I’m Throwing Trump Out of My Life – Why Don’t You?

Tokyo. November 10th. 2016.

First thing every morning, I head for the toilet.

I want to reduce my weight (guess how?).

After my toilet, I head for the bathroom. Once I jump on the scales and register my weight, it’s all over for the day. That number is today’s benchmark. It governs my eating behaviour for the day. I’ve noticed that when I keep my weight at around 79kg, I think better. I act more. I am more often in a lighter mood…

But today I am not writing about that. Today I am writing about what I usually do, while waiting in the toilet for those satisfying plops in the water below…

I read the news. Every morning.

I have NYT, the Huffs, Saloon, Slate (yes, a true socialist) SMH and Google apps on my iPhone, just waiting for me to finger them to life and start reading.

But something funny happened on November 10th (my birthday as it turns out)

It was 2 days after Trump won the United States Presidential election. I didn’t want to open any of my news apps. I sat there staring vacantly at my iPhone, unable to take the next step. I just didn’t want to fill my head with any more trash about Trump.

It happened again the next day. And the next day…

So yesterday I deleted all the News apps* on my iPhone, and here’s why.

I finally recognised – I am what’s happening in the world.

Because the world – this wonderful thing I project as existing independently of me – is wholly my creation. Out there, something exists, I don’t question that. However, it exists differently for every individual on the planet, and even more so for animals and insects.

I see an ant scurrying across my living room – damn! – then wonder: what is his world?

Does his world even extend to the end of my street?

The ant’s conception of the world is defined by his perceptive ability and the mobility he has to act upon those perceptions. Today there is a school of thought amongst neuroscientists that the only purpose of our brain – intelligence – is to move. Creatures that move by a brain and then turn into plants – yes, they exist† – actually go ahead and eat their own brain for sustenance.

We think so we can move. We move because we can think. The brain is our moving machine. And our limitation is set by our mobility, just like the ant. And mobility defines the end points of your world, just like the ant.

Where’s the end of the street in my world?

In my arrogance towards the ant, I first marvelled at his insignificant, tiny world. After all, I have Sydney, Tokyo and even the moon. The moon. Hmm. Then I realised: The end of my street is the earth. And I wondered…

How much of the universe does my planet earth even occupy?

Julius Bier Kirkegaard, a PhD Candidate from the University of Cambridge, did the math. Assuming a universe with a radius of 45.7 billion light years, my earth represents this much:

0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003 %

The ant is laughing now.

We are more the same than we are different in our limitations. But I know more than the ant – don’t I?

Oh yes, I read the news. That’s the truth right?

No. Not even close.

I live in a world constructed around my limitations, just like the ant, and so do you. The principles upon which you construct your world are determined by your conceptions, which in turn rely on the mobility of your senses. Alexander:

“Sensory appreciation conditions conception -- you can't know a thing by an instrument that is wrong.”

My “instrument” is my Self. My “wrongness” is set by my limitations.

My world is not defined by what exists out there, it is defined – just like the ant – by what I am able to perceive about what is out there. I live in a world that I construct and project based upon my limitations. And so do you.

To a Trump voter, November 8th is projected as a glorious day. To most of us, November 8th is projected as a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Which one of us is right?

The answer I got was a surprise: we are both are right, yet neither is true.

This existence of parallel opposites is also encountered in physical reality. The Physicists solved this dichotomy by proposing the principle of complementarity: that two opposing conceptions can both be right, while neither can be simultaneously true.

Is light particles? YES

Is light waves? YES

Which one is right? BOTH

In our psychological reality, we also confront these parallel opposites. We have “Trump is terrible” and “Trump is terrific” but the complementarity principle helps us understand how two opposing ideas can both be right, while neither are simultaneously true.

Buddhists reflect this dichotomy in their teaching of the two truths: absolute truth (where quantum physics rule) and relative truth (where Newtonian physics rule). These two ‘truths’ describe how the absolute world (quantum phenomena) operates within the relative world (everyday experience). I struggled through a 1,000 page tome on the subject, and came out a little wiser for the effort.

From these studies, I came to understand how I live in a world of my relative truths, not absolutes. My world becomes the one I perceive, and my perception is determined by my mobility and senses. What I seek from my senses (reading the news) is the fodder I use to construct and project my world.

Which is why I decided to stop reading the news.

I realized – news is a fairy tale. News is a construction I spin into the world, believe it to be the truth, then frightening myself with that projected truth.

News is not the truth. It’s relative and so I needed to ask my Self:

Relative to what?

Sitting on the toilet that day I finally got it – what all this means.

Trump thrives on my attention and I can deprive him of that.

It is my first and most deliberate act of protest, and I feel really good about it. I am now proactive, not reactive. I decide – like in this blog – when I want to include him in my world, and not a moment more. Trump is no longer permitted to enter my world, except when I say. I have that power.

Wonderful! At last, I am free.

Why don’t you do the same?

***

*I also dragged the book links off my browser bar, and I stopped watching CBSN live on the internet.

†The common sea squirt starts life as a member of the chordates (phylum of fish, birds, reptiles and mammals) until eventually the tadpole-like larvae find a place in the sea bed to permanently plant their bodies. Then it eats it’s tail, eye and spine-like notochord.