 George Kelly claimed that people were natural scientists, that we're always investigating hypothesis and trying to disprove them and so on. It's an interesting theory and it's right in a sense, but fundamentally it's wrong. We are not natural scientists, we're natural engineers. And when we look at the world, we don't see objects and then in further use, what we actually see is the use. So for example, when I look at that Coke can, my visual system activates my motor cortex directly. It can do that without me seeing the damn can consciously to some degree, because there are people with blind sight, I've told you about those people, they say they can't see, but if you ask them which hand you have held up, they can tell you. So they might not be able to see, but they can map patterns from their visual system onto their motor output. And that's basically what Piaget said we do when we deal with the world, we're embodied creatures. And so what we see when we look around aren't objects, they're things we can use and things that get in our way. And that's a theory that was derived originally from J.J. Gibson who wrote a great book on that called The Visual Approach to Visual Perception. And his science is a brand of pragmatism and the pragmatists basically claim that things including theories and perceptions have a limited range of truth and the truth that the limited range of truth is determined by the match between your actions and outcomes, so I think this is a coke can. Is that what it is? No, but it's good enough for me if I want to drink a bit of coke out of it. God only knows what it is. If you go into communist China and you start advertising these things, then what are they? Because this thing tells a story, right? What's the story? Like really, do you need Coca-Cola? No, it's like, it's a bit of frippery, you know? It's a bit of a non-necessary luxury. It's not even very good for you, but it's kind of fuzzy and it's sweet and you get to buy it. And why is that? Because no matter how stupid you are in your nutrition choices, as far as our society goes, you have the right to poison yourself in whatever way you think best befits you. And so when you send this little coke can off to communist China, this thing screams stupid individuality all over. And God only knows how it undermines the state. You know, and if you're not thinking about that, you're not thinking. Think about what happens when we export cars. What does a car say? It says, hey, you can go wherever you want, whenever you want, you don't have to tell anybody at all. And you can do it in a really dangerous, high-speed manner. It's like, you want a political statement? Wrap it up in metal and ship that thing off and everybody goes, whoa, I'd really like to have one of those. It's like poof, communism disappears with that. There's nothing that says individuality and capitalism like a personal automobile. You even get to pollute the atmosphere and ruin the planet with the damn thing. But if you have to drive to the corner store and pick up your damn coke, it's like to hell with the atmosphere. So don't be thinking that the things that appear in front of you are merely objects because they're not. I started thinking about this, for example, when I was thinking about people going down to Graceland to look at Elvis's guitar. You think, what exactly is it that makes a guitar, Elvis's guitar? You know, it's not exactly the guitar because it's just sitting there like any old guitar, you know, and maybe you could even think about it. You could take that guitar out and you could put another guitar in that looked just like it and it would still be Elvis's guitar because no one would know. And you might think, well then that's not really Elvis's guitar. But that's a funny thing because you'd only think that if you thought that Elvis's guitar was the thing that was made out of material that was sitting right in front of you. And that isn't what it is. That's only one tiny little bit of it. That bloody thing is a part of incredibly layered reality, right? I mean, the people who wanna go look at that, they're looking at it in some sense because of the magic that's emanating from it. But the magic is actually real. You know, the magic is the effect of that guitar, let's say, on the entire culture. And those effects are the damn guitar too. And it's weird because when you go look at Elvis's guitar, you're not looking at the guitar. You're looking at the magic. And weirdly enough, the magic is actually real. Well, you can't think that way if you're a materialist because you think that the thing is the material. It's like, yeah, right. I can tell you another story. So when the Europeans came to the South Pacific Islands, the South Pacific Islanders, because there weren't that many of them, they didn't have a very highly technical society. And so if you were like Joe dominant guy in a Pacific Island culture, you might be able to have a stone axe, like a well-made stone axe, because go out and make a stone axe and see how long that takes you. It's like, that's a bit of work. And so if you're a high status guy, if you've really worked your whole life to be at the top of your damn pyramid, you get, maybe you had two axes. It's like a red-lettered A. You've got two axes, which is more than any other animal has by a lot. So it's not trivial. And then the damn missionaries come in, and they set up shop, and what do they bring? Steel axes. It's like, that's kind of a downer. You've worked your whole damn life to get these stone axes, and that makes you like head tribesman. And then your kid wanders down to the local missionaries and they say, oh, we've got an extra steel axe. Oh, here, why don't you take that back home? And it's like, it's so shocking because not only do the missionaries have this thing that is so much better than a steel axe. It's like a jet plane compared to a wheeled cart. Like, they're really, really different. But the missionaries, they don't even notice. That's the horrible thing about it. It's like, they give away this thing that has virtually infinite value, and it's like, well, it's okay. We got a dozen of those sitting in the storeroom, and we're just willing to hand them out. It was a little demoralizing. It was a little demoralizing for the Pacific Islanders. And so, you know, was it an axe that the missionaries gave away? It wasn't. You'd think that if you were a Westerner and you had a bunch of axes, it's like, yeah, that's an axe. It's like, yeah, right. It's a lot more than an axe, a lot more. It's a weapon to bring down a whole culture accidentally.