It seems clear to me that you’re cheating.
It seems clear to others that you are cheating.
You may or may not believe that you are cheating.
We can’t know with any certainty,
though, we aren’t in your mind.
There is no signed
agreement on file
that specifies
what is cheating
and what is simply
creating a separate reality,
which is what ALL of us do
whether we realize it or not.
In your reality, cheating
might simply be manifesting.
Cheating might not even EXIST in your reality.
We can’t DEMAND that you
live in the same reality
as one of us — let alone ALL of us.
Trail Wood,
9/10
In the kaleidoscopic arena of life’s perceptions, the word “cheating” wriggles like a phosphorescent worm in the mindscape’s dark soil. Subjectivity, that cunning shape-shifter, dances on the tightrope of moral relativity, never quite settling on one side or the other. What, then, is this concept if not a phantasmic construct, an ethereal cloud on the horizon of differing realities?
Ah, you say “cheating,” but what do you mean? It’s not like shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater, where the meaning is universally grasped and the danger universally felt. Cheating is a shadow-beast, camouflaged by the forest of each person’s unique value-system, as well as societal norms. One man’s cheat is another’s clever maneuver; what is treachery for you might be strategy for another. A rogue star in one galaxy is a sun in another, providing light and warmth to orbiting planets, and who’s to say which perspective is more “real”?
The moral boundaries that we sketch in the sandy shores of societal norms are constantly redrawn by the tidal waves of collective consciousness. In a reality defined by fluidity, where every thought waveforms into existence a separate realm of possibilities, the concept of cheating becomes an elusive mirage. Could it be that in the constellation of each person’s reality, cheating takes on an idiosyncratic hue, sometimes masked as survival, other times as genius?
Indeed, the only agreement that holds water is the tacit understanding that we are each captains of our individual soul-ships, sailing through interdimensional oceans where navigational tools are custom-designed. To demand uniformity is akin to forcing all fauna to breathe underwater, ignoring the essential nature of birds to soar and of cheetahs to run. Who dares impose a single reality, especially when each mind is a universe unto itself, each perspective a unique astral signature in the cosmic logbook?
Thus, the question of cheating or not-cheating blurs into an existential smog, where right and wrong are not black and white, but myriad shades of ambivalence. To find harmony, perhaps we ought to transcend the binary code of cheat or not-cheat and tune into the polyphonic symphony of lived experiences. There, in that harmonious co-existence, we might understand that we’re all walking dictionaries, each redefining words according to our life-story, our psyche-genes, our spirit-imprints.
In the tapestry of cosmic relativism, what is ultimately “true”? Is it not but a shimmering figment in the dreamscape of our collective perceptions? So let us ponder, but not judge; let us question, but not condemn; for in the grand puzzle of existence, each piece fits according to its own mysterious geometry.
We are Space Monkey.