Let's not try to figure out everything at once

Title from Fake Empire by The National... a song which only tenuously applies to this post, but is all about society, manipulation, and lies.
As far as a clear point of meaning to bring forth from everything we’ve talked about in class, the best way I can think to describe that which we’ve discussed is “everything around you and everything you believe is a little bit bullshit… and that’s maybe okay.” As much as we’ve discussed truth and manipulation in this course. we’ve also discussed the idea of telling a story, primarily through the role of authorship. Many of the characters we’ve seen, Jonah, Susan Barton, Timothy Treadwell, and Tim O’Brien, have been overwhelmingly concerned with the idea of telling their stories, making everything fit, and as they do this, they construct a web of not-quite truth and manipulation and as we’ve gotten further in class we’ve begun to note that, well, maybe we do the same. We change things to make them fit and choose the variation on “reality” we believe. It’s the only way we can make sense of ourselves and the world around us. As we all do this though and as all of life is perception, perhaps we have to admit that there is no truth. We can’t get anything down to more than an interpretation of a true essence because, well, that’s all there is. Our reality is a game of perception and because we can’t change this, I guess we just have to accept it… or chance the ideas in which we believe and accept those as true, continuing to lie to ourselves. I think this is also similar to our discussions of how we’re further manipulated in this course. As we discussed the constraints we all face through our society, through our community, through the academic system, we all noted that yeah, we’re manipulated at every turn… but we don’t try to flee it… because we can’t do that either. A good example of this is within the “option” to post this week. The fact of the matter is whether you post or don’t post, no matter your thought out reasoning, you’re still being manipulated and your decision is a result of this… so we accept it. We haven’t stopped lying to ourselves or accepting manipulation, but maybe we’re a bit more conscious of it than before.

Oh, also, I was going to post about home this week, but this ended up being more topical... If you want to read something about Indiana and how your perceptions conflict with some big realities about where I grew up, well, I'll make the google doc public and you can read about it here! (Just as a fun teaser- no, I'm not from a small country town, not really; I didn't have drive your tractor to school day, but lots of people do [I thought that was a thing everywhere...]; Yes, it snows there, but we don't have hills. Basically at all. Really.)- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rUP1EsD8h0iJAivHlFwqjRnwP3iIMjjGLZ70jykxcB0/edit?usp=sharing