When
someone looks at a massive work of human effort, like architecture or a giant
mural, they feel a sense of awe because it reminds them of their own smallness
in proportion to the world. But what they’re looking at isn’t natural expanse;
it’s human bigness. Maybe it’s not a reminder of our insignificance, but the
opposite. We wonder if we also contain multitudes, or if we’ll always be
microscopic compared to the
neighboring giants.
I voiced this to Mike and he sees it differently. He thinks that when we look at human creations, we’re affected more by physical scale than by thoughts of psychological size/effort. He then showed me a game he’s been playing called Katamari Forever, in which the player starts out tiny and steadily grows bigger as they roll up their surroundings into a giant ball that eventually becomes a sacrifice to a god and is made into a star. When they’re smaller, they’re dominated by their surroundings and are easy prey. But then as they grow and start to absorb people, and then trees and buildings and eventually sea monsters and floating islands and planets, everything starts to look more abstract to the point where individuals don’t even register anymore. And then you’re reminded of your smallness again when you present the ball of everything to the deity, and he accepts or rejects it seemingly on a whim.
I’d like to believe that people, and living beings in general, interact on a more profound level than predator vs. prey, and that we can resist the urge to crush or absorb others once we reach enormity. And that it takes something other than intimidation to remind us of compassion. I like that game, but it seems to reduce consciousness to those binary terms, and I’m not sure I identify with that.
I voiced this to Mike and he sees it differently. He thinks that when we look at human creations, we’re affected more by physical scale than by thoughts of psychological size/effort. He then showed me a game he’s been playing called Katamari Forever, in which the player starts out tiny and steadily grows bigger as they roll up their surroundings into a giant ball that eventually becomes a sacrifice to a god and is made into a star. When they’re smaller, they’re dominated by their surroundings and are easy prey. But then as they grow and start to absorb people, and then trees and buildings and eventually sea monsters and floating islands and planets, everything starts to look more abstract to the point where individuals don’t even register anymore. And then you’re reminded of your smallness again when you present the ball of everything to the deity, and he accepts or rejects it seemingly on a whim.
I’d like to believe that people, and living beings in general, interact on a more profound level than predator vs. prey, and that we can resist the urge to crush or absorb others once we reach enormity. And that it takes something other than intimidation to remind us of compassion. I like that game, but it seems to reduce consciousness to those binary terms, and I’m not sure I identify with that.
