Escapism

I saw you at the Central Station today. In your hoodie. Oblivious of the crowd. Enchanted, not by a broccoli forest, but by your smartphone.

My brain saw you before my eyes did and it gently steered me to the right to avoid a collision. Although my heart missed a beat, my step didn't falter and I continued to Moderna Museet.

I watched the exhibitions, sculpture after sculpture. And I wondered about what we choose to perceive. Social realism is not my thing. "I get enough of that in reality" I say when friends want me to watch a Roy Andersson movie. I also hide behind my camera, preferring not to see myself, unless reflected in some shiny object. It's a way of life. I try to not stay in the moment.

I suppose we' humans are good at not talking about the elephant in the room. We rather pretend to be saints and look the other way. Or ghosts, omnipresent but not really interacting. Nowadays, we can even let technology help us select what to focus on through augmented reality. Perhaps I should develop some Google Glass software that identifies people who are likely to make you miserable and gives you a nudge in another direction. I think the market is bigger than just me.

You didn't see me. I don't think you ever saw me. Saw. Me. I didn't want to see you. Not the real you. So, what did we see in each other? Perhaps we were just means for self-expansion and self-supression. What I do know, is that the elephant is still here.

We Never Went to Arthur's Seat

I've just finished watching the film One Day. It wasn't my choice and as I suspected, it hit a little too close for comfort. Still, I think it was a great movie with lots of truths in it. Or maybe not.

In one recent episode of Philosophy Bites, Peter Lamarque talks about the claim that great works of fiction often contains important truths about what it is to be human. He does not think so.

As an example, he uses Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and its famous beginning: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

I think the point he tries to make, is that we should look for the truth and real knowledge elsewhere and see fiction as providing other values. What is called "deeper truths" revealed in literature are perhaps things we need to think about and pay attention to, but perhaps they have no black and white answers and maybe it doesn't matter. For example, there's been no study investigating if happy families are more alike than unhappy ones and I don't think anyone would like to really know for sure. I suppose his book, The Philosophy of Literature, is not to be considered as fiction.

For a constructivist, of course, there is no truth, or perhaps more to the point, many truths. Perhaps we should develop the concept of "true truth" further, in accordance with the Cloud Atlas. Maybe then we can find the way to universal truths. Or at least the way to Arthur's Seat.