>>616This is just what I was looking for. I'm the
>>615 (You) anon since this board has no ID's. So we hold this experiment, and we have the following people show up:
1)A doctoral candidate in material physics
2)A Roman Catholic bishop
3)A Theravada mendicant
4)A romantic playwright
5)A structural semiologist
The material physicist shakes the box around, listening to the rattling. He presses his nose up against the box and sniffs real hard. He pulls out some instruments to measure electromagnetic waves, radiation levels, and the weight of the box.
I presume it is a two pound sphere of depleted uranium due to yada yada yada.The bishop gets on his knees, resting his head and hands on the box, weeping with joy.
It is a miracle! Saint Peter appeared to me in a vision, on Good Friday, with the revelation that a stranger would gather men of wisdom around a sealed box. Within this vessel will be a holy relic, as he would transubstantiate into the item and make it his body. The mendicant crosses his arms and shakes his head.
Trick question. There is nothing in the box, and there isn't even a box! What we call the "world" is ignorance and suffering clouding our mind. One who has achieved Buddhahood would not even see the "box" or whatever is "in it".The romantic lays down on his side and just stares at the box for forty five minutes.
It is the sublime. Look at this scene: five people have been pulled away from their professions simply to behold and ponder the contents of this box as a test of their aptitude. No, more than that! At stake is their professions themselves! The hidden item induces us to stumble over ourselves in taxing our talents to divine its identity. And the moment it is to be revealed, we will stand before it like a bachelor gazing at his sweetheart's mouth, waiting for her to accept or reject his proposal for marriage.The semiologist doesn't look at the box even once, instead lighting a cigarette and saying he doesn't have time for this and needs to get going. But he offers you this:
What is inside the box is the box itself. Why do we refer to that receptacle as a box and not a cubical piece of cardboard? Because a box holds things. So what makes something a box or not is dependent not on how it is made, or what it is made of, or who made it. It is the fact that the box anticipates itself in conveying to us not just a capacity, but an essential identity, as a holder of things. It is the uncanny truth that the box is actually the object being contained, and not the receptacle we see. Without the object inside, or at least the promise of an object inside, or the promise that objects have been and will go inside, there is no box. Only cardboard.