Invisible Audience

Once upon a time the thief left fingerprints without knowing there could be such a thing as fingerprints. How many people realize that we sometimes leave footprints even though we can sometimes see our footprints? Now that we know about fingerprints, some thieves wipe surfaces they're aware they touched hoping to erase their fingerprints: but what traces do we leave that we yet have no science for?

The Jews imagined God walking in the garden and calling for Adam while Adam hides from God, ashamed. Primitive Adam imagines that if God can't see him the way he Adam sees, then God won't know where he is. But the Jews imagined God knowing what Adam was doing even when God couldn't "see" him. This and the other sect of Protestants imagine that God "saw" Adam eating the fruit before Adam ate the fruit, even before Adam existed.

We drop napalm on little girls. If we keep the press away, no photographers, we imagine that we can do anything: and no one will know!

How do we know that everything we do isn't on TV at Aldeberan?

Why hasn't Jesus come back to do what he promised? Maybe he has: and we didn't notice. Maybe he can't. Maybe he never meant to. Maybe he did mean to but God had other plans. ... Or maybe our running around like dogs that don't feel the leash has entered its third millennium of hit reality show around Betelguese. The sponsors won't allow anything to interfere.

Imagine that you're an actor on the stage. Imagine that you're in the middle of "To be or not to be." Can you see the audience? The light is low, but there's a spot light on you. The lights in the theater are dim, but they're not at zero. Can you see through your own glare to see all those dim faces out there? Do you know which ones are looking at you? which ones are asleep, or necking, or bored? How can you even try to see while you're concentrating on your lines? Maybe you don't have the words memorized perfectly yet. But even if you have them as perfectly as Burbage would once have had them, so well you could paraphrase and Sweet Will might not mind, might not even notice? You're still concentrating on the meaning! Who could multi-task so skillfully that they could act, and watch, and contemplate ... all at the same time? even if they're already a genius? even if they're already a double- or triple-genius?

We don't know who sees us. We don't know what they think. If we see, it's like veiled. My name-source Paul may have been full of shit on faith, but he had that through a glass darkly part just right. The mouse doesn't know that the owl sees it, though the mouse is keenly aware that there are predators. Parents try to control their children with threats of bogymen, but we may be leaving more traces than we know (or fewer!) regardless of what the parents mean.