The Power of Beauty

In my own space, I surround myself with beauty. My eyes can rest on an air plant, a photograph, or my tinkling fountain and I can find joy and peace in what I see.

Visual cues are a major contributor to behavior. When I see something that “needs doing” it could inspire me to take action, or it could cause me to feel helpless. When I see something in a state of decay, disorder, or ugliness, it could inspire me to invigorate it or to feel despair. When I see something beautiful, however, the worst outcome would be blind indifference. The best outcomes include feeling more creative, restored, tranquil, or happy.

Beauty is a value that is lost to most of America. The overall culture shames you for being materialistic, for being vain, for being “shallow.” However, appreciating beauty is no more shallow than enjoying a delicious, well-prepared meal. Identifying special visual treasures is no more shallow than stopping and smelling a rose. Carefully creating composition that delights the eye is no more shallow than luxuriating in a massage, or feeling comforted by the hug of a friend.

Visual pleasure is no less valuable than any other form of sensory pleasure. And visual information is no less valid than other sensory information.

Why have visual cues been denounced? Perhaps it is because corporations have been taking advantage of the power of visual cues to market us products – particularly through sexuality. Our ability to judge a healthy mate based on their appearance is meant to be used to produce healthy offspring, and yet that instinct is being twisted into selling us cheap trash that pollutes our bodies, homes, and planet. This ploy is causing many people to blame the enjoyment of visual beauty itself rather than blaming the true culprit: fear-based, power-grabbing, corporate entities.

This same marketing is used in movies and concerts. Product placement is utilized to show us that the characters we’re becoming attached to like particular brand name cigarettes and soda. These products aren’t inherently beautiful at all. They’re intended to be eye-catching through boldness – not through elegance. There is no peace or harmony in your corner-store selling soda and cigarettes – there is a cacophony of color competing for our attention, each trying to promise us a moment’s escape. Perhaps we wouldn’t need that escape if we had true beauty in our lives.

Commercials use strange tricks to make their advertisements more convincing. The milk is really glue mixed with water. The ice cubes are actually acrylic. The condensation on the glass was sprayed there. That perfect “splash shot” was created on a computer by combining three different photographs. The perfect-looking produce was selected from among dozens – sometimes hundreds. The “fresh baked” brownie was actually made days ago and they made it look fresh by using a hairdryer to melt the exterior again. These commercials are made so perfect with specially created and programmed robots. The client can pay $100,000 for a four-second commercial. All so that you’ll be convinced their cheap product is beautiful – when it really isn’t.

Beauty is most twisted by corporate interests, but occasionally we may meet someone who is truly both vain and cruel. These people are exceptionally rare despite how often this archetype shows up in stories: a beautiful, yet narcissistic woman who uses her beauty to manipulate and hurt others.

In all cases of twisted beauty: the manipulative behavior is based on a deep-rooted fear that drives a person to seek power through controlling and manipulating others.

The fact that some people misuse something doesn’t make that something wrong or bad. As a society and a culture, we get that wrong time and time again. Money isn’t evil – those who misuse money cause evil things to happen. In fact, the original invention of money rescued countless poor people from starvation. Prior to money, there was no way for a farmer to store the value of their labor; they had to trade their fresh food immediately, and if they couldn’t trade for anything that lasted (such as a metal statue), then their family would go hungry in the next famine.

One of my high school art teachers had a poster that stuck with me: “Paints aren’t messy: people are.” Power itself is not evil and it does not create evil. Power causes whatever is already within a person to become amplified by that power.

You might be wondering about that quote that says, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but I can tell you that it is absolutely wrong. Absolute power allows someone’s most deeply hidden fears to run the show. If someone was already afraid of not having enough, then they will use their power to try to secure “enough” to feel safe. Yet they will never succeed.

