The World is a Stage … And you’re the two-bit comic relief

The universe is deterministic – free will non-existent and life utterly pointless. Topics for another day, but inherently valuable when considering the nature of truth in our world of appearances. What is truth, why should I care, and what does that mean for me?

Everybody knows what the truth is, I mean even a five year old can tell the truth – but thats not exactly the same as defining it. The truth is what we hold to be the objective reality of the world, but it’s naive to assume we can get the objective from the subjective, because isn’t that after all exactly what we inherit from being human? No matter how hard we try we will always be limited to the knowledge that we can gain (eg. we can’t consider factors that we don’t know about) and from our prejudices formed from past experiences clouding our interpretation of events. In light of this, we try to gain some objectivity about the world by confirming what we interpret with others. If you see a hovering man, you ask your friends if they see it too – eventually one of them will tell you that its just David Blaine lifting one foot off the ground, nevertheless you try and confirm that what your seeing is real by seeing if they see it too.

It is utterly undeniable then that all we have in this world is subjective appearances to go on, and hence all that matters is the subjective appearances that we present, and those that we believe. If you can convince everyone perfectly that you are something your not, then in reality haven’t become it – and no you obviously haven’t convinced people perfectly if they do discover your just posing as a brain surgeon.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker realised this in ‘Eek, A Penis!’, one of their more recent South Park episodes where Cartman helps inner-city kids do well in school by cheating. Although serious moral implications are raised, it begs the question: does it matter if you appear to be something your not? It answers resoundingly at the close of the show in Mr Garrison’s tirade after he regains his penis (did I forget to mention there was a sex-change mid episode?) which makes us realize that although he appeared as woman, he was really a man all along. It makes you realize that the truth only matters when the appearance slips up.

This realization has raised serious questions for me which I’ll consider over the coming weeks because isn’t success really just appearing even to yourself to be successful.