Tag: philosophy

Anything for the story

A few months ago, there was a wonderful episode of This American Life—#454: Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory—in which the show featured the experiences of one Mike Daisey’s visit to an Apple contractor in China. The show was an emotionally super-charged look at the deplorable conditions that workers in electronics factories endure every day, to produce the shiny gadgets that you and I enjoy Angry Birds on.

Recently, This American Life released another wonderful episode—#460: Retraction—after discovering that Mr. Daisey had fabricated many of the details making up the heart of the previous piece. This episode, rife with awkward pauses, attempted to separate fact from fiction as the host and correspondents of the show confronted Mr. Daisey.

Huzzah for journalistic integrity, if that is something you care about. But that’s not how we roll here on actuality.log, where the story is always more important than the facts.

I leave you with a select quote from Mr. Daisey that adequately captures my feelings on the matter:

“I think I was terrified that if I untied these things, that the work that I know is really good and tells a story, that does these really great things for making people care, that it would come apart in a way where it would ruin everything.”

The myth of normalcy

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This might seem strange coming from someone who claims to be a scientist, but I’m fairly convinced that there is no such thing as objective reality. After numerous conversations with people around, I’m beginning to realise that everyone’s perception of reality is just that—it’s simply their own. No amount of arguing or attempts at homogenising their outlooks can change that; everybody just lives in the world they concoct for themselves.

Normalcy, morality, sanity, … are just figments of our imaginations. They’re illusions concocted by a dominant few who arrive at a vaguely consistent view of the world, and attempt to impose their perspectives on the masses.

I’ve been analysing some of my more-bitter tirades over these past weeks, and I now see what I’d been wrestling with: I don’t enjoy being told how I ought to perceive my life. I just want to be allowed to perceive my life.