Saturday, December 08, 2007
ANT 323 – an eruption of the real
During a boring afternoon, I began thinking about the course, and it made me wonder whether the course is actually an eruption of the real for those that are taking it. Does learning about the constructedness of your reality debunk your reality? Does the real erupt into reality simply by learning about the fakeness of our reality? I would argue that it doesn’t. Simply knowing and learning something is quite different from the actual experience of that something. I believe that by just knowing about the constructiveness of reality, you have the notion of fakeness, yet you do not experience it. Because the reality is so pervasive in our everyday life, savvy reflexivity plays a rather small part in our understandings of the reality. Knowing something as constructed does not really intrude on our sense of reality because we have no idea of an alternative
I am not sure if anybody mentioned this in an earlier blog, but the movie The Matrix portrays the idea of the real and the reality very nicely. I think we should definitely watch this film in class. In the movie, the reality is characterized by the everyday life, and the protagonist, Neo, is freed from this fake world. It’s funny that Professor Kalmar mentioned déjà vu as a surplus of the real. In a part of the movie, Neo notices a déjà vu during his expedition back into the reality. Apparently, déjà vus in the movie is an indicator of the existence of the matrix (the symbolic). When the matrix needs to make a change in its programming, a déjà vu occurs as the lag time inbetween the changes. There is a very Buddhist philosophical outlook of the film. In the end, Neo is able to completely be freed, and he sees and understands the matrix as it is – just a construction. During the ending scene, Neo is shot by the agents (those trying to rid the human resistance and protect the reality, reinforcers of the matrix). But he does not die. His vision of the matrix has changed from seeing images projected by the matrix to seeing the matrix for what it really is – just a program. In the end, he actually sees the codes that the matrix uses to create the reality. I think he has become invincible when he is within the matrix program because he understands the construction of the reality. By understanding that it is fake, it cannot harm him. This is similar to the Buddhist view of the reaching of enlightenment, nirvana.
Being a Buddhist myself, I am swayed into believing that everything is the real. I do not believe there is true understanding of anything in the world. To understand is to make exclusions – you can only understand something through exlusion. What is a book? A book is something that has qualities that non-books do not have. The requirement of understanding anything is dependant on comparison. Human understanding of anything requires this notion of comparison and exclusionary categorization. So is the act of trying to understand something an eruption of the real? Surely, it allows us to understand the constructiveness of the reality. Yet this is often overlooked because we are so involved in the reality. I would argue that all knowledge, even knowledge about the existence of the real and reality, it all falls under the reality realm. There is no understanding of anything at all because to understand objects is to fall into the symbolic of our understanding through exclusion and comparison. So our course, ANT323, is not an eruption of the real because to understand the reality and the real purely through human rationalization is dependant on our ability to understand through the symbolic. I am beginning to sound like a nihilist now.
During a boring afternoon, I began thinking about the course, and it made me wonder whether the course is actually an eruption of the real for those that are taking it. Does learning about the constructedness of your reality debunk your reality? Does the real erupt into reality simply by learning about the fakeness of our reality? I would argue that it doesn’t. Simply knowing and learning something is quite different from the actual experience of that something. I believe that by just knowing about the constructiveness of reality, you have the notion of fakeness, yet you do not experience it. Because the reality is so pervasive in our everyday life, savvy reflexivity plays a rather small part in our understandings of the reality. Knowing something as constructed does not really intrude on our sense of reality because we have no idea of an alternative
I am not sure if anybody mentioned this in an earlier blog, but the movie The Matrix portrays the idea of the real and the reality very nicely. I think we should definitely watch this film in class. In the movie, the reality is characterized by the everyday life, and the protagonist, Neo, is freed from this fake world. It’s funny that Professor Kalmar mentioned déjà vu as a surplus of the real. In a part of the movie, Neo notices a déjà vu during his expedition back into the reality. Apparently, déjà vus in the movie is an indicator of the existence of the matrix (the symbolic). When the matrix needs to make a change in its programming, a déjà vu occurs as the lag time inbetween the changes. There is a very Buddhist philosophical outlook of the film. In the end, Neo is able to completely be freed, and he sees and understands the matrix as it is – just a construction. During the ending scene, Neo is shot by the agents (those trying to rid the human resistance and protect the reality, reinforcers of the matrix). But he does not die. His vision of the matrix has changed from seeing images projected by the matrix to seeing the matrix for what it really is – just a program. In the end, he actually sees the codes that the matrix uses to create the reality. I think he has become invincible when he is within the matrix program because he understands the construction of the reality. By understanding that it is fake, it cannot harm him. This is similar to the Buddhist view of the reaching of enlightenment, nirvana.
Being a Buddhist myself, I am swayed into believing that everything is the real. I do not believe there is true understanding of anything in the world. To understand is to make exclusions – you can only understand something through exlusion. What is a book? A book is something that has qualities that non-books do not have. The requirement of understanding anything is dependant on comparison. Human understanding of anything requires this notion of comparison and exclusionary categorization. So is the act of trying to understand something an eruption of the real? Surely, it allows us to understand the constructiveness of the reality. Yet this is often overlooked because we are so involved in the reality. I would argue that all knowledge, even knowledge about the existence of the real and reality, it all falls under the reality realm. There is no understanding of anything at all because to understand objects is to fall into the symbolic of our understanding through exclusion and comparison. So our course, ANT323, is not an eruption of the real because to understand the reality and the real purely through human rationalization is dependant on our ability to understand through the symbolic. I am beginning to sound like a nihilist now.
# posted by Anonymous @ 10:07 AM 