The fear of not having enough, sometimes called “lack mentality” or taṇhā, comes from childhood traumas where there literally wasn’t enough. It could have been a lack of money, a lack of warmth, a lack of companionship, a lack of physical safety, or a lack of emotional safety. Whatever you lacked under the age of eight continues to haunt you until you create full emotional resolve for that lack – and most people never do. And this is why most people become tyrants with absolute power. They try to make themselves safe, but amassing more wealth often plays into those same insecurities and makes one terrified of loss.

We can break the cycle by creating an environment for the next generation that contains real security, compassion, and beauty. A child raised with the security of a loving family will not seek the empty solace of a vain companion who offers physical closeness without emotional intimacy. A child raised with real beauty will not try to comfort themselves in adulthood with cheap plastic trinkets.

Imagine if we valued real beauty again. Imagine a world where the poor invested in beauty the same way the wealthy do. Imagine how the world might transform if each household embraced elegance as a value. A poor family might buy and plant a single daffodil bulb, and given five years that bulb will have multiplied into twenty to thirty bulbs, offering one of nature’s most transcendent creations: flowers.

There is nothing wrong with power, money, paint, or beauty. These are just tools for manifesting your inner truth in life.

Enjoy the beauty in your life – there is absolutely no shame in it.

More articles you might like:

• 10 Tips to Increase Your Creativity
• Human Behavior Polarities Stem From The Same Core Beliefs
• Why is it so hard to make friends?
• Why “Just Being Yourself” Doesn’t Work for Introverts

Raederle’s Bedroom 2016

Raederle’s Bedroom July 2018

Raederle’s Bedroom October 2018

Simulator Sickness vs Motion Sickness

Motion Sickness versus Simulator Sickness

Motion sickness and simulator sickness are both caused when your sensory inputs do not match.

When you experience motion sickness, you feel like you’re moving, but the visual cues tell you that you’re still; this happens when trying to read in a car, or when you’re in the belly of a boat, or when you’re in an airplane and not looking out the window.

When you experience simulator sickness, you feel like you’re still, but your visual inputs tell you that you’re moving. The term ‘simulator sickness’ came into being in the context of pilots doing flight simulations prior to flying and getting sick from the simulation.

Comparisons	Motion Sickness	Simulator Sickness
Cause	Visuals are still yet Movement is felt.	Visuals are moving yet One feels still.
Most Common Symptoms	Nausea Dizziness Uneasiness and cold sweat Vomiting	Eyestrain Fatigue Sweating
Other Symptoms	Headache Fatigue Saliva Production Pallor	Headache Disorientation Difficulty Focusing
Cure	Look out the window Eat ginger Get fresh air	Lay down in a dark room Eat ginger (maybe) Get fresh air Sleep

My Simulator Sickness Experience

I primarily experience headaches, but when my simulator sickness is severe I can also experience disorientation, dizziness, fatigue, and a little nausea. Also, if I’m feeling simulator sickness and I get into a car, I will experience motion sickness during the drive even if I look out the window, breathe slowly, and open the window for fresh air.

I experience motion sickness with any new first-person video game that I try which includes most massive multiplayer online games (MMOs), first-person shooters (FPS), and many adventure games. In games where the motion is very controlled and slow – as if watching a well-produced movie – the negative symptoms are minimal or nonexistent.

The good news is that you can cure yourself of your simulator sickness. Unfortunately, you need to rest thoroughly as soon as you start getting sick, usually not playing again until the next day. For some the adjustment period is very short (just a few days), but for me it can take weeks.

Virtual Reality (VR) Simulator Sickness

I find virtual reality somewhat less simulator sickness inducing than watching a monitor, and I certainly can’t watch the monitor while someone else is playing a virtual reality game. That said, I did still have to go through an adjustment period with BeatSaber but it was far less than what I had to go through when I was playing MMOs such as WildStar (I wish that game hadn’t been cancelled – it was a great game and I spent over a month training my brain to not get sick while playing it).

