Saturday, November 4, 2017

World Views

We don't all live in the same world

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Of course this is only one concrete world around us, where things happen regardless of how we perceive them.  But as human beings our upbringing and experiences give each of us at least a somewhat different world, for instance in any society a man's world and a woman's world are not exactly the same.  In different societies the world is seen somewhat differently, if you're a fundamentalist Muslim in the mountains of Pakistan your world is quite different from that of the agnostic freethinker working as a lifeguard on the Santa Barbara beach.
 
But on top of the world we experience personally, there's a yet another big variable.  Which is the conscious or semconscious decision to choose the world we want to live in.  That's where you can decide that you belong to a different race, or you really are more of a cat than a human being, or you are actually perfect in all significant ways and thus, can never be wrong about anything.
 
Here's a great example of choosing a different world for yourself.
 
Kern Burns said, at the Newseum preview of the Vietnam series on 13 June 2017, in Washington, DC, that in making the film they had not been interested in dry facts, "but in an emotional reality." This was witnessed by those in attendance, including Dr. Lewis Sorley.
 
Yep, that's the world where emotions trump anything else.  All that is of significance is how you "feel" about things, and you don't have to give any thought to what that hard outside world of actual facts and actions and consequences might mean.
 
This is OK for a teenage kid, and maybe even for some comparatively harmless people who want to live in the commune and go Vegan and work harder at growing flowers than their food, and maybe have little ceremonies to honor Gaia, the spirit that enevates all life on the planet.
 
But if you're going to make a documentary, and such presentations are supposed to be about bringing a clear view of reality to people, then maybe prioritizing "emotional reality" is about as helpful as the surgeon operating on you prioritizing thinking about his/her golf game while having hands and a knife inside your gut.
 
Then again, I'm just one of those old guys who remembers the "emotional reality" of hearing the sharp snap of bullets passing close by and how much heavier a dead body is to carry than a live one.  Or listening to the survivors of "re-education" about finding the right bugs to eat, or the boat people who survived Thai pirates talk about their sisters who were taken away and never seen again.  All that is so far outside the world of Mr. Burns that there is no measuring that gap.
 
Del

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