Dioramics raises questions. Some call for clarification; others concern possible weaknesses in the approach. Below, I try to take both seriously. Dioramics, too, must be open to questioning.
Does Dioramics avoid the question of what really exists and how it came into being?
That impression can arise. Dioramics focuses attention on how a world is experienced, described and investigated. But this does not make questions about existence itself disappear. What exists independently of us? Why is there something? How did the universe, life and consciousness arise?
These questions deserve investigation. We need to distinguish between questions that can be investigated through observation and scientific theories, and questions that reach beyond what these can currently establish. Cosmology, for example, investigates the history and structure of the universe. The question of why there is a universe at all has a different character. The boundary between such questions is not, however, fixed for all time.
Dioramics itself offers no developed ontology or cosmology. It does not explain what reality ultimately consists of or what brought existence into being. This is a limitation of the approach, not a reason to call such questions meaningless.
Dioramics can, however, contribute to examining the answers proposed. What do we mean, for example, by ‘matter’, ‘consciousness’, ‘coming into being’ or ‘nothing’? Which observations support an explanation? At what point does a scientific theory become a metaphysical interpretation? And what difficulties arise when familiar concepts are applied to existence as a whole?
The distinction between a description and what is being described must be maintained. That a cosmological theory is developed within a historically evolved research practice does not mean that the universe is produced by that practice. Theories can also fit what we observe more or less well.
Attention to dioramas can therefore accompany ontological and cosmological inquiry, but cannot replace it. If every question about what exists is answered only with a description of how we look, the original question remains unanswered.
Dioramics must also examine its own assumptions here. As soon as it states, for example, that reality consists exclusively of experience, relations or appearances, it is itself making an ontological claim. That claim requires arguments and cannot be justified by the diorama metaphor alone.
Isn’t Dioramics simply relativism?
If the world presents itself to us in different ways, the conclusion might seem to be that every view is equally valid. Yet the latter does not follow from the former.
A claim can be factually incorrect. An explanation can be poorly supported. A belief can harm people. Attending to the world within which such a claim acquires meaning does not remove these differences.
Dioramics does ask us to examine what a judgement rests on. What counts as evidence here? Which experiences are taken into account? Which questions are asked, and which remain out of view? Our standards, too, deserve examination, without our having to abandon them straight away.
This offers no guarantee of a definitive judgement. It can, however, help us judge more carefully.
Is there no reality outside our dioramas, then?
That something exists independently of us and that we can know it independently of any involvement are different matters.
A blackbird does not depend on my interest in order to live. Yet that blackbird always appears to me within a particular situation: as song in the morning, as a bird making a mess of the vegetable garden, as a subject of biological research or as a reminder of someone.
Dioramics need not deny the existence of an independent reality. It investigates how that reality becomes accessible and how our descriptions take shape.
The diorama metaphor also has a limitation here. It can suggest that we are trapped inside a shoebox diorama, with reality somewhere outside. But we ourselves are part of what we investigate. We are affected, interrupted and surprised. What happens by no means always conforms to our expectations.
Are some dioramas better than others?
Yes, but that calls for clarification: better for what, in which situation and by which standards?
In treating an infection, medical knowledge and reliable research are of great importance. Understanding why someone is afraid of that treatment may also require a conversation. One approach does not automatically replace the other.
Sometimes approaches directly contradict one another. Then it is not enough to say that they are simply different dioramas. We must also consider evidence, coherence, applicability and consequences.
Dioramics calls attention to both the possibilities and the limitations of an approach. A way of looking can bring much into view and yet fall short as soon as it claims the final word on everything.
Isn’t this just perspectivism in a new guise?
The affinity is clear. Dioramics shares with perspectivist approaches an attention to the fact that knowing and experiencing always take place somewhere, through a particular involvement.
The word ‘perspective’, however, readily suggests someone looking at the same object from a particular standpoint. By a diorama, I mean a broader experiential world. Mood, bodily condition, language, memory, habits and the presence of others also help determine what stands out and what something means.
A conversation can become a different world during a conflict than during a relaxed encounter. More than my opinion changes: the same words sound different, other details stand out and different responses seem possible.
This emphasis gives Dioramics a distinctive focus. Whether that focus justifies a new name is open to discussion. The name must earn its usefulness through what it helps us notice.
If everything is a diorama, is Dioramics itself one too?
Yes. Dioramics, too, is formulated from within a particular history, using particular words, interests and preferences. It has no position outside all other approaches.
The statement ‘everything is a diorama’ therefore also calls for caution. It can become a general formula that settles every situation in advance. Then much seems to have been explained, while we may hardly be looking any more.
The concept is useful as long as it opens up inquiry. What acquires meaning here? Which taken-for-granted assumptions are at work? What changes when our involvement changes?
When the concept makes such questions unnecessary, it begins to get in its own way.
Does this approach do justice to nondual experience?
Experiences in which no clear centre, owner or separate self is felt deserve serious attention. They need not first be reduced to an error or a psychological mechanism.
At the same time, there is a difference between such an experience and the statements made about it. ‘No separate self is experienced’ is a different statement from ‘no self exists anywhere’. The second has a much wider scope and requires justification of its own.
Radical nonduality can also be both a lived experience and a philosophy of life. Words such as ‘no one’, ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’ can express something of an experience, but can also become part of a fixed explanation of reality.
Dioramics investigates these different roles. That inquiry must also remain open to the possibility that the diorama metaphor fails to do sufficient justice to certain aspects of nondual experience.
What use is this in everyday life?
A remark sounds like a reproach. You feel tense and begin to defend yourself. At that moment, what the other person means may seem obvious.
Later, you notice that you were tired, already expecