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capri0mniAnd I'll try to keep this brief.
(Icon description: An abstract falling leaf pattern in dark green; the overlyaing caption reads: "A tree will fall in the forest and the forest will hear.")
So: Late in May, I made a mid-year resolution to return to a daily writing practice.
After six weeks and a bit of this, I've discovered something:
I can not write a scene (no matter how small) with "no one" in it.
Even in a scene as brief as:
"The sun shone brightly on the ocean waves."
There's someone there to see that. That someone is unnamed, and undescribed. But someone is there. The moment I go into any further detail is the moment that someone's character begins to be revealed. If I describe the color of the water as: "the color of tarnished copper" (for example), then the scene is being witnessed by someone who knows the color of tarnished copper. Or, as the scene unfolds from my imagination, I might start to realize that I'm writing it from the p.o.v. of a personified rock on the shore, or maybe a fish being dropped on the deck of the fishing boat, or maybe the boat itself.
But every scene has a witness.
That is what has always bothered me about that old philolosophical riddle: "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it -- Does it make a sound?"
If the tree is in a forest,
Then
Someone is there to hear it.
Even if the other forest's other vegetation can't hear (as we understand hearing), I can't imagine a forest without birds, and bugs, and mammals, and reptiles, and -- on and on. Forests are crowded places, by definition, and they're crowded with many creatures with ears.
But the whole question presupposes that humans are the only "Someones" -- the only real inhabitants in the world -- that, Matrix-like, the rest of existance is generated only by our own minds. It's a perspective that leads to a callous disregard for other living things, and also a willingness to trash our objects, and things we've created.
That presupposition might come from the premise that in order to be a "someone," who can perceive, and feel, and understand, you have to have a soul. And only humans have souls, because we are made in God's image, and God gave us souls....
Maybe that's why so many* Fundamentalist Christians can't understand how an atheist can have any morals at all, and think we must all be self-centered and callous.
...I don't know... just a thought that rises in my head, now and then.
Then again, I've held some sort of Animist beliefs since as long as I can remember having a sense of "me-ness". So add salt to taste...
*Or at least, it seems like "many," based on the comments I've encountered from self-Proclaimed Fundamentalist Christians.
(Icon description: An abstract falling leaf pattern in dark green; the overlyaing caption reads: "A tree will fall in the forest and the forest will hear.")
So: Late in May, I made a mid-year resolution to return to a daily writing practice.
After six weeks and a bit of this, I've discovered something:
I can not write a scene (no matter how small) with "no one" in it.
Even in a scene as brief as:
"The sun shone brightly on the ocean waves."
There's someone there to see that. That someone is unnamed, and undescribed. But someone is there. The moment I go into any further detail is the moment that someone's character begins to be revealed. If I describe the color of the water as: "the color of tarnished copper" (for example), then the scene is being witnessed by someone who knows the color of tarnished copper. Or, as the scene unfolds from my imagination, I might start to realize that I'm writing it from the p.o.v. of a personified rock on the shore, or maybe a fish being dropped on the deck of the fishing boat, or maybe the boat itself.
But every scene has a witness.
That is what has always bothered me about that old philolosophical riddle: "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it -- Does it make a sound?"
Then
Someone is there to hear it.
Even if the other forest's other vegetation can't hear (as we understand hearing), I can't imagine a forest without birds, and bugs, and mammals, and reptiles, and -- on and on. Forests are crowded places, by definition, and they're crowded with many creatures with ears.
But the whole question presupposes that humans are the only "Someones" -- the only real inhabitants in the world -- that, Matrix-like, the rest of existance is generated only by our own minds. It's a perspective that leads to a callous disregard for other living things, and also a willingness to trash our objects, and things we've created.
That presupposition might come from the premise that in order to be a "someone," who can perceive, and feel, and understand, you have to have a soul. And only humans have souls, because we are made in God's image, and God gave us souls....
Maybe that's why so many* Fundamentalist Christians can't understand how an atheist can have any morals at all, and think we must all be self-centered and callous.
...I don't know... just a thought that rises in my head, now and then.
Then again, I've held some sort of Animist beliefs since as long as I can remember having a sense of "me-ness". So add salt to taste...
*Or at least, it seems like "many," based on the comments I've encountered from self-Proclaimed Fundamentalist Christians.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 10:00 pm (UTC)But, of course, you're right:
The Cat would certainly be aware if it were suddenly poisoned, or not.
Mostly, those old school thought experiments just lead me to think that quantam physicists are a neurotically morbid lot: getting their jollies by imagining going back in time to kill their own grandfathers, or poisoning kitty cats locked in black boxes....
I mean... really!