Things aren’t always what they seem, of course. Take a
familiar illusion caused by the way that light bends through water as an
example. I remember reaching for a colorful pebble in the bed of a clear
mountain stream when I was a young child and being shocked to find that the
bottom was farther than it appeared and the rock was nowhere near where I
thought I put my hand. My grandfather told me that his mother’s people
understood about this illusion, and to compensate for the distortion they would
hold the tip of their fishing spear under the water, and gage their aim by
where the tip appeared to be instead of where it really was.
Events may appear transparent at times. There is a seductive
illusion that our perception is actually enhanced by the smoke and heat of
civilization. And then we immerse ourselves in the stream and find that we are
all victims of a lethal foreshortening.
If corporate industrial mass society was a Chinese
restaurant, I would be a suicide bomber with a jones for Lo Mein.
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