In order to proceed, this naive construction takes the world for granted, it relies on an assumption that the world is always already there in a known and reliable form, a form that can be identically perceived by any and all. By the same token, this undermines — even denies — the validity of the subject's experience (accusing it of being "merely subjective!").

This naive perception posits the "idea" (culturally constituted) of what one is looking at in such a way as to have it always "confirmed" (and of course, anticipated, intended). This makes one's experience of "reality" very different from being a genuine encounter with the mysterious, a discovery, an uncovering, it relegates it to being a mere confirmation of what was naively intended in the first place, and as "this intended reality" is most often a social convention, it tricks us into believing in it even more because of the societal approval it tends to elicit. (You're a good subject when, along with the group you wish to belong to, you agree to and confirm the beauty of the emperor's clothes.)

In a real sense, our belief in this type of "objective reality" makes us members of a cult, or at best, members of a religion that posits its own brand of "objectivity" as its central object.

Of course, the more we, by way of conformism, surrender to this illusion, becoming more and more alienated from the (our) inherent mystery, the more we experience a lack, a feeling that something vital is missing. We sense a widening gap between our symbolic representation of "the real" and our lived experience of "it."

That experience of a lack often leads us to compensate for what we sense is missing, a compensation that often leads us to exaggerate secondary aspects of our work. (Animation is presently pitifully stuck on having to be funny and/or cynical, even nihilistic!) This also often drives many to substance abuse and other explorations that are far from being life-sustaining. ("Life is a bitch, and then you die!") And yet, that very experience of lack could itself be an entrance to serious work if respected/accepted instead of being merely reacted against.

Life driven by a need to compensate is hardly a fulfilling life; it borders on being a permanent tantrum!

Culturally, it is nearly impossible to make a 180° turn and start looking for the mysterious where it truly is, "under our nose" (or better yet, an inch or two behind it!).

Walter Benjamin talks about the "impenetrable as daily," and the "daily as impenetrable." (Thanks to Pierre Hébert and his remarkable book L'ange et l'automate, a book that MUST be translated into English, and soon.)

What we normally call "objective reality" is in fact an almost complete invention, a fabricated illusion, which maintains its status of "reality" by way of something that approaches mass hysteria. (In very much the same way the emperor has no clothes, our "reality" has no substance.)

So, through aided perception #1, our grasp of Muybridge's work allows us to believe we now know how to dissect motion, and how to use that knowledge to create the illusion of motion in our work, a motion (and the world in which it takes place) that reinforces the societal delusion.

What most animators (and viewers) have now come to accept/expect as "real" (or at least as being "credible") is leading us all further and further away from our humanity, just as the acceptance of the conventions of the language of "live cinema" (which most often naively constitutes habitual animation's underlying structure) has greatly curtailed the potential of animation as a different language in its own right, very much in need of its own "principles" and vistas to explore, vistas no other art form could enter (at least not in the same way animation could).

Just as many artists accepted the "scientific world view" (many still do) as a basis for their work (basically, this forms the underlying structure of most people's world view — solid objects moving about in empty space- conditioning/containing their activities), animators took the same approach in their search for ways to suggest/imply motion within a context that was taken for granted.

When we draw/paint from the visible, we often overlook the importance of the distance from which we are looking at "something," too often calling on our memory and expectations to add details we cannot see because of that distance, or to negate the "distortions" caused by that distance as well. (Edward T. Hall has a great book, The Hidden Dimension, that talks very well about this and other aspects of our being in the world. Highly recommended!) This negation of the distance/space dimension is very similar to the negation of time of which we are guilty when we surrender to the Muybridge model: we posit each frozen moment as equal to every other frozen moment, while in experience, in our living present, "now you see it, now you don't!"