With BeatSaber I started out the first day with two songs. The songs average about three minutes, so that’s about six minutes of play time. The second day I went up to three songs and felt mild sickness, so I stuck with three songs for about four days until there was no longer mild sickness due to playing three songs; I also pushed the limits some by throwing in some longer songs (four or five minute songs) leading my total play time to increase slightly on my fifth and sixth days playing.

By the second week I was playing four songs a day and that increased to five or six songs by the end of two weeks. At that point I was able to play until I became tired or bored and simulator sickness has no longer been what stopped me from playing longer. (Usually I give out now from fatigue or my knees hurting from me bouncing in place to the music so much.)

Some people, however, experience simulator sickness for the first time when they try virtual reality. To me, this is baffling, since virtual reality visually matches your movements similar to real life. That said, having the still reality in your peripheral vision is something that helps many people with simulator sickness when playing a game on a regular monitor. While I was training myself on Wild Star I made a light-colored frame for my monitor out of paper and photographs to make the “real world” more visually obvious, which helped.

The better your virtual reality system synchronizes exactly with your movement, the less simulator sickness you are likely to experience. For this reason, I went directly for the highest end system available at my time of purchase (Steam’s system). I did seem to feel better using this system than I did using my friend’s lower-end system which I had tried BeatSaber on. After my second time visiting my friend and playing BeatSaber I was very sick and the car ride home was quite painful.

This page isn’t finished. What follows is a bit less polished and the above is not yet edited. Still, if you suffer from simulator sickness, I believe you will find this page helpful because there is so little about this issue on the web.

Simulator Sickness Statistics

In nineteen out of twenty cases, people eventually adapt to an environment that causes motion sickness, whether it is simulator created or motion created. The twentieth person seems to be doomed to symptoms forever unless otherwise addressed. How quickly adaptation takes place varies.

Adaptation is highly environment specific. Pilots who adapted to one simulator became sick again when they began using a new simulator. This implies that adapting to a new video game may require a new adaptation period.

To adapt people to a new simulator, the Navy recommended brief tours in the simulator (less than one hour), followed by 24 hours of rest. The Navy also recommended putting the most intense experiences at the end of a session.

It takes six to ten sessions to adapt to a new simulator.

Active movement in the environment may make you sicker initially, but also may make you adapt more quickly than being passive.

Performance is not affected by motion/simulator sickness. Researchers tested users who were motion sick and users who were not on a wide range of tasks (600 yard dash, throwing darts, shooting rifles, drawing lines in a mirror, and walking in a straight line). The performance of queasy people matched that of those who felt perfectly healthy. What changes is your motivation to perform – when you feel motion/simulator sickness, you don’t feel like doing much of anything, even if you do perform well when you do it.

The longer the duration, the more likely it is for people to become sick.

How common is simulator sickness?

Across multiple studies:

• Eyestrain: 29% to 37%
• Fatigue: 27% to 35%
• Sweating: 30%
• Disorientation: 24%
• Difficulty focusing: 24%
• Headache: 17%

In one study, 61% of those sick had their symptoms persist between fifteen minutes and six hours. Symptoms very rarely persisted the morning after a simulator session. In my own case, if I continue playing a game for more than a minute after I’ve become sick, symptoms persist for the rest of the day, usually until I sleep.

Women are generally more prone to simulator sickness than men, though the difference is not large.

Children between two and twelve are the most prone to sickness. This effect decreases rapidly between twelve and twenty-one, then more slowly to age fifty or so.

Alcohol and drugs affect your inner ear, which affects your ability to balance and tell up from down. Not surprisingly, this means that you are more likely to get sick while under the influence.

People with illnesses such as hangover, flu, head cold, ear infection, or upset stomach all were more likely to get sick. The Navy generally would not let pilots fly if they were not at full health. Lytenian and I have noticed that we both get more severe air sickness from being in an airplane if we have stuffed sinuses at the time.

