Some thoughts on Radical Alterity

So, a common theme that just keeps popping up in Radical Alterity is this whole paradox of communication: The more we communicate with others, the more we destroy communication; the less we exchange, the more we have to communicate. They also extended this to knowledge by saying that the more we explore outward and expand our knowledge, the more the world shrinks. I found these concepts really interesting. Once we'd discovered the world was flat, and had explored all major areas, are world became smaller. And now, with globalization, the world is still becoming smaller and smaller. Technology connects everyone closer and closer. The authors also said that if you go looking for the origin or the cause of something, it becomes familiar, but loses it's secret. This connects to something we were talking about in class, asking why can't we just appreciate the vastness of the universe? Why can't we just say wow. that's crazy and I don't understand it, but it's beautiful? I'd rather just look at the stars and admire how beautiful they are, not think about how many light years away they are, or what gases they are composed of. Figuring all that out is interesting, but it takes away the wonder of it all.

This seems to be an impossible thing to get away from though. Humans are naturally curious and driven to communicate and find things out about their surroundings. We are in a shrinking world, but there doesn't seem to be much to do about it. And is that even a bad thing? Maybe the point of communication IS to get to a point where we're all so connected that communication isn't even necessary any more. So then it wouldn't really be a paradox anymore, it would just be a natural human process occurring and working toward it's goal.