We do not see things as they are, nor do we even see them as we are, but only as we believe our story to have been.
The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is better than A Shore Thing, by Snooki. And it may be; Snooki definitely has more one-star reviews on Amazon. But if literary value is real, no one seems to be able to locate it or define it very well. We__e increasingly adrift in a grey void of aesthetic relativism.
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The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is better than A Shore Thing, by Snooki. And it may be; Snooki definitely has more one-star reviews on Amazon. But if literary value is real, no one seems to be able to locate it or define it very well. We__e increasingly adrift in a grey void of aesthetic relativism.
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Yes, there is an outside world, and yes, there is an objective reality, but in moving through this world, we constantly apply unconscious filter mechanisms, and in doing so, we unknowingly construct our own individual world, which is our "reality tunnel.
I do not mean, of course, that we can always accurately express our conscious thoughts with Proustian accuracy. Consciousness overflows language: we perceive vastly more than we can describe.
If truth is not objective, there is no good or evil. There is only what people do and how people feel about it.
When we teach people that suspending moral judgments is a virtue, the necessary outcome is moral horror.
Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.