People who reported that they had previously gotten sick in cars or amusement park rides were more likely to become sick in a simulator. Interestingly, my father gets sick on amusement park rides that go in circles but I generally do not, but I’m the one with the simulator sickness.

Animals also get motion sickness.

Motion sickness is generally more correlated with gastrointestinal distress – symptoms like burping, nausea, and vomiting. Simulator sickness is more correlated with visual distress – eye strain, difficulty focusing, disorientation, and headache. For me I only finally made the connection between the two conditions because the headache was actually the same. Furthermore, I realized that I get the same headache from reading.

Lack of Control Increases Simulator Sickness

Changing a user’s camera angle without warning will lead to sickness. In fact, I’m way more likely to get simulator sickness from watching someone else’s monitor while they are playing a game.

Moving forward/backward in time, or flying backwards (a motion not controlled by the user) causes sickness.

Pilots report less discomfort than passengers. This is likely because pilots are controlling the motion of the plane and can anticipate turns and flips. When designing content, camera motion is best controlled by the user.

Head movement increases susceptibility.

In one study, 67% of pilots closed their eyes to avoid getting sick at points where the simulation moved rapidly. I do this frequently while watching youtube videos shot by amature videographers that move their cameras around too quickly.

Drugs like dramamine were effective at helping with simulator sickness. Ginger has been found helpful as well. In my case, ginger cures my motion sickness entirely and does nothing at all for my simulator sickness. The only cure I’ve found is sleep; even laying down in a dark room and getting close to sleep can help.

Susceptibility increased the closer the simulator was flying to the ground; the further away the ground, the less sick the pilots got.

Unrecognized forms of Simulator Sickness

• Reading
• Web-page scrolling (particularly online shopping)

Emotional and Psychological Cause of Motion Sickness

When you have a fragment caught in a state of shock, it is entirely still. There is a powerful contrast between that stillness and the external movement. Vehicles allow us to be in motion even when our bodies are not aligned with that motion.

Raederle’s Surveys, Studies & Quizzes

Most of my surveys will ask you for your Myers-Briggs type. While no Myers-Briggs quiz is entirely accurate, I recommend Human Metric’s Personality Type Quiz as it is the most reliable one I’ve seen. I also specifically recommend against using the one at 16personalities, as they have used a different methodology entirely which is incompatible with Carl Jung’s original eight cognitive functions system.

Short Surveys & Quizs 5 to 10 minutes

Habits

Survey: What is your experience with forming and maintaining habits?

Feeling Seen

Survey: This survey is asking you about your perception of other people's ability to read you correctly; this survey is about how understood, seen, felt, and heard you feel by others.

Medium Surveys & Quizs 11 to 25 minutes

Inspiration

Survey: This survey is about what makes you inspired and how often you feel inspired.

Autistic, Aspie, ADD or HSP? Find out!

Quiz: This quiz will tell you if you're an autistic, an aspie, a highly sensitive person (HSP), or have attention deficit disorder (ADD). I specifically designed this quiz to be effective on girls which are not accurately assessed by typical autism questionaries.

This 19 minute quiz can be used on girls four to nine with parental assistance.

To women: If you’re taking this quiz over twenty, think back to who you were between the ages of six and sixteen. You may have adapted to seem a lot more normal since then.

To girls: If you’re taking this quiz under the age of twenty, there is a good chance that you won’t yet know how you compare to “typical” people. To get the most accurate results, ask a parent or friend to help you consider your answers.

To parents: Please consider that if your daughter is an aspie, there is a good chance that you are too. Many things you think are typical because they also apply to you may not actually be typical. When a question asks if you are “more ____ than typical,” try to compare your daughter to the most normal-seeming, average classmates and individuals you can.

To boys: You can try this quiz, but I’ve aimed this assessment specifically at girls. There is a good chance that it will still work for boys, particularly highly sensitive boys, but autism in boys is already assessed with decent accuracy by the conventional AQ assessment.