Join us for the next installment of Constellation Two of our “What Is Reality?” symposium series, as Maria Popova, creator of The Marginalian, joins philosopher Bayo Akomolafe in Reality and Disruption, now available on YouTube.
Maria’s reflections take us from the instability of our shared models of reality to something more intimate: the stories we construct about ourselves. She draws on the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch’s idea of unselfing, the experience of having our attention drawn so completely toward something beyond ourselves that our usual preoccupation with the self momentarily falls away. A work of art, a piece of music, or an encounter with the natural world can interrupt our habitual sense of being separate, self-contained individuals. Maria suggests that the self may be one of the most elaborate stories human beings have created.
Taken together, Bayo and Maria’s conversation opens a larger question. What if the uncertainty we feel in a world undergoing profound change has as much to do with the limits of how we have learned to see ourselves and our place within it as with the changes themselves?
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