Let's Agree to Disagree

            It was cold as Hell. I barely even felt my hands what with the air practically freezing my body in slow motion. It was pretty ugly. But it was delightfully wicked at the same time. Because I felt my heart freeze and, while it was extremely hard to act naturally, the agony of ecstasy of complete vulnerability was kind of enlightening. Some might think me a masochist. Lets agree to disagree.

            These, ladies and gentlemen, are antithetical statements. That means that they sandwiches (haha, sandwiches) of two opposing statements in a single sentence. I try to delve into how antithetical statements can bring a point across. I’ve heard they make for compelling speeches and yet I wonder. What exactly is ‘cold as Hell’? Since I happen o use that phrase quite often I’ve come to the conclusion that Hell is not noun as much as it is and adverb. It is basically an emphasis on the cold and yet the words themselves give the illusion of two opposite concepts melding into one. Pretty ugly also uses the former as an adverb and not as an adjective. These might seem so opposite in origin that one might wonder how they can come to make sense. But they can. And so the few of those statements that grace the pages of David Shield’s Reality Hunger might just mean more than I previously thought.

            In chapter O, Shields mentions a quote: “Something can be true and untrue at the same time.” I’m left staring at those words with a blank stare as I try to find some reasoning behind it. For starters, I’d just like to understand what he means by true. Truth is factual, things that are accurate. 2+2=4 can’t be true or untrue at the same time. ‘The sky is blue ‘ can, however. We label that slightly cerulean tint as blue and so that statement is true for most of the people that inhabit this earth. If there happens to be someone raised in some isolated cave in the middle of nowhere and is raised by a tribe with quite peculiar customs and rules, said person might refer to sky as ‘pink’ or ‘mghjk’ because that is true for them. Their pink is our blue. The truth is relative.

            Another such statement was “We're only certain ("certain only"?) about what we don't understand.” By that he’s trying to say that we know for sure what we don’t know. Ah, there I go making an antithetical statement myself. By that, I mean to say that we are only completely sure of what we don’t understand.  I, for one, admit to the fact that I know absolutely nothing about mechanics. I am certain about my lack of knowledge about soccer teams, the Greek Language, the sport of cricket, the sewing of rugs, the building of solar panels, the string theory, and I could go on and on to the point where my page span rivals that of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The fact of the matter is that we know for sure, and we can be completely certain of the things we don’t know. But as for the things that we do, for me let it be books, guitar chords, cooking recipes, there is always  the uncertainty that there is more, that we don’t know all there is to know, that the world is limitless in it’s supply of books, guitar chords, and cooking recipes.

            Probably my favorite one in the chapter is the following: “Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.” We as humans like to have it all figured out. I, for one, don’t openly welcome confusion and indecisiveness because it’s not what I aim for. It’s not what anyone aims for, I believe. And since art is in a way a for of human expression, a manifestation of the human condition via talent and skill, via the human itself, I think that is a main component: art should demonstrate mixed feelings, clearly. Great art is art not masked by blurry confusion in an attempt to overcome it, but the acceptance of said mixed feelings, the ability to accept it and build on it.

           

            These all lead to the main topic of the paradox of the nature of reality: reality is relative. It’s not nature, it’s nurture. We all make our own realities because reality realism and truth are a matter of experience. What for me is the reality of Mao Zedong as a mass murdered, after being informed by history books, that is, is for most of the Chinese population a hero. Our experiences differ and the way our brains mold said experience via our own molded perspective shape them into our own reality.