What is real to us? Do we ever truly know our friends or acquaintances? How do we verify if our surroundings are even concrete? Just because we can touch, feel, see - are we actually experiencing reality? Or is it just a fleeting glimpse of someone else's design? And if so, who? What? These questions have been pondered by some of the greatest minds that have ever pondered. But are we any closer to the answers??
Truman was brought up to think his world was real. His entire 'reality' as he knew it was a construct of his creator, Christof. Christof designed this elaborate world to disguise the outside REAL world from Truman. Truman could even taste the salty air surrounding his menagerie, and yet it wasn't true. So eloquently put: "We accept the reality of the world in which we are presented," responded Christof in interview. If Emerson were alive today, I think he would have retorted with one of his lines: "The mind does not create what it perceives, anymore than the eye creates the rose." R.W. Emerson
What are your thoughts?
1 comment:
Cool post, Ali.
Yeah, I guess it gets back to the nature of reality, and whether it can be known through perceptual experience if sensory information could be distorted and we presumed a perfect creator. Reminds me not only of Truman, but the Matrix, too.
No deep thoughts on this, but my gut reaction is that it'd be a little presumptuous of us to surmise that reality is contingent on us. If a tree falls in the woods and we're not there to hear, yep, it still falls. I think our worldview should be such that we realize that we're an overlay onto the natural world, rather than the other way around. Part of the Piaget development is understanding that as individuals we're not the center of our little worlds. This is a pretty big world, we're just a small little part. Our consciousness and reflection is unique as a species, but not necessary for the world to function. The idea of a manufactured or false reality requires a creator, too; Truman has Cristof, who imperfectly upholds the illusion, Neo has robots, who harvest people for energy in a manner that's contradictory to energy conservation, dudes in Plato's cave have a captor who impractically imprison them for years upon years without movement. Of course, these are all thought experiments and we're supposed to suspend disbelief to some degree, but the questions raised in what we have to accept to consider the question are salient; are we important enough that we merit all the work that goes into a fictitious reality, could reality be effectively manufactured (which I think is one of the questions we've touched on in class), and would there be some be some benefit to the creator (i.e. incentive to create and maintain the illusion)? I think all of those three questions are worth pondering. This is also up to debate, but I think the burden of proof is on those who would argue that reality is or could be false. Our null state is just chilling out thinking this is reality, and the three examples above (Truman, Matrix, Plato) fail at least one condition for the fake reality to exist.
A lot of the discussion in class was about whether or not Truman gets a fair deal. Looking more broadly, one of the ideas related to utilitarianism worth a ponder goes beyond Truman or the economic or happiness benefits accrued by the masses. What of the nature of the reality that's created and social implications? Like Cristof says, the show is watched the world over, and they're (literally) selling the vision of one man. His eden is white, middle-class, cookie cutter suburb living. There's only one African-American family and few (no?) other ethnicities presented, women hold stereotypically female positions and dress like 50s housewives, and again, Truman's dear old dad only seems out of place because he looks homeless. He's effectively selling and people are buying a vision of utopia that could be attacked from racist, sexist, and classist ideology. What about the ethics of presenting a socially regressive utopia?
tl;dr: what about the conditions for the question of a fake reality, and are those worth questioning, and what about the social implications of the reality presented?
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