#5 Pygmalion, Can What We Create Take Over the Reality?
Let’s talk about the story of Pygmalion, the Cypriot sculptor that fall into love with the statue he made.
Ovidius, in his Metamorphoses, talks about Pygmalion, as he also talks about many other ancient stories. Pygmalion, seeing Propoetides prostituting themselves, decides that he is not interested in women. But he creates a woman sculpt, and he falls in love with her.
Visiting Aphrodite, when it is time to wish something, he wishes a bride that has the likeness of the sculpt he made, not being able to confess his desires. When he goes back to home, he kisses the sculpt, feels some warmth, then kisses again. Sculpt becomes alive, and he marries the statue, which became an actual woman.
There are two important points that need to be made, to fully grasp the depths of the story.
- Pygmalion, as many do, is looking for a perfect, ideal spouse, which does not exist. But unlike many, he doesn’t accept this fact and settle for the reality. On the contrary, he decides to create his own, even if it is not alive.
Many people are warned not to be too picky. The good part about the stories are that, impossible can be made possible to explore the reductio ad absurdum.
- He is a sculpt, and he is able. He knows how a perfect woman look like, and he is able to reflect that into the reality, but not really. So what he creates in his mind, becomes half real. There is a little gap between the new half-real that he created, and what he actually wanted. The stone has to become flesh to fıll that gap.
We create many things in life, but they are generally half, by the means of reality. We create a picture, and it is static. We create a movie, it is only playable. We create a game, it is limited and not realistic. We create things in our minds, but when we convert them into objects, they are half done. This is what makes us ‘human’ and not ‘gods’. Another interesting point is that, in the history of religions, the endeavour of people to create things, was seen as challenging the gods. As an example, Abraham would break the idols. According to another story, people were punished when they created the Tower of Babel. One of the class differences between people and gods was utilization of fire. Prometheus stole that ‘technology’ and brought it to people. And he was heavily punished for that. The gap can not and should not be filled.
- Who creates? Gods create. Humans on the other hand, generally just stumble upon what was created. Gods are omnipotent, humans have limited powers. In this story, the god Aphrodite filled the gap of creativity by making the statue a person. And this created an interesting question. Is artificial lovable? Can we feel for it?
For thousands of years, it wasn’t possible for people to create anything close to real. Maybe somebody could fall into love with somebody they have seen in their dream? But dreams are not reproducable on demand.
With the emerging technologies this changed, we are actually able to have something similar to the reality, and the gap is slowly diminishing. We have computer games as an example. Synthetic DNA is a slowly emerging technology, 3D printers are a thing, robots are slowly getting smarter. And all these, make people start asking questions.
What might happen if people decide to shut themselves down into a virtual reality and never come back? What if everybody decide to escape to their virtual world? Would loving a robot make sense? Or a clone? What is the difference? If you define the ‘sense’ with reproduction, will love make sense when people stop having children? Then what about gay couples? So what is the difference really?
Were you looking for answers? No, this is an article that will only ask questions.
Maybe love itself is an absurdity already, and we are trying to make a meaning out of it. Who knows?
