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.
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