HUGO: Nothing in your world is denied it‟s just that, in addition, your world is
entangled in other worlds that we
do not understand. This is a fact which you have to
place
alongside....alongside...the claimed fact that this is a chair and my
feet are
firmly on the ground. Despite the
earth rotating and hurtling through space. Our world
is in fact many worlds and what
you and I see are illusions or delusions which we
reify into reality. But reality
is elsewhere getting on with it without any input from us.
Look we are perceivers. We are an
awareness; we are not objects; we have no
solidity. The world of objects
and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth
convenient. It is only a
description and I would call it a deception that was created to
help us. We, or rather our reason,
forget that the description is only a description and
thus we entrap the totality of
ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely
emerge in our lifetime. I‟m quoting Castaneda,
there.
HUGO: So the populace tune into
that pornographic media babble. For we hope to be told
that beneath all this there is
still concealed a true universe. One safe place where we exist. So
we sit, watch, listen and wait
for the news. But if you want to be part of the drive that opens
a few logic gates…beyond
convention and routine not going to do it by listening to the
„experts‟. Instead of analysing
soaps at University, why don‟t kids do „expert‟ studies?
Analyse the knowingness of the „experts‟ that are
trotted out by the media.
HUGO: So the populace tune into
that pornographic media babble. For we hope to be told
that beneath all this there is
still concealed a true universe. One safe place where we exist. So
we sit, watch, listen and wait
for the news. But if you want to be part of the drive that opens
a few logic gates…beyond
convention and routine not going to do it by listening to the
„experts‟. Instead of analysing
soaps at University, why don‟t kids do „expert‟ studies?
Analyse the knowingness of the „experts‟ that are
trotted out by the media.
Lack of practice. If I was
teaching I would ask the kids to imagine say...fish in a
pond. And I would explain that
the fish can see the other dimension to their world by the rain
spattering on the surface of the
pond. In that way they detect a third dimension. For us, we
think in four dimensions, and the
fifth dimension is detected by light. So think of something,
anything to do with light.
EUGENE: Sorry, being a bit slow
here on the uptake.
HUGO: As we are here, let‟s take
„colour‟ that depends on light. Think of something to do
with colour.
EUGENE: I don‟t know, my
daughter, eh, putting her hand in a palate of colours.
HUGO: But colours don‟t exist.
EUGENE: They don‟t. Oh right,
it‟s light, refracted light, isn‟t it? Right, all coming back
to me. We had a...what was he
called?...Mr. Breen! Yes we had a Mr Breen for Physics.
Interesting old buffer. It‟s
interesting stuff.
HUGO: It is...and what‟s really
exciting about light, the thing that gives us the appearance
of colour, is that it has a
probability factor.
EUGENE: There is a chance element
to it?
HUGO: Yes, photons...the thing
light is made of....bounce of electrons and scatter, so the
moon reflected on the lake,
beloved of poets, has a probability element in it. I think I have got
that right. But I can never
understand that about writers why they haven‟t embraced all this. If
only Keats had really understood
how the rainbow was constituted how richer his poetry
would have been. Bloody hell,
come on, „Thou still unravish‟d bride of quietness‟
is a mighty funny way to describe
a Grecian urn. Isn't it?
EUGENE: Eh yes.
HUGO: We have to start
distrusting the idea that our beliefs, like Keats belief about the
rainbow, are accurate
representation of the world. It does not do harm to the mystery to know
a little about it. Science does
that for us. Now, what was it Wordsworth said of science? „...it
murders as it dissects.‟ That‟s complete bollocks.
Well eh...never mind the
bollocks.‟ so, in some sense, colour does exist?
HUGO: But not as an essence in
itself. It exists as a „result‟. Like us, it does not form the
essence of an object. There is no
essence...and that applies to us too. Essence is just lazy
thinking. Colour does not exist. The Polar Bear
isn‟t really white...
Your daughter? She can still
appreciate the beauty of a large animal that appears to
be white. But colour is not a
noun, something you can pick up. What about a world of noncolour?
If there were fifty people in
this room and we said think of „red‟, there would be fifty
different conceptions of „red‟.
And colours vary according to light, because when any colour
is placed in the shade, it
appears to be different from the same colour which is located in
light. Look
HUGO fished in
his pocket and takes out a tissue and places it under the bench.
HUGO: There you go. All colours
will agree in the dark. Who was it that said that? Bacon, I
think it was Bacon. (Taking
his seat again.) What excites me about colour is that it...just
reveals the limits of language.
It evades our best attempts to impose a rational order on it.
Colour makes you become acutely
aware of the insufficiency of language. The naming of
colours is no more than an act of
reason
Silence
HUGO: So how will you explain to your daughter about
colour?
said, if you had a daughter would
you want to take away her appreciation of say...a red
tint?
HUGO: Hmm. I don‟t know. Yes, I
do. I would tell my child that... the red tint was an
appearance that was in
effect....let‟s see if I can remember this...yes... EM light waves
calculated at 0.63 times 10 -6 M – 1/3....and if she
heard a loud bang I would tell her that what
she just heard, I would say don‟t
be frightened, that...was a large amplitude atmospheric
compression wave...and if she was
cold, I would tell her to warm...to warm her hands to a
mean molecular KE of about 6.5
times 10 ks M3/.
EUGENE: And she would understand
this, would she?
HUGO: She would understand
because everybody in her school would talk like that. In the
future people will talk like
that. In the future people won‟t sit on the beach and listen to the
„pounding of the surf.‟ They will
listen to the...eh...aperiodic atmospheric compression
...produced as the coherent
energy of the ocean waves...which are...which are...redistributed
in the chaotic turbulence of the
shallows.
EUGENE: Hmm.
/From the play The Mysterious Ambassador from the Real World by Peter P. Cheevers
HUGO: A red tint, a loud noise,
warm you hands, pounding surf are descriptions which are
false. I ask you what is the more
beautiful, those, or the approximate reality descriptions I
have given you. I‟m not claiming
my descriptions are exact.
EUGENE: Well...I have to
confess...give me the coherent energy redistributed in the chaotic
turbulence of the waves every
time. Did I get that right?
HUGO: (Laughs) But just
because colour doesn‟t exist in the same way as we previously
thought it to, doesn‟t mean your
daughter can‟t enjoy it.
EUGENE: It doesn‟t have to exist
to enjoy it. Is that what you are saying?
HUGO: Yes. For instance, there
were these Silver Birch trees in California, Fiona and |I
used to look at the leaves…
EUGENE: Fiona
EUGENE: ...and we used to think
how beautiful these leaves were. But we both knew it was
how the atoms were bonded in the
leaves…and it made us think of not only the beauty of the
colours but of the other
dimension of light.
EUGENE: So, being aware of that
other dimension, what did that do?
HUGO: Well, it just deepened our
appreciation of the beauty. We weren‟t seeing things in
darkness and believing them to be
in light, we were seeing them in light and believing them
to be in light
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