“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Bryant's Glasses

I know exactly what Levi means. One's first pair of glasses is quite a shock, usually a pleasant one I guess, but one in which you seem not to be in the same world at all any more.

These different worlds are predicated on the existence of real objects such as your eyes, your street and the street lamps, which go from being fuzzy spherical angels to neat luminous droplets.

One theory in Buddhism is that while you or I see a bottle of water as a refreshing drink, a hell being sees it as a Molotov cocktail.

The sudden shift from no specs to specs can be enlightening. But then you forget about that. The contours of your Umwelt are sealed.



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