visually impacting.

Nowadays our culture depends on writers, directors, actors and other artists to dream. We can see, for example, that films convey, on a symbolic level, the anguish, anxieties, and hopes of our own times. They are a symbolic trail safe to understand, in depth, the time they happen. And more than a dream, it is, therefore, a collective nightmare [1].

Or, better saying, it’s worth just what it enchants, leaves ecstatic or holds and seizes my gaze. But what’s attracted to people is just smoke. Something that fades with the dawn of day, like a fog; because real life is much deeper than we have accustomed to believe or do. So I suspect that they are suppressing our reality with full-time art and entertainment, with deviant activism, with the altruism of occasion to give visibility only to the ego. And every day a little more. And for not realizing that, We’re indoctrinated from an early age, that we arrive at maturity without conditions to recognize real values and manifest a safe and well-formed character. So, we’re unable for real life. Paraphrasing Jonas Madureira [2], we’re trapped comfortable in our Platonic cave, looking at the shadows through our touch screens, unable to give up our comfort. We stayed in the background of our caves admiring the beauty of the shadows that reach us through the internet. Where we experience an extreme subjective generation, without much practice and real interest in it. I think that current reversal of values, in which the opinion is decidedly more important than “being”, in all possible senses, ends up creating us the strange mania of testifying and reporting what surrounds us. And it turned into a deplorable difficulty when it is necessary to act [3].

Also, our society believes that only by linking intuition and reason we build a free path to a productive life, centered in the form and based on individual experiences. Where it is important to assume the subjectivity itself and not yield to the standards imposed by the Archaic society. This is a clear incentive for people to resist the aesthetic patterns and previous moral behavior, given by society to just live in their own way.

In the long term this subjectivism individualistic relativized, this moral liquidity, and intellectual autophagy will produced social borders so blurry that a worse chaos than was at Sodom and Gomorrah will be a saddest and everyday reality of this world.

But if the virtues and moral values are much more necessary than adornments and compelling things, more than the pleasure of fulfilling my desires solely, why not follow guided by these real moral values?

Why the aesthetic value, which has permeated almost all modern thinking, has made us dependent on the freedom provoked by the sensations and emotions aroused in us; This postmodern society has no other purpose but to make life easier for poets, artists, intellectuals and revolutionaries, while they make it harder for others. And because we are different individuals in our desires and wishes, we observe everything under different perspectives, realizing different values in everything as well. Soon, in this veiled dispute, the victory will fit those who possess the greatest skill and political power, to the most appropriate or the smartest; All engulfed by pragmatic interpretation, individualistic post-modernist. In the words of Roger Lundin [4]:

“Instead of appealing to authority beyond us, we can only seek to put our rhetorical skills in order to promote the political battles necessary to protect our own preferences and prohibit expressions of preferences that threaten or disturb us.”

This because postmodern society is a society of pragmatists, where the truth will always be what or changed, to promote personal and corporatist preferences, private pleasures so only. So where a religious image can awaken a feeling of the sacred in one, for others it may be a work of art smaller or even, a mere craft, embellishment. Or, as we have seen lately, a demonstration can be artistic for one person, and deeply vexatious, disrespectful or repression to others [5].

Following this reasoning, we can perceive that even though everyone needs light, few can discern between the real light and that artificial. One by fear, others by ignorance, and yet others for laziness or convenience. That’s why the depression of relationships and individualism undergo a relativization of values, by the deconstruction of the being in moral and social existence. And without faith in itself or in something true, it’s impossible to believe it’s worth moving on.

