I’ve been thinking about how much of life is consensual illusion. I mean “illusion” in the sense of an invitation to make-believe.<\/p>\n
When an illusion is well done, we don’t even think about it. In a good production of “Hamlet”, we don’t sit there thinking “this is all obviously fake”. We know<\/i> it’s all fake, but we don’t care. The players have invited us into a make-believe world, and we gladly enter that world. We are deeply moved when Hamlet dies, even though we know it’s all a chimera created out of words and greasepaint.<\/p>\n
If someone were to simply announce “Here is he death scene from Hamlet” and then flatly recite Shakespeare’s lines, we would be unmoved. And if an actual<\/i> death transpired on-stage, most of us would be horrified, and perhaps deeply scarred by the experience. But that strange liminal space of consensual illusion, of willing suspension of disbelief, creates a safe conduit for the sharing of all sorts of deep and intense emotional experiences.<\/p>\n
A great magician does not merely perform tricks, but rather creates an invitation for us to enter an entire illusory world. Similarly, J.K. Rowling never claims that Hogwarts actually exists. We know<\/i> it doesn’t exist, and that gives us permission to happily go there and experience its reality. These invitations to enter the magic circle of shared illusion are so deeply woven into human nature that even small children immediately understand and accept them.<\/p>\n
This principle also pertains in places where we might not think to look for it. For example, I would argue that that the business of Apple Computer these days is, precisely, creating and marketing consensual illusion. Other companies that find themselves unable to compete with Apple for consumer mind-share don’t seem to realize that this is what Apple is really up to. These rival companies appear to be under the impression that it’s all about technology.<\/p>\n
Which of course it is not. Like most things that make people desperate to part with their money, it’s really about conjuring an irresistible world of magic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been thinking about how much of life is consensual illusion. I mean “illusion” in the sense of an invitation to make-believe. When an illusion is well done, we don’t even think about it. In a good production of “Hamlet”, we don’t sit there thinking “this is all obviously fake”. We know it’s all fake, … Continue reading “Consensual illusion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7172"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7172"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7177,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7172\/revisions\/7177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}