Why the political and metaphysical are intrinsic

In a childish post I wrote a couple of years ago I wrote that 'reality is fiction and fiction is reality,' but then argued that reality must be distorted at all costs and that it's unnecessary to follow political events.

A perceptive comment left by Doug said the following: "The metaphysical and the physical are one and the same. I do not feel this requires a dismissal of political events. I do feel that it does lend itself more to certain political leanings for a variety of different reasons."

Either way, both are unavoidable. The mind is at once controlled by politcal beauracracy and unconscious impulses. Rejecting one or the other is denial.

Political machinations are the foundation for everyone's lives. I wouldn't say that it's vital to keep a close watch on the current political events, but important decisions reached at the commons have a direct or indirect effect on other people's lives. It certainly isn't foolish to have political inclinations.

And the political has an intrinsic relationship with the metaphysical. For instance, the films of Kryzstof Kieslowski recurrently feature the theme of destiny and the synchronism of human emotion. These are metaphysical themes influenced by philosophical texts. Yet the destinies of these characters are at once determined by politcal undercurrents and their own free will.

Blind Chance

Take his film Blind Chance. The film sees Witek chasing a train, foreseeing three possible outcomes: he cathces it and works as intelligence for the communist government; he misses the train and becomes a dissdent; he crashes into a train attendant and he decides to continue his medical studies, living an apolitcal life.

It certainly was audacious to make this film under the communist regime, but that's beside the point: this film is a composite of metaphysical elements and political. Witek has existential dilemmas that he attempts to confront, which are determined by the repression of the communist order.

If one is able to gauge an idea of the metaphysical, a good and common example is the dream life of an individual. The political climate no doubt influences the outcome of a dream - especially if it's communist Poland or the Soviet Union - yet at the same time the so-called 'unconscious' of an individual has an inverse function: it determines the choices we make, the way we behave, and it moulds our society.

How does the agenda I had three years ago reflect this? How does one 'distort reality'? The distortion of reality is certainly something I continue to be interested in, but is completely irrelevant to the 'reality is fiction and fiction is reality' argument. Reality and fiction play off one another - the distortion of reality is an entirely different endeavour that would require an entirely different blog post...