It’s a very interesting question. Is ‘our best self’ an unbroken self that is uniform? Would the perfect woman be identical to the perfect man? Perfectly tolerant, perfectly kind, perfectly … physically symmetrical? Following an absolutely uniform developmental pathway through life? Or are there only two platonic ideals in humanity, separated by gender? Or instead, are there trade-offs which require that each perfect person would be a different person and the whole of humanity can only be effectively flawless e pluribus unum? From which frame, we are individually also broken, but not in a way that when fixed would result in uniformity? Thus our umwelt flows from both our best selves and our worst selves – and we often can’t disentangle them because in selecting a model of our better self, we are not usually clear about which way we are being true to our better nature as compared to aping someone else’s and further (but differently) distorting our own.
April 17, 2012
It doesn’t have the same philosophical poignancy as a wagon or toboggan, I suppose.
Also, by extension, there is no actual comic.
April 17, 2012
Overt surrealism.
April 17, 2012
Overt Emerson-ism.
I had a transparent eyeball once. I lost it. Next time i’ll get a translucent eyeball.
April 19, 2012
Eyeballs, changing, surrealism, all made me think of this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-xJpqLcvlE&feature=youtube_gdata_player
April 19, 2012
It’s a very interesting question. Is ‘our best self’ an unbroken self that is uniform? Would the perfect woman be identical to the perfect man? Perfectly tolerant, perfectly kind, perfectly … physically symmetrical? Following an absolutely uniform developmental pathway through life? Or are there only two platonic ideals in humanity, separated by gender? Or instead, are there trade-offs which require that each perfect person would be a different person and the whole of humanity can only be effectively flawless e pluribus unum? From which frame, we are individually also broken, but not in a way that when fixed would result in uniformity? Thus our umwelt flows from both our best selves and our worst selves – and we often can’t disentangle them because in selecting a model of our better self, we are not usually clear about which way we are being true to our better nature as compared to aping someone else’s and further (but differently) distorting our own.
April 19, 2012
And what about those who swing both way? AC/DCs.
April 19, 2012
AC/DC don’t rent a transparent eyeball, they rent a stiff upper lip.
April 22, 2012
Everyday I become a little less perfect,