Plague Journal, Why We Should Give It Another Try
Why wouldn’t there be as many real worlds as there are imaginary ones?
Why would there be only one real world?
Why such a mode of exception?
In reality, the notion of a real world existing among all other possible worlds is unimaginable.
It is unthinkable, except perhaps as a dangerous superstition.
We must stay away from that, just as critical thought once stayed away (in the name of the real!) from religious superstition.
Thinkers, give it another try!
— excerpt Radical Thought, by Jean Baudrillard
Last night I attended a virtual meeting of the Socrates Cafe. Eight of us were “present” as a postage stamp pixel painting, a tiny glowing facsimile upon our screens. In the course of the conversation I offered my recollection of two squirrels playing at the far corner of our backyard, where they’d be protected from any approaching predator. Two tree climbing rodents twisted and turned in a wrestling match upon the ground for the better part of a minute. I have seen squirrels play before, chase one another from tree to tree, and up a tree, following, as they jump from limb to limb. I mentioned to the group gathered on screen, the scene as an example of the unalloyed exuberance of mammals which we can never know, and only observe. Perhaps the ballet of bodies, the physical grappling was their mating ritual?
Another member of our group questioned how I could know anything at all about the squirrels activities, as I inevitably am attributing human characteristics to squirrel behavior. I replied that of course I am. Why cannot my anthropomorphizing be as appropriate as is an authentic display of impassioned joy by both animals? Two worlds may exist co-extensively. Why reduce things to a binary disjunction?
Another member of our group offered whereas we cannot know with certainty the emotional state of animals (shorthand for Nature), — there is no clear reason not to pave over the better part of the world, to accommodate the automobiles which our ever burgeoning population desires… I could not deny his premise. The inevitable attribution of human meanings to all that we observe, defeats any certain knowledge of what experience is for squirrels, or for any feature that is a nonhuman living organism, plant or animal. We must create a fictional model of our sense experience, along the lines of the only being that we know from the inside out. Anthropomorphism!
How many “real” worlds are possible?
Careful, careful you thinkers…
Give it another try.
4 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Why We Should Give It Another Try”
What would Thoreau say? Don’t have a definitive answer, but it is my belief that we, as a nation? society? Have largely lost touch with the natural world and could use a healthy due of natural philosophy.
Based upon my reading of Thoreau’s words, he would likely express himself along the lines of your “losing touch” metaphor. There are many versions of “reality.” Thoreau was proponent of a lost reality, one that we desperately need to reclaim. Baudrillard suggests that we are lost in a hall of mirrors, a fun house of our own making. We regard our simulacra as real.
‘Pave Paradise’ by Joni Mitchell would be most appropriate –
“Don’t it always seem to go,
that you don’t what until it’s gone,
You pave paradise and,
put up a parking lot”
And Walden’s Pond was only twenty miles from town. Another country heard from.
Blessings