Recycled illusion! It seems we have a knack for it, don't we? We recycle everything but the right thing, in most cases.
Politicking: Nothing more than recycled illusion. Well, in the case of the present presidential offerings, delusion is a better word. The 'American Dream', illusory hell, I say. Corporate goodwill, beyond illusion, non-existent; corporate greed, on the other hand, nightmarish reality.
I know it's a stretched comparison, but all this illusory shift was brought full circle by the sudden virality of that silly duck rabbit drawing.
First, its history: It initially appeared as an anonymous entry in a German humor magazine way back in 1892, (original image above). Since then, it has become embedded in the culture along with the old woman, young woman illusion, and many others. It's been around a long, long time.
My question here, though, is WHY? WHY has it made such a wow comeback now? WHY the sudden interest in a simple drawing now? I know stuff goes in cycles, and next week it'll be something different, carted out as if it's brand new. But duck rabbit, ad nauseum, is everywhere: It's on my timeline every time I open up good old FACEBOOK, and pointedly, it's boring, furthermore, it's annoying as hell. It's burned over ground.
So, why(?), I believe was the question.
Is it a generational thing, and it's simply new eyes and new minds ladling images out of the hard boiling pot of cyber soup to get a closer look? That's part of it maybe, but it's not the whole picture, I believe.
We've always, from our beginnings, had difficulty sorting the shadowy from the substantial. We don't always know where we stand inside our family circle let alone in the public bazaar. It's easy to see how a simple yet quirky image from the relative beginnings of our present age can lend a modicum of reassurance within the swirling uncertainty, (read that the illusory well), of the here and now. The here and now is a very scary place. Why not dust off some little nonthreatening iconic cultural quacker to pass the time away in ignorant social media bliss.
I'm sorry, folks, I have a psychological bent, and I see things sometimes when other people only see a cute little duck rabbit picture that toggles one into the other. (Oh, no, doc, do I have it too?) But in this case, I can't help but think that there's more to it than being a cute little bit to share. It's a kind of escapism.
The number one mental illness of this historical period is anxiety, supreme, mind numbing anxiety. We want to be told that everything is alright, and we go to great lengths to fill in those blank spaces in our individual and collective insight with all manner of shadowy substitutes. Duck rabbit is tricky, but its the cute kind of tricky, almost like it came from a children's book, and we prefer that to facing the obverse realization that in so many ways our society, our culture, our civilization in going to hell in a handbasket full of brittle dead roses, or flowery illusions, as it may apply.
Here comes the stretched comparison. Let's take the run for the president shenanigans. There's the Donald Trump illusion. Donald Trump, as well as all the others, let's be fair, is an illusion, you know? Instead of seeing this dangerous illusion for what it is, we choose to virally share a silly optical illusion from over a hundred years ago--124 to be exact. Well, Donald Trump is shared virally too, but why I don't rightly know.
Let's take a look at the Donald Trump illusion. Donald Trump is duck rabbit, but he's duck rabbit of a more ominous kind. If you look carefully, you can see him toggle from rogue to clown. Look! Do you see it yet? If you don't, don't be alarmed; you've been hypnotized into seeing what he wants you to see. In fact, a great number of the populace has.
All of us, the human family I mean, from the beginning, seem to have been hotwired to see in this way; the survival value of it isn't readily apparent from a paleontological perspective. It is apparently a gap between what we actually see, and what our mind/brain expects to see. I guess a way to say it is that we make adjustments to satisfy that indwelling expectation.
The thing is we see what we want to see, and even when the illusory quality of a thing in focus is pointed out to us, we persist in our belief. The other thing is that we can be led to see what someone else wants us to see, which is where considerable danger enters the 'picture'.
In the Vedic teachings there is a word for it: Maya, which means illusion, magic, i.e. what appears to be may no actually be.
All I can say is that driving on life's highway can be tricky. If you're putt-putting along in your Volkswagen Beetle, AND you look up ahead, AND you see a giant, enormous, HUGE duck rabbit blocking your way, it may or may not be real, AND it may or may not squash you flat, AND leave your mouth agape, AND leave your eyes googly, flashing moiré patterns.
Just remember; what is seen can't readily be unseen, like that dude wearing spandex with a pink thong showing at the back of his ass in an 'evil retail wart on the face of the world which shall remain nameless'. He had hunkered down so he could reach a big bag of that bite sized candy on the bottom shelf, and there it was. That wasn't an optical illusion; that was all too real. Quack-quack, hippity-hoppity, exit stage right or is it left. Duck rabbit has left the building.