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my brain on too much caffeine?
Aug. 14th, 2008 07:28 pmRight, so, we're all familiar with the concept of alternate realities branching off from different outcomes of actions and decisions, but I was watching telly today and this background conversation in Willow and Tara's sociology class got me to thinking -- well, actually, it got me to pacing around the room talking to myself and gesticulating wildly and making happy squee noises of intense geekitude. Anyway, apparently they were discussing perception? It went like this --
Now, what the professor probably meant was that there are countless perceived realities, but what if alternate realities could also spin off of perceived realities as well as possible outcomes? Mind you, I know very little about this sort of theory, and I am by and large formulating these thoughts as I type, but -- what if for every perception there was an alternate reality in which that perception was truth? The problem with this is that a) it's confusing like whoa, and b) there are so many perceptions, many of which don't make very much sense. (Why hello there, Harry Potter, master of the incorrect assumption!) Would the perception have to reach a certain level before it could branch off into a separate reality? At the same time, what is reality but how we filter it? Think of Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, which shows four different versions of the same event. (Now, that wasn't quite the film I originally thought it was going to be -- I was picturing a treatise on memory and how four different people might remember the same thing differently, how they might notice different things, not how they might tell other people what occurred and therefore lie. Memory is biased, but less biased than telling. Only now I want to make the film that I thought this was going to be, using different colour schemes and angles and details and lighting for each memory -- Aaagh. Anyway.)
Also, I have ceased to make sense even to myself. Someone else say something? Am I completely off the wall? How interestingly could this be developed into a science fiction novel? :p
WILLOW: Because social phenomena don't have unproblematic objective existences. They have to be interpreted and given meanings by those who encounter them.
PROFESSOR: Nicely put. So, Ruby, does that mean there are countless realities?
Now, what the professor probably meant was that there are countless perceived realities, but what if alternate realities could also spin off of perceived realities as well as possible outcomes? Mind you, I know very little about this sort of theory, and I am by and large formulating these thoughts as I type, but -- what if for every perception there was an alternate reality in which that perception was truth? The problem with this is that a) it's confusing like whoa, and b) there are so many perceptions, many of which don't make very much sense. (Why hello there, Harry Potter, master of the incorrect assumption!) Would the perception have to reach a certain level before it could branch off into a separate reality? At the same time, what is reality but how we filter it? Think of Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, which shows four different versions of the same event. (Now, that wasn't quite the film I originally thought it was going to be -- I was picturing a treatise on memory and how four different people might remember the same thing differently, how they might notice different things, not how they might tell other people what occurred and therefore lie. Memory is biased, but less biased than telling. Only now I want to make the film that I thought this was going to be, using different colour schemes and angles and details and lighting for each memory -- Aaagh. Anyway.)
Also, I have ceased to make sense even to myself. Someone else say something? Am I completely off the wall? How interestingly could this be developed into a science fiction novel? :p
