If We Percieved Like Goldfish Picasso Would Be Among The Wealthy
In Plato’s allegory of the human condition, we are tied by chains in a dark cave, able to see a passing parade of objects we think real but which are only cast shadows. Since the Renaissance it has been held that the world is a tangible phenomenon slowly being unraveled by science. An alternative view is that its a mirage, a construct of imagination. A web of ideas, a fabric of our own making.
Stephen Hawking: ‘ we see the universe the way it is because if it were different, we would not be here to observe it.’ And, on a less metaphysical plane, Werner Heisenberg: ‘what we observe is not nature exposed to our method of questioning.’ Or plainly put, what a piece of bread looks like depends on whether you’re hungry or not. Our notion of reality is molded by our parents, schooling and culture. Since we all come from different backgrounds so do our perception of things. That is not to say we experience totally different things but different aspects of those things. The Hindu’s view of a cow in no way corresponds to that of a canning factory meatpacker, and in Instanbul they keep their pigs in the zoo instead of making them into sausages. We build our own models of reality. Even those created by Newton or Einstein or fashioned by Picasso or James Joyce, are merely alternative versions of the same hologram. To alter our particular personal construct requires a substantial leap of imagination as we need to see things from a new angle. And only when this is expressed through a creative action, can it be experienced by others. At which point their perceptions can also change. Tolstoy described it this way: first one had to evoke a feeling in oneself; and having evoked it in oneself by means of movements, lines, colors, or words, then one had to transmit that feeling so others could share the same feelings. When Picasso showed his portrait of Gertrude Stein to someone (probably Alice) they remarked it didn’t look much like her. ‘It will’, prophesied Picasso. Of course not it does. Another oft-quoted story makes the point. Seeing Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at an exhibition opening a man approached Picasso (who was hanging around) and asked why he didn’t paint people the way they looked. ‘Well, how do they look?’ Asked Picasso. The man took a photo of his wife from his wallet and handed it over. Picasso looked at the picture; then handing it back, said,’she is small, isn’t she. And flat too.’ What things look like is a convention not a truth, as how we see things us a weird amalgam of observer and observed. We have to accept the uncomfortable fact that much of what seems real to us is governed by our own perceptions. During his lifetime Van Gogh couldn’t give his paintings away yet eighty years after his death Sunflowers (all a 14 of them) was sold for £24.75 million. The painting hadn’t changed but the aesthetic and visual attitudes had. Now the artworld considers there is a string possibility that is is a fake. Naturally the owners, a Japanese Corporation, won’t even countenance such allegations.
Of course you may find all this sort of thing a bit tedious and prefer to be a goldfish. The awareness of a goldfish is about 4 seconds, so it never gets bored as each trip around the bowl is a new journey. A condition which has advantages.
