Christine (antonio campos, 2016)
"It wasn't supposed to be different, it was supposed to be good."
Teleology is the philosophy of understanding a thing in terms of its purpose, principle, or goal. It's about taking the end and working backwards (or working forwards with the end in mind) in order to understand more about the thing in question. Yes, but what, you may ask, is a purpose, principle or goal?
We've been here before, and we've discussed how some of these words can have different meanings depending on one's perspective. So instead of discussing apples (for a change) let's ask ourselves what might be *your* purpose, principle, or goal? And how can we have a teleological discussion about you?
There are biological imperatives bound up in you, that's for sure. There's the unfortunate unavoidability of growing older, there's the potential for having (or not having) children, and there's dying. At the base level, those are three things that we talk about when we talk about you. Yes, but is there more to you than that?
These photographs of you that I've found would seem to suggest so.
Kurt Vonnegut once said (or wrote) "We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be," but from looking at all these photos of you I'm finding it hard to work out who you're pretending to be. You feel like a myriad of different people.
Sometimes your face is all thunder. Sturm und drang. And sometimes you seem quite pleasant. Sometimes you're concentrating, lost in your thoughts, enveloped in a task. And sometimes you're staring off into the distance, blank behind the eyes. You have so many looks.
Now I move my attention away from you and onto the many other people who are in the pictures with you. It seems that a lot of who you are in these pictures is wrapped up in who you're with. Almost as if you were playing a number of different roles. As though the company you keep dictates to you (consciously or not) who you need to pretend to be. Yes, but what is your purpose in these moments? Your principles? Your goals?
If we imagine that there's a goal to your interactions with other people, then your interactions have a purpose. Something to gain. That's not a particularly unfair thing to say about you. You're pretty ambitious. There's a lot you want to attain that you don't already have. And you have a large number of principles. Things you believe in. And these principles play a fundamental role in what you perceive your purpose to be, in how you go about achieving your goals. This all starts to go some way to explaining why you seem so different in all these pictures.
Yes, but let's get specific. Let's look at one particular image.
In this picture, I'm looking at you looking at someone else. You're behind glass, a window, and the other person is simply a reflection. I can see them, but only as a reflection in a photograph. A third generation image. Some might say that this image of the other person can't be trusted, because of that distanciation. Whereas other might posit that this makes the image more trustworthy, as it places the person 'solidly' within the world. Hell, I don't know. Instead, let's drop this picture into the machine and explore it in more detail. The machine is old and clunky, but it allows us to move closer without losing resolution. We zoom in on the image of you behind the glass and it's at this point that I notice that there's another picture of you in the background. It's framed. Presumably the picture shows you on some kind of holiday. I don't know if it's a picture of you with your friends, or family, it's hard to tell. But you look happy in the picture. Happier than you look behind that window, anyway. Peering closer, in the glass of the framed picture I can make out the reflection of another image. It's a TV screen, and you're on the screen, looking into the camera. I'm not sure why you're on TV, but you seem more determined here, comfortable, as though you know what you're doing and are in charge. This is all good, but I feel that I'm not learning anything about you. So maybe I should remember that a lot of what you are is (or may) be wrapped up in the people around you. Bearing this in mind I decide to use the machine to zoom in on the image of the person reflected in the glass. The person that the 'original' 'you' in the photo is looking at. The photograph was taken on a bright day, so there are many images reflected in the window obfuscating the identity of this person. A lot of lines, a lot of colours break everything up. But thanks to the machine we can clear up this noise and find out who it is. Our mystery figure is facing away, so we can only catch a sliver of their face. There are too many buttons and dials on this machine, and I'm not sure what they all do, but I keep pressing buttons and turning dials until the sliver of face in the window is identifiable. It is perhaps no surprise to learn that the reflection in the glass is an image of you. The fourth 'image' of you in this photograph. Somehow you're managing to be on both sides of the glass simultaneously. At this point it hits me with a physical, sick certainty that, even without seeing, I know the identity of the photographer of this image. I know the subject, and creator. The machine taps in on these thoughts, and uses the concept of biological imperatives, purpose, principle, and goal to zoom out to reach the logical conclusion that we've been moving inexorably towards the whole time, to realise the full image as it doesn't exist in the real world.
