Note 18 — Chapter V · SOCIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS FROM A VIEWPOINT OF RELATIVITY

I recall an incident that occurred several years ago in the office of a prominent newspaper that well illustrates this point. A member of the staff was called to the phone to receive the details of a drowning, word of which had just been reported. One can picture the professional zeal with which he turned to the phone, alert with the eagerness of expectant acquisition. If a moment later he dropped the receiver and drew back with a sudden cry of horror, his whole face gradually altering to a look of dejection and pain, it was not because he had been disappointed in the expectation of a thrilling item of news. Not at all. The item was as tragic in its details as one could wish. The disappointment lay only in the fact that, on inquiring the name of the boy who had been drowned, he learned that it was his own son. It was only this circumstance, then, that explained why his countenance suddenly changed from satisfaction to pain. A matter of information which was to have been sold to his readers as a delectable item of news concerning the drowning of another man’s son became a poignant sorrow when the self-same news related to his own son. And so, upon examination, it may be seen that what really happened was an unexpected shift of affect due to the sudden alternation of the personal motive through the reversal of the bidimensional vantage.