Sex, Drugs, and Boredom

Very odd notion, but indeed, we have really anthropomorphized the character Brad Pitt. In a way, it's possible we do the same to ourselves, creating a persona, creating a character and then acting accordingly, is there ever a point in our life when we are not "in character"? Only in moments of "temporary insanity," thus it is insane and unacceptable to not play along with the character you've written, you must remain "canon," your political views, your religion, your gender, your profession, you're consistently "playing along" and acting out the role intended or expected. Similarly, though, you could extend this sort of thinking to other aspects of our world that we expect to exist as they've been written in the preceding chapters, and we just accept based on hearsay or rumours of existence. For example, I have never met a Rabbi, or to my knowledge, any Jew, I've only heard stories of their existence, I've seen photos, but I've also seen photos of Hollywood depictions of Leprechauns and Unicorns, or textbook descriptions; in the same way I know of Jews, I know dinosaurs, I have no more firsthand knowledge of the existence of Jewish people or celebrities or even Abe Lincoln or Stalin than I have of the existence of Terradactyls. All our matter-of-facts are but mere matters of faith. We take people's word for these things being facts of this world, for all I know, history's textbooks could have been edited to include Thomas Jefferson two generations ago; or centuries before our time, people could have made up fictional religions, claimed to be part of them as a ruse and the populace could have been told to play along, to go with it, "right then, old chap, 'tis a joke on our great-great-grandchildren, we shall have a right hearty chuckle at their imbecility as they believe these hoaxes we have so deftly crafted, indeed, it shall be right good lulz, my good fellow. Aye, we will be ROFL, kind sir." When you enter into the realm of "not believing celebrities exist" you also permit concepts like this to flood the mind, you've got an active-denial device churning hot in your mind, skeptical, you look past all the evidence of moon-landings, the holocaust, Fight Club, Twelve Monkeys and Se7en and claim them all to be hoaxes perpetrated by comediennes at your expense. For what it's worth, I actually don't exist. (Marik Bromine is an alias, I am but an avatar posing per sentience which posits words posing as thoughts. However, the hands that type these words may not exist either.)

Sir, no slight was intended, not even slightly; but appologies if my curiousities scathed you, I did not mean to imply that you are a denier of murdered millions, or to shrivel the towering horrors of WWII to the raisin-size import of celebs, nay, merely I proffer the notion that the sugar-coated shell that we see of celebrities, and the concept of only knowing what we've been permitted to know, only what has been sold, only what has been polished and gilded, is similar to the agenda-wrought shell of all information, textbook, .html, or silver-screen, thus all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream, aka a facade, a fantasy, an illusion masking mystery masking illusion.

As to me, this seems no great leap, I indeed arrive with haste to the topic of doubting all that is hearsay, all that has been laid before me even and especially these things regarded as facts and assumptions and truths; and, like you note, celebrity lives, which accost us from every market aisle, are thrust before us and appear as such matters of commonly accepted knowledge that it is sometimes difficult to access the fact that these are not who these people truly are. They are more glossy or less glossy, more statuesque or more flimsy than they may exist in the confines of their own skin and mind, and even those (minds) may be at peril to the assumptions of the expected image.

Again, no great leap need be made to slosh into deep doubt of the puddle of perception. Reality depends on where your frame of reference lies and on what lies frame your reference; our kaleidescoped perspective, twisted and muddled by our assumptions and points-of-view, is nothing more than an interpretation of the things we think we see, when not only may the interpretation be wrong, the image may have been a lie. If the magazine covers tell us that Brad Pitt is thusly muscled, and prefers Labradors to Beagles, then how are we to guage the validity of that data? How are we to verify the things we think we know when we can't even verify whether or not our measure of verity is accurate? Can you measure height if you doubt the notion of "height" or "measurement"? What does it mean to measure the existence or nonexistence of Brad Pitt? It means that you must first base this on an assumption that anything else truly exists. I hope this explains my remarkable foolishness. :)

I appreciate your writing back and explaining yourself further, I admit that the holocaust thing kind of set me off, I now understand better where you are coming from. In fact, you have some good sentences in here describing celebrity images.

Basically I see you raising the question here, “how can we know anything for sure”? And the answer (or my take on the answer) is simple, we can’t, if by knowing we mean “how things would appear from a neutral perspective.” We can only know how things appear from our own peculiar primate perspective. But the good news is that that perspective turns out to be good enough to figure out how to make beer, invent antibiotics, and other good stuff. We do the best we can, and that includes trying to figure out if the celebrity thing has gone a bit too far in our society.

Again, thanks for your response, I see that you were not being remarkably foolish but rather struggling (like many of the rest of us) with a big question.