Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship pdfdrive com

What seeders are currently influencing your life? Are their motives in your best
interest? Or theirs?

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CHAPTER 8
HYPERREALITY:
YOUR ILLUSIONARY CAPTORS
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their
culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the
masses.
~ Plato, Philosopher

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REMOVING YOUR BLINDFOLD
A
fter I sold my first company, I bought a red Corvette. At the time, I thought it
was a unique car, rare among millions. Except it wasn’t. My brain simply
convinced me it was. As a proud new owner, I suddenly saw Corvettes
everywhere. Women are annoyingly familiar with this phenomena: buy an
expensive Louis Vuitton and hit the mall; suddenly every woman appears to own
one.
This mental phenomenon is known as an 
observational bias
, and it’s a brain
function known as your 
reticular activating system
, or RAS. Your RAS has many
critical functions, one being a filter. At any moment, your brain is swamped with
billions of pieces of data. If you’re reading this on a train, your brain is flooded
by a barrage of sensory input: the people around you, their clothes, their look,
the cute girl four seats up, the odor of the guy seated next to you, the sound of
the tracks, the lighting in the cab, the seat against your butt, the discomfort of
your suit—the list is endless. Because your brain must process these data, your
RAS makes quick judgments about what it should and shouldn’t see.
Once you’re made aware of something, like owning a Corvette, your brain
stops filtering Corvettes and filtered data are suddenly seen. My Corvette’s
cognitive distortion wasn’t that they were more frequent on the road, it was my
RAS no longer ignored them.
So what does your RAS have to do with the 
SCRIPT
? Well, since your RAS
sees once it’s made aware, 
awareness holds the key for transforming
subconsciousness to reality
.
The 
SCRIPT
’s illusions flow through its seeders: media, family, educational
institutions, and the rest. However, the 
SCRIPT
’s real power isn’t from its
seeders; 
it is from the false realities cast by its seeders
. And because your brain is
überlazy and unaware of the falsities, you become complicit in the scheme. Yes,
your brain, in its glorious attempt for efficiency, is largely undermining your
ability to live an extraordinary life.
Because your brain deficiently perceives reality, what follows is a great
cascade of false conclusions causing misguided beliefs. Misguided beliefs cause
misguided actions. Misguided actions produce unwanted results. And unwanted
results create dissatisfaction.

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A dramatic life shift requires a dramatic mind shift. Right now, your lazy
brain is a 
SCRIPTED
ally. Once your RAS is nudged, the blindfold drops.
SCRIPTED
doctrine whitelists from your firewall, and suddenly actual reality
becomes clear. This paves the way to rewriting injurious beliefs and social
contracts not written in stone but written in reflective shadows.
Once your brain is exposed to the secrets behind a magician’s tricks, the appearance
of magic disappears. As does the magician’s power to deceive.
THE SCRIPT’S SHADOWED CONVENTIONS: HYPERREALITY
Misperceived reality is best hyperbolized in the ancient story, “The Allegory
of the Cave,” by Greek philosopher Plato. The tale is about several prisoners held
captive in a cave their entire lives. The prisoners are chained in such a way they
cannot move their heads or legs, forced to forever stare at a cave wall. Behind
them, a fire blazes high above. Stationed behind the prisoners and in front of the
fire is a depressed walkway and a parapet wall. On the walkway hidden behind
the parapet, several puppeteers upcast various figurines, objects, and shapes,
casting shadows on the prisoners’ wall. The prisoners cannot see the puppeteers
or the objects passing behind them, only their walled shadows. Because these
shadows are the only reality the prisoners know, they are misperceived as real
and substantive, despite the reality that schemes behind them.
This ancient story told more than 2,000 years ago is just as relevant today.
You see, the 
SCRIPT
is also a collection of shadows, simulations, and
cognitive distortions—a collection of authentic fakes and mental alchemy
designed to keep us chained in a cave, mesmerized by a pseudo reality. And
instead of shadows cast by puppeteers, the 
SCRIPT
has its seeders. The truth is,
the 
SCRIPT
, you, I, and the entire civilized world revolve around a web of
wizardry called 
hyperrealities
.
Wikipedia defines hyperreality as the “inability of consciousness to
distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically
advanced postmodern societies.” Furthermore, a “hyperreality is seen as a
condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended
together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the
other begins.”
12
In other words, we are interacting with simulations instead of
truths.

