Life's Illusions

Today’s article is about illusions, now I am not talking the ones we see from the magician on stage. I mean the ones we create by way orchestrating things we want to happen in life. Just a quick rider there are two kinds of illusions in the world, positive and negative, the latter is also known as manipulation, it’s what gives some individuals bad feeling, whilst the former usually empowers people.

So first let me talk a little about the negative side, the manipulating of situations. This is something that businesses and organisations may use when they want to restructure or get rid of certain staff. The basic format and plan are the same, someone at the top decides the what the final outcome needs to be, then feed little bits to staff allowing rumours to spread. There are legal parts that need to be followed but for the most it’s about getting individuals to either trip up to sack or allow them to decide to leave themselves. Governments also use this approach confuse the truth to get what they want too; they heighten it through the power of media. The approach can be very harmful to individual’s mental health and even careers, because the power is to shift blame away from corporation.

Illusions used positively empower and create opportunities as they can put people where they want in life. They encourage dream chasers and even small businesses and entrepreneurs as they can present opportunities to artificially meet those they need too in a natural way, leading to spreading of information that maybe needed.

The positive illusions can also be used to overturn a toxic environment, making it positive may be in a workplace or voluntary organisations. It’s able to do this because manipulation is about control of individuals or group, where illusions are about free will and the good of others.

A manipulator will mostly be in a position of power, whilst and illusionist may not be in the position you expect them to be. If the trick is going well then it may be come hard to tell who is in control and even for the illusionist sometimes, and if everything is going well then things may be allowed to take their natural course, the illusionist may decide not to make a planned move. You see illusions are like a game a chess, where and how the illusionist moves depends on where the other person chooses, so any intervention of the illusionist is about nudging people in the right direction.

You see it easy to look back on a manipulated situations in hindsight and see what went wrong, you see understand who did what to get the outcome that happened. You may even understand how you were used within the situation. It can be a little harder to know if you’ve been used by an illusionist, because they use people for the good of a situation, true illusions are ripple effects so you may not come into contact with the illusionist, they may not even be aware you are part of the trick. But at the end so often the individuals look up and onwards.

You may remember the 1998 movie ‘The Trueman Show' this had an element of illusion for Jim Carrey's character, Truman. The whole movie is about one mans life from birth, in big brother style show. Everything about Truman’s life is pre planned, his friends, is work, even this relationship and break ups. But later in movie we see it’s more about manipulation as Truman begins to ask question and finally escapes the show.

You could be friends with the illusionist, the illusionist may be part of group you hang out with, it could be quite the reverse, they maybe someone you fall out with or even your arch enemy. You may never meet the illusionist. It maybe the illusionist plan that you turn against them, spread rumours. We have this thing of first impressions, well if an illusionist is thinking of using you then they will see how you behave towards certain behaviour from the outset, so first impressions is often one sided to see how you react.

Another example of real-life illusions are the tactics to catch organised crime. The police and partner organisations either create a situation for the criminals to walk into or they place themselves undercover to collect information and guide the end results, while this can be seen as manipulation it is all done for the good. If you have ever seen the franchise movies ‘now you see me' it’s very much doing just this, but it on an international scale.

Some of the smaller illusions could be to help someone deal with their past, or to make their dreams happens. When it is all finished and done, after a reasonable passage of time the illusionist may feel it beneficial to make themselves known to an individual, to allow a conversation and questions for them to understand what happened. But very often you won't know the person who created the plan as they will so often leave others to take the credit.

Why is it like this? Because like the manipulator the illusionist looks for secret keepers, but they differ from the manipulator in respects that because the illusionist works long a positive vibe, people feel safe and rarely find reason the share bigger plans.

Whether you are an illusionist or manipulator the bottom line is you play games and quite often with people’s minds, and dangerous ones so you should always know where to stop and how to care for those who you use.

But I wonder what it would be like to organise a life illusion on an international scale, where the event just seems to happen.