Saturday, May 26, 2007

If an elephant shits in the jungle and no one is around to see it, is he still huge?

What makes an elephant huge? I don't mean diet or DNA. I mean what makes it so that being the size of an elephant makes an elephant huge?

The answer is that we decided an elephant is huge, and by that we mean huge compared to us. Similarly, when we say a Pomeranian is small, we mean a Pomeranian is small compared to ourselves. It's always about us.

If field mice got to decide this stuff, the Pomeranian would be huge, and the elephant would be -- well, I don't know what. Ask a field mouse if you see one.

But the elephant is huge not because of anything the elephant did, but because humans decided he was huge. So if the elephant shits in the jungle and no one is around to think, "Wow, that's a huge elephant shitting in the jungle," is he still huge? Obviously, he's the same size he would be if he was shitting with a human audience. But it's only the human perception that makes him "huge."

No humans, no hugeness.

He is neither huge nor not-huge... because no judging, analyzing, measuring, categorizing human is there to attach a concept to his size.

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