Teleology is the philosophy of understanding a thing in terms of its purpose, principle, or goal. It's about taking the end and working backwards (or working forwards with the end in mind) in order to understand more about the thing in question. Yes, but what, you may ask, is a purpose, principle or goal?
We've been here before, and we've discussed how some of these words can have different meanings depending on one's perspective. So instead of discussing apples (for a change) let's ask ourselves what might be *your* purpose, principle, or goal? And how can we have a teleological discussion about you?
There are biological imperatives bound up in you, that's for sure. There's the unfortunate unavoidability of growing older, there's the potential for having (or not having) children, and there's dying. At the base level, those are three things that we talk about when we talk about you. Yes, but is there more to you than that?
These photographs of you that I've found would seem to suggest so.
Kurt Vonnegut once said (or wrote) "We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be," but from looking at all these photos of you I'm finding it hard to work out who you're pretending to be. You feel like a myriad of different people.
Sometimes your face is all thunder. Sturm und drang. And sometimes you seem quite pleasant. Sometimes you're concentrating, lost in your thoughts, enveloped in a task. And sometimes you're staring off into the distance, blank behind the eyes. You have so many looks.
Now I move my attention away from you and onto the many other people who are in the pictures with you. It seems that a lot of who you are in these pictures is wrapped up in who you're with. Almost as if you were playing a number of different roles. As though the company you keep dictates to you (consciously or not) who you need to pretend to be. Yes, but what is your purpose in these moments? Your principles? Your goals?
If we imagine that there's a goal to your interactions with other people, then your interactions have a purpose. Something to gain. That's not a particularly unfair thing to say about you. You're pretty ambitious. There's a lot you want to attain that you don't already have. And you have a large number of principles. Things you believe in. And these principles play a fundamental role in what you perceive your purpose to be, in how you go about achieving your goals. This all starts to go some way to explaining why you seem so different in all these pictures.
Yes, but let's get specific. Let's look at one particular image.
In this picture, I'm looking at you looking at someone else. You're behind glass, a window, and the other person is simply a reflection. I can see them, but only as a reflection in a photograph. A third generation image. Some might say that this image of the other person can't be trusted, because of that distanciation. Whereas other might posit that this makes the image more trustworthy, as it places the person 'solidly' within the world. Hell, I don't know. Instead, let's drop this picture into the machine and explore it in more detail. The machine is old and clunky, but it allows us to move closer without losing resolution. We zoom in on the image of you behind the glass and it's at this point that I notice that there's another picture of you in the background. It's framed. Presumably the picture shows you on some kind of holiday. I don't know if it's a picture of you with your friends, or family, it's hard to tell. But you look happy in the picture. Happier than you look behind that window, anyway. Peering closer, in the glass of the framed picture I can make out the reflection of another image. It's a TV screen, and you're on the screen, looking into the camera. I'm not sure why you're on TV, but you seem more determined here, comfortable, as though you know what you're doing and are in charge. This is all good, but I feel that I'm not learning anything about you. So maybe I should remember that a lot of what you are is (or may) be wrapped up in the people around you. Bearing this in mind I decide to use the machine to zoom in on the image of the person reflected in the glass. The person that the 'original' 'you' in the photo is looking at. The photograph was taken on a bright day, so there are many images reflected in the window obfuscating the identity of this person. A lot of lines, a lot of colours break everything up. But thanks to the machine we can clear up this noise and find out who it is. Our mystery figure is facing away, so we can only catch a sliver of their face. There are too many buttons and dials on this machine, and I'm not sure what they all do, but I keep pressing buttons and turning dials until the sliver of face in the window is identifiable. It is perhaps no surprise to learn that the reflection in the glass is an image of you. The fourth 'image' of you in this photograph. Somehow you're managing to be on both sides of the glass simultaneously. At this point it hits me with a physical, sick certainty that, even without seeing, I know the identity of the photographer of this image. I know the subject, and creator. The machine taps in on these thoughts, and uses the concept of biological imperatives, purpose, principle, and goal to zoom out to reach the logical conclusion that we've been moving inexorably towards the whole time, to realise the full image as it doesn't exist in the real world.