Monday, May 4, 2020
Years ago, my wife and I went on a date to the Griffith Observatory, and while walking around that evening we came upon a guy set up on the grass with this fancy telescope pointed at the night sky.
"Hey, you guys want to see Saturn?" he asked.
"Okay, sure," I said.
So my wife and I both took a look through the telescope and we were amazed by how clear the image was. It was as crystal clear as the lead image of this article. In fact it was so clear I felt like I was looking at a picture of Saturn rather than Saturn itself.
Then the guy said something about the telescope being digital, and suddenly I felt like I'd been cheated. Like what I was looking at was a photo as opposed to the real thing.
To this day, I still think about that experience and wonder what makes something real versus fake?
For example, when you hear the sound of an actual piano versus a digital keyboard, is one more real than the other because of the way the sound is being produced? While the sound you hear from a piano is made by a mallet tapping on a set of strings, is the sound made by the digital piano less real because it is merely a copy or reproduction of what a real piano sounds like?
If I'd been looking through a regular telescope and saw Saturn by way of the light waves directly hitting my retina, is that more real than the light waves hitting a sensor inside the telescope which generates an image for me to look at?
I don't know what I'm trying to get at. Just something I was thinking about on this Monday morning as I start the eighth week of my lockdown.
Cain, friend. I fully understand your point. Everything is so relative. As the truth of things and reality is not the same for everyone. Even, the laws of classical physics are totally challenged today, the quantum physics that also exists and true. But none is absolute. Thus, nothing is absolute and each thing has its importance and reason for being. A greeting.