Easter Monday 13th April 2009

I was intrigued by a brief editorial comment in this week’s New Scientist. Apparently ‘There is now a CCTV camera that monitors people who are employed to watch CCTV footage… This, though, raises the question of who is monitoring this extra footage…Clearly what we need is CCTV that watches the CCTV that watches the CCTV…’ This being the New Scientist, the obvious comparison is not made here to the predicament of being human that Zen Buddhists have long understood; that it is possible to take a similar position in relation to our own ego: the pilot who observes the pilot, the pilot who observes the pilot who observes the pilot, and so on. Indeed, it is through the contemplation of this infinite progression, Zen scholars suggest, that the shock of enlightenment can be attained. Rather than get too closely involved with the actions of our ego, a more compassionate and quietened condition is gained at a distance, and by whatever it is that we are if we are not our ego.

The editorial doesn’t say where such CCTV cameras are to be found, which makes me wonder if it is rather the idea of such cameras that provoked the article than their actual existence. I don’t mean this as a criticism, I am merely making an observation. Sometimes we think a fact substantiates an idea, when in fact the idea alone is just as interesting. (And this makes me think of the condition of much conceptual art, which is less interesting seen in actuality than it is in its verbal description.)