Книги #illusion

Amurka is an Amur tiger. The last of her kind. Or the first? Her world is a zoo where reality is reassembled from scratch each day. She senses the falseness in the spotlight beams, in the smell of artificial meat, in the keeper's thoughts. She is an error in the system, a bug that learned to think. And when she is first offered freedom, the main question becomes not how to escape the cage, but what truly lies beyond its walls.

What remains when the entire universe collapses? Only thought. "I think, therefore I am" — this phrase by Descartes became not only a point of reference but also a verdict, forever imprisoning Western man in the solitary confinement of his own consciousness. Where is the proof that the external world is real? That other people are not merely convincing puppets in the dream of our lonely mind? This text is a journey into the heart of the most agonizing mystery of our existence. From Descartes' stove to Kafka's nightmares, from the gaze of the Other in Sartre to the abyss in the eyes of a stranger on the subway, from the digital ghosts of social networks to the temptation of an artificial interlocutor. This is the story of how the tragedy of solitude gives birth to music, love, and a great, quiet courage — the courage to believe in the reality of the other.

"We are like astronauts, forever stranded in orbit, who, having relinquished all hope of returning to Earth, begin to perceive the icy, lifeless splendor of the starry sky as their new home. And in this acceptance lies a certain, bitter freedom."
A child draws the sun as a circle with rays. A scientist sees it as a raging thermonuclear inferno. Where does true reality reside? This is a journey from Husserl's phenomenology to Baudrillard's simulacra, from Plato's cave to the server racks of social networks. An essay on how we learned to live in a labyrinth with no exit, and why, knowing it to be a simulation, we still persist in drawing a warm sun. Perhaps this very gesture constitutes the last bastion of the human.