Fishbowls

I like the concept of fishbowls (see Ch. 2 The Livingness) as it gets across the notion that we are ‘swimming’ in something that is so basic that we take it for granted. Hence the fish doesn’t realize that he’s in the water. He doesn’t realize he’s a male!
So there are two concepts that are essential in fishbowls:

Much of life is:

1. unconscious (the fishbowl effect)
2. It seems rather normal because of the saturation level of the environment

Hence our first fishbowl is our parents/home-life in that children take for granted that what their family does is normal and correct. Then we go to school and we presume that everything that happens in our school is normal and correct and even at school that our small group is normal compared with the other groups.
I had a man suffering with panic attacks that came to me and said his father used to bash the kids regularly when he came home drunk from the hotel on Fridays, “but that was normal in those days!” He was confused when I said that it wasn’t. His fishbowl said it WAS normal.
Since there is a pay-off in the fishbowl of gaining acceptance and a sense of belonging to a group (see Herd), this is clearly a distraction from realizing one’s self at a truly individual level apart from other costs.

As Wordsworth says it is just like trading different parts in a play as if they are really us!

And then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his “humourous stage”
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

(Wordsworth, From Ode: Intimations of Immortality)