The basic concept of Metamorphic Tao (MT), echoed in the tag line "A Journal of Our Changing Perceptions of Reality", originated more than thirty years ago. It was still the era of paper and ink, and my original vision was a magazine printed on recycled paper with vegetable based ink. I even had a printing press in mind, a used Multilith 1250 offset printing press like the ones I used in the Army.

But I was newly wed, and newly starting a software consulting business, and the magazine dream was set aside.

Just as our perceptions of reality change over time, my vision for MT changed over time, moving from the age of ink and paper into the electronic age and the Internet age. And here we are.

The event that sparked the idea that led to MT was a lunch gathering of former employees of Columbine Systems in Atlanta. One of my former coworkers, I think it was Mike Green, was talking about his wife's work at a home for people with dementia. He was talking about her morning routine of "RO", or Reality Orientation, which consisted of asking people, or perhaps reminding them, what day it was, what month and year it was.

Which cracked me up.

Why? Because the things that they were considering "reality", like dates and times, have no basis in physical reality. They are just concepts, ideas in people's heads, that the majority of people have agreed to treat as real. Saying people had to know the date and time in order to be in touch with reality struck me as completely absurd; in fact, it was the so-called "normal" people who were out of touch with reality, or at best in touch with a reality that only exists as an idea that people have agreed to treat as reality.

That observation, or realization if you will, was just the beginning for me. As I looked at other things considered foundational to our society it became clear how much of civilization is built on ephemeral ideas that people treat as reality.

Consider money for instance. Everyone treats money as though it is something with physical reality, but it is only an agreed upon symbol, a method of "keeping score". You might be able to say a bit of gold has a certain value that will allow you to trade it for something like food, but once you abstract that gold into paper and ink, or even further into electronic records, it is clear that money in and of itself does not exist, that it is only an idea, even if it is an idea people take so seriously they will kill over it.

To me this is emblematic of all modern life, the confusion of symbols with reality, the placing of value on things that do not exist and the subsequent devaluation of real things that real people need to lead real lives.

And that is what MT intends to portray, the many ways in which modern life tries to say illusion is real and reality is illusion. We will do so, and have fun along the way.

Being MT,
Tex