In the Christian case, when the scenario of human life moves away from the biblical context, of God’s purpose, it creates an environment of absence of sense, for nothing more definitive than the ever-changing and relative systems of the human initiative itself, where the postmodern society wants to be creator of his own destiny, to be able to live the life without divine restrictions or directed by any sacred rules; Where their members only act to make real the causes profane, contingents and blind they produced, and the artifacts and institutions that they created for themselves. The truth, in these cases, is only linguistic and cultural convention, where the values and virtues become relative and dependent on the feelings involved. That’s why Luther said, “Feelings come and go. Feelings are deceitful. “

Well, emotions are states of being, while feelings are individual and personal expressions of these emotions. But what determines people’s feelings? That leads us to another question: Do people talk about what they believe? I realized that in most cases, no. In fact, most people are not sure what they believe beyond what they’ve been taught, i.e. what they are programmed to believe. Now, what you perceive is what you believe [6] (i.e., we only see what we want!). Your personal perception of reality determined by the beliefs you have. This won’t make them real, even though you believe they are. Their beliefs will create and dictate what their attitudes are. Their attitudes will create and dictate their responses, in other words, they will dictate their feelings. And it’s the sentiments that determine in a large part how you behave. The problem of a life focused only on the beautiful, for beauty and what is beautiful is in this: the pleasure (it is the main connection that Kant makes with the beautiful), because is subjective, is devoid of the sense of knowledge, is not linked to the reality of an object or phenomenon. The pleasure that the beautiful provides comes only from the sensibly apprehended representations [7]. Is the sentiments from the pleasant sensations that emits the judgment of the beautiful, inducing the desire to remain to enjoy such sensations. The immediate interest in the pleasant sensations is to continue feeling pleasure (can I say that this is the philosophical basis for hedonism through time?). Now, if we live seeking only what is beau and beautiful, according to Hegel, this would be an attempt to transpose the harsh and cruel reality of everyday life and at the same time designing for themselves examples to follow. Exactly why we talked a lot about empathy, be altruistic, and create templates that personified these desires.

I’m going to tell you if there’s a place where you can refugee, this place is the truth. Do not deny your affection, your joys, your victories, and desires, but most important, do not deny your pain. We only get out of sadness when it allows experience. It may be that someday you feel that your eyes see better when they’re damp. This happens because the tear lubricates the vision, while sadness reconnects us to the truest one exists in us. Then weep, weep, and do not disguise your abandonment, your disappointment, anger, and frustration. [8]

The modern religion, thus, seems to be based only on feeling well with its actions and behaviors, producing well-being for yourself and the other. Seeking and producing a quality of life today means seeking to beautify and making everything prettier, in this case, creating a comfortable and pleasant, real or not, where I could exist, appeasing feelings and balancing people’s emotions. Something that can be produced quickly and constructed with aesthetic resources. Unfortunately, this is not enough to live well. Paraphrase Charles Chaplin [9]:

(…) Our knowledge made us cynical, our wisdom, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than intelligence, we need kindness and tenderness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and everything will be lost. (…)

Before him, Jesus already taught us that “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6.21), almost always the pursuit of the man and for something that would bring him a benefit, to give him pleasure. It’s almost an exchange of favors. You do that to me that I give you that. Jesus taught that the value given to things is to the benefits to our hearts. So I agree and say, “Live by the spirit, and in no way will satisfy the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

1-http://obviousmag.org/andre_camargo/2015/05/como-nao-virar-um-zumbi---vivendo-em-tempos-liquidos.html#ixzz4qpSm903f

2-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDiPzCEUR7Y

3-http://obviousmag.org/oeduardocabraldigitou/2015/04/a-geracao-t-e-seus-estranhos-valores.html#ixzz4puUB7rIp

4-Christopher A. Hall, Reading Scriptures with the Church Fathers: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

5-https://jornalivre.com/2017/10/08/rede-globo1-defende-exposicao-do-mam-com-crianca-e-revolta-a-internet/

6- https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-flux/201211/you-are-what-you-believe

7- http://sheilaestetica.blogspot.com.br/2012/06/o-que-e-estetica-na-teoria.html

8-http://lounge.obviousmag.org/fabiola_simoes/2015/04/carta-para-coraline.html#ixzz4m6J4woRt

9-https://youtu.be/gmMVrAC1Acc