Flight from reaosn & the cult of instruments (exercise six)

1. Downtown in a large town. All of the plants did not get built by humans, but people planted/cultivated all of them. I can see some of the surrounding mountains and woods. The mountains did not have human intervention, but acid rain had a very large impact on the types of plants growing in there area; we have a much higher population of pines than would "naturally" have grown.

2. I had a difficult time with this exercise. Constellations that I know have a pop to them, even without "naming" them internally. Intentionally looking at the sky, could distinguish planets from the stars, and have a good idea of proper names for the planets. Too much light pollution to see it, but I could mentally project the milky way shimmer.

3. I think my knowledge of meteors enriches the experience. Looking at meteors without contemplating them seems less beautiful to me than contemplating them contextualized with physical and historical understanding.

4. I think that changing the types of shows on TV would influence reality-tunnels. I think it rather odd that Wilson refers to the "average American reality-tunnel though." Watching Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares has certainly changed my perception of the restaurant business; I now have a better understanding regarding cues to the health of eating establishments. Since tv requires drama, I seems like American perceptions regarding renters/rentiers would change. Would people prefer evil landlords or trashy tenants? Researchers have published a few studies on the impact of televised crime on individual perceptions of risks (http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/jbem30&div=20&id=&page=). Americans would probably put more research into where they rented or who they rented to, after seeing the shows and learning warning signs. What differences in perception change might landlord dramas versus "reality tv" create?

5. It seems to me that much of Western culture instills an implicit assumption that we have done something wrong and always have barely gotten away with it. Since many of us appear to have trouble living with this as a conscious belief, it creates a dynamic that plays itself in various themes like police show. Following this line of thought, it seems that television producers would share this mythic need, and fund shows that reenact it. As a large part of the population shares the narrative, the shows draw in the ratings, leading to a feedback loop, where the market saturates itself. Police shows also draw on our latent aggressions, revulsions and power assumptions; I do not think that landlord themes could believably engage so much violence or institutional power disparities.

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