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For example, Las Vegas is a hyperreality. Each casino presents a hyperreal
experience where you feel like a king, a pharaoh, or a sheik—at least as long as
your money lasts. Unfortunately, 
SCRIPTED
hyperrealities aren’t as obvious as
Las Vegas. Unless you activate your RAS and train your brain to 
see
hyperreality,
the 
SCRIPTED
shadows are perceived as real. Awareness gates the bridge to
defiance.
CONVENTIONAL ILLUSIONS: THE SCRIPT’S 9 HYPERREALITIES
Nine primary hyperrealities underwrite the 
SCRIPT
, each culturally iconic.
These are the fables of 
SCRIPTED
doctrine. The weapons of mass distraction.
The Jedi mind tricks. These hyperrealities surround our existence and cannot be
avoided. Our goal is to swivel your head around from the cave wall, expose the
reality behind the shadowed projections, and activate your RAS.
Hyperreality #1: Named Days
I’m alone in darkness. As a stiff chill drafts my neck, I’m about to be scared
out of my wits. It’s Tuesday morning and I’m in a movie theater watching the
newly released horror flick 
Saw
. The theater is empty, not because the movie
sucks but because everyone else is busy—busy trading life away in exchange for
little pieces of paper called money. And ironically, while I piss my pants in fear
for the next two hours, my business makes enough money to pay for the movie
twentyfold. Meanwhile, outside the theater darkness lies the true horror of the
day: Millions of people have killed their Tuesday and willfully postponed their
life until the weekend. I’m not sure what’s scarier, the mass murder of Monday
through Friday or the murders in the movie I’m about to watch.
Long ago, your first day at school birthed the hyperreality “named days.”
Think “Monday through Friday” and what do you feel? Anguish? Maybe a
little discomfort? How about the word “Saturday”? Or “Friday night”?
Named days order the week by titles, Monday through Sunday, carrying with
it the implication that Monday starts work and Friday ends it, while the weekend

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reserves play. The fact is, named days are a hyperreality, one the industrialized
world has perfected to perfection.
Beneath the named-days scheme is a man-made illusion your mind has made
real—
the illusion that your life’s limited and precious time must be systematically
segregated by days, with each day’s title designating whether work or play is
expected
.
The truth behind the shadow? There is no celestial reason or natural
phenomenon behind a seven-day week cycle. The Earth simply takes twenty-four
hours to rotate on its axis, and the Earth has no idea if that rotation happens on
Sunday or Thursday. If aliens orbited Earth, Monday through Sunday wouldn’t
be recognized. Nope, their supercomputers would identify one planetary rotation
equals twenty-four hours and one revolution around the sun is another 365
twenty-four hour sequences.
For every creature on Earth, named days don’t exist. Your dog Rex doesn’t
know the difference between a Sunday and a Tuesday, other than you might
spend more time with him on Sunday. His Sunday 
feels
exactly the same as a
Monday.
The mathematics are real; named days are not. In other words, 
the entire
scheme is an artificial interval to institute order
. Monday is an illusion. Sunday
equals Thursday. The Earth is indifferent, with the exception of one creature:
humans.
Hyperreality #2: Consumerism
Consumerism is 
the myth that consumption can produce success or happiness.
Despite that Vogue magazine, despite that Audi commercial, despite that banner
ad, you are not what you own, 
but you can be owned by what you own.
If the 
SCRIPT
was a jail cell, consumerism and the debt it creates are its bars
of incarceration. That house with the thirty-year mortgage, that car with the
seven-year loan, that boat, and that degree—all backbreaking expenses that can
paralyze your existence.
Consumerism, materialism, or “stuff” is the ubiquitous hyperreality that
dominates the world’s economic engine, and it will dominate yours if you cannot
pierce its shadow.
Megacorporations spend trillions annually to create consumer hyperrealities
—or in marketing speak, “brands”—all designed to communicate a fabricated
perception. BRAND X says you’re wealthy, BRAND Y says you’re fashionable,
and BRAND Z says you’re rugged. If you drive a Toyota Prius, the advertised

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perception is practicality or thriftiness. A Lamborghini advertises “wealth,”
which may or may not be factual.
When I bought my first Lamborghini, the hardest part of the purchase wasn’t
the price tag; it was succumbing to a hyperreality. From a utilitarian standpoint,
a car gets you from point A to point B. My Lamborghini was 5 percent car and
95 percent hyperreality. But in the real world, people cannot make the
distinction. For example, whenever I valeted my hyperreality at a night club, I
immediately bypassed the line and got into the club. Had I driven my Toyota and
valeted, I’d receive no such treatment. Nope, get to the end of the line, buddy! In
the Lambo, I am presumed rich and noteworthy; in the Toyota, I wait with the
rest of the proletariat. Reality is ridiculously distorted. My car changes nothing
about me—not my looks, height, or the nine bucks in my wallet—but it changes
perception.
The consumer hyperreality cons the ladies as well.
See those expensive red-bottomed stilettos? Depending on who you ask,
some will say you’re classy. Affluent and stylish. Visit some gossip blogs and
they’ll accuse you of being a well-paid escort. Whatever the message, it’s not real
but simply a crafted perception. Drop these prestigious brands in a post-
apocalyptic world where survival is the priority and their influence is stripped
down to utility. What’s left is a means for transportation and an uncomfortable
height-enhancing shoe.
Consumerism’s job is to trick you into thinking utility is not enough. The
off-brand jersey from Target won’t do—you need the Nike. Instead of safely
driving from point A to point B in a Honda, you need the Infiniti adorned in
triple-stitched leather. The 
SCRIPTED
seeders are spending trillions
brainwashing us that utility is for chumps; we must also cast a shadowy
statement. Just because you bought the most expensive basketball shorts at the
pro shop doesn’t mean you can dunk like LeBron. Consumer proxy doesn’t
change reality.
Hyperreality #3: A College Degree
My first day at college, I arrived late. My roommate (whom I never met until
then) had already unpacked his side of the dorm room. On his wall hung a poster
featuring a seaside mansion with a five-car garage filled with exotic cars. Above
the garish picture in bold lettering was the statement “