This is one brilliant man.
Mushishi is a polarizing show. Most people loved it for its poignant description of the human description and slow moving dramatics. The others hated it for the same reasons; it had some pacing problems, and was admittedly depressing in the way it portrayed every other human besides Ginko. It encompassed a wide variety of the spectrum of human emotion; Greed(ep 6) Love for those long gone(ep 8,16,17, 22) Unrequited love/lust/schoolgirl crush(ep 20) A womans love for a child not technically her own(ep 21) Hatred and fear of the unknown(ep 24) Acceptance of fate (ep 25).
Granted some of these aren’t exactly pedestrian, but they do cover what humans can go through and it subtly depicts them at their worst, but unlike my Bokurano musings I’m not here to bitch about how fucked up humans are. I’m here to discuss the concept in Mushishi of the Mushi. Creatures too basic, too pure of life to be seen by most humans almost beg to be argued about in terms of Rationalism vs. Empiricism.
In Epistemology there are two hotly contested theories about how humans perceive knowledge in life. These are not the only epistemic theories about such things, but they are the only ones I will discuss.
Rationalism is the notion that humans have an innate sense of things going on, and that “truth is not sensory, but intellectual and deductive.” This is often heavily contrasted with Empiricism which claims that humans only have their knowledge through their senses. Locke called it the tabula rasa (clean slate), and denied the possibility of innate knowledge without sensory experience.
The existence of the mushi seems incredulous. Things that exist, but only a select few can see them? They affect some people but not all of them? It almost begs to be a story about crazy people who are insanely deluded into blaming their problems on seemingly non-existent critters.
Empiricism would say that the mushi don’t exist until they affect you in some way, while rationalism would say that the mushi do exist without personally affecting you. The only question is which theory is correct in this aspect. If someone see a lower species and has no empirical proof then how do we believe it happened. Either since it didn’t happen to us, we can assume it never happened or they don’t exist (Empiricism), or we can deduce that the person that experienced it has changed a great deal and deduce that perhaps they do exist(rationalism).
Far too often do we humans forget that we exist as a holon of the larger system the earth. We become egotistical and never think of this plane of existence without humans to define it. Whether the mushi exist or not they pose a fundamental philosophical question about the existence of anything.
April 29, 2008 at 4:12 am
I absolutely love Mushishi, and think it is one of the best anime ever.
You touched a very interesting topic. Humans have five senses to experience the world. These devices allow us to make observations and note patterns. They are sufficient to explain many phenomena, but don’t describe the world in its entirety by any means.
Some people might have special abilities. However, the reward of one million dollars is still unclaimed as people failed to demonstrate it. Science can only address things that are testable. Do Mushi exist? Does God exist? These questions can’t be answered clearly. I would answer to these questions in terms of possibility: they might exist, but I can’t state with certainly they do or do not exist.
“Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know.”
April 29, 2008 at 7:41 am
The only thing that is certain is that we think. In thinking, we realize we exist. If we didn’t even think about these mushi or ourselves, neither we nor they exist.
May 17, 2008 at 12:01 am
This post makes me want to watch mushishi right now!
:]
Humans tend to believe that the world revolves around their life, but in fact it doesn’t. Everyone has their own world and their own friends who have their own spec of history. They all think that theirs is the only one that matters. To them everyone see’s the same place, experiences the same days, and go on in life as them but yet another person.
When we pull away from that view point and see that everyone has their individual point of view and opinion. Things get drastically bigger and expand beyond our human capacity. Everyone has a different thought. Yes, some think alike but not one thought is exactly the same at the exact same moment in time.
This is the thought fingerprint, if you will. An infinite number that keeps going in eternity until our time runs out. Our minds don’t even rest while we sleep. We dream. Some even live out those dreams. To create their own world as if they see it, but also creating the world for better or for worse with someone else. We are in this world together.
Functioning, creating, destroying, and living all as one. In the same world. Their isn’t 9 billion worlds. There is but 1. That we all affect and create at our own will, but that affects the world of another causing a domino effect of the 9 billion worlds around. It may slip and fall or not take the turn and fall out. But we make a difference. To this world. Not our world, or the real world, or some crazy virtual world.
1.
Solitary.
Revolving.
World.
with 10 billion thoughts in one mille second.
What would happen if we used that for the betterment of OUR race. Not my or his or hers OURS to share.