Trap of Appearances
Beyond beauty questions and fake news
A philosophically charged question is the relation between reality and the appearance. Are things as they appear? or with filters? Is there something beyond appearances? Questions like these are not new. I just mention about a few cases.
- Most people till 16th century (even today without education or an information given to us by someone) looked at the rising sun in the morning and setting sun in the evening and said that son rotates around the earth. Scientists said the case is the opposite, where earth is revolving around the sun. Appearance says something, whereas reality is slightly different.
- Traditional wisdom in many traditions will warn us against judging or classifying people based on colour, beauty parameters, money, talking style, language and educational capabilities, physical abilities etc. Without denying the importance of these qualities, the wisdom will speak of the person beyond these qualifications.
- Jesus would say, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Again the appearance of the person (in the form of loud prayers or invocations) is not the most important factor of entering the kingdom of God. And the parable of Good Samaritan names a Samaritan (not a priest or Levite) as the model of loving the neighbour.
- Often times in our relationships and friendships, the most important factor is not the visibility/availability for occasions of importance, but the presence in the ordinary situations. And often, there are those who are invisibly serving us.
- We can look throught Gross domestic Product (GDP) of a country, and it reveals the overall amount of riches in the country, and this often hides the vast amount of inequality, poverty and suffering that may be present along with the riches.
- In the contemporary era of social media, I often do double check or triple check the news coming from certain sources, and easily believe others coming from certain other sources. Certain appearances are closer to reality without any checks, certain others need further checks.
- And then we see a myriad of reels/short videos/images giving a certain points of view/ judgements regarding a certain event, and without much analysis, we do start believing the story; we slowly become a fan of the present government, or a believer in the hopeless of the contemporary situation.
- And finally, it is not easy to differentiate between a AI video and video of a real environment.
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All these examples are not of the same level. And the point is not to compare them, but to show a certain difficulty to trust appearances or what we see/hear/sense always. Despite all technological progresses, we find it so difficult to distinguish between different versions of appearances — to find their connection to reality or truth or whatever you like to call it.
Is the best option creating an absolute doubt about all kinds of appearances, something like a hard core skeptic.
I am not sure such is the right attitude in this world of extreme polarisation. We need trust to happen between people belonging to different paradigms and thinking patterns. And we need to be cautious about the question of appearances-interpretation-manipulation-vested insterests-reality-truth etc.
I don’t think I have a solution, but I don’t think extreme doubt is the way forward.
