There’s reality and there’s meta. Reality is visceral, concrete experience. Motion and action. Sensation and meaning. The universe.
Oddly, we mortals experience reality mostly as thought. As I’ve noted elsewhere:
Thought is a reaction to stimuli in the world: a fragrance, an overheard sentence, a prolonged glimpse at the app you are presently doom scrolling (because you are what you read). This reaction, a thought, can trigger a cascade of more thoughts. The mind is a noisy place.
– You are not your thoughts, September 2023
But thoughts are not reality, and neither is meta. Meta is everything we say about reality. It’s abstract. Thoughts about thoughts. Academia. Philosophy. Religion. Gossip. The todo list on your fridge. The thickening sludge formerly known as Twitter.
Here’s the prompt: Limit your ratio of meta to reality. It’s challenging because meta grows while reality just is. It takes vigilance to contain meta. Reality requires no such tending, because it is untendable.
Don’t get me wrong, meta can be useful, but it’s hardly mandatory. Orangutans swing without storytelling, and ospreys fly without physics. Meta is here to help mere mortals do a little more. But none of it is required.
Meta is intriguing, but the map is not the territory. That love song isn’t itself love; every diagnosis is words, not the disease. Meta beguiles you with the illusion that you might control reality. But you do not, and you never will.
Meta can be fun, but it’s expensive. Your clicky obsession with saccarine non-reality steals time from the bitter kale of reality. Where meaning happens. And since your days are numbered, I would advise against getting that pHD or that VR headset.
Don’t waste too much time on meta. It is a virus, and you are its host.
When you carry, create, or consume too much meta, you leave less room for its target: the mysterious, continuously unfolding chaos that surrounds you. That is you. Use meta if you must, but learn to move, and live, and be without it.
Reality is numinous and boundless. It is dark matter impenetrable by any scribe. And it’s infinitely more rewarding than anything taped to your fridge.