Personal Entry #1: Would We Believe A Perfect World

   "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your "perfect world". But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So, the perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from."

    The above quote is from the Matrix. The original first movie, not the dumb second and third ones. This quote illustrates an interesting point. If one day we woke up and for the entire day everything went perfectly. There was no traffic. You weren't tired. You didn't have to work for anything. Would you even believe you were really awake? I would guess that we have become so atuned to the suffering around us that if it were gone, something would feel off.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heidegger (I Guess)

In "The Origin of the Work of Art," Martin Heidegger characterizes the essence of art as work which contributes to the unconcealment ( aletheia ) of reality, i.e. the literal (or perhaps literary, given his emphasis on poetry) construction of truth. This philosophy/ontology seems quite compatible with Lewis's bit in "Myth Became Fact," wherein he describes myth as reality. Heidegger describes unconcealing as the existential project of the Dasein, i.e. the human being, and artistic manifestation of the aesthetic impulse is a prime way of doing this: realizing and bringing-forth qualities of Being, facilitating the dialectical relationship between world and earth. Poetry is a privileged art form for Heidegger, given the profound intertwining of language with the human condition (the Dasein ). "Language is the house of the truth of Being," says Heidegger. Thus, Lewis's proclamation that myth, i.e. narrative, i.e. a particular manifestation of poetic a...
Read more

The Liberal Arts Experience

When I was applying for colleges, I was for more concerned about getting accepted to any  school rather than any particular kind of college. So when it fell to a choice between CNU and Radford after my other 5 choices rejected me outright, it was an easy choice. But that choice was really between two liberal arts institutions. I always thought of those liberal arts classes as some sort of natural phenomena. Most people don't question why the sun has the appearance of rising every day, it's just a part of their lives. Something they accept and live with. So it was also with the fulfillment of my liberal learning classes. I didn't choose them any more than I chose to go to CNU. And with an attitude like that, I can't help but wonder if I was putting in enough effort to get any qualitative experiences out of them. An old English teacher of mine once said that we'll become real scholars when we start taking charge of our own education, and that idea has sort of stuck wi...
Read more

Inklings About Inklings

It seems quite strange to be reading a more autobiographical work about Lewis after spending all this last semester studying his fiction. Being empirically minded it feels like I've done things in reverse - perhaps I should have known the man before I came to know his myth. A poet might say they're one and the same, and perhaps so, but understanding the man can make the myth deeper. Of course, having thought about that concept for one moment longer, it can probably go both ways. I just recalled a band, as well as a series of t.v. shows that were made worse for me by having a greater understanding of the people behind them. So it may be just as well. Regardless, I was interested to learn that Lewis had an early fascination with Norse fiction, and was an avid reader his whole life. Many of his professors would go on to remark that they had never met a man more well-read in the classics. Also I found it quite interesting that after getting a degree in Philosophy, he could not find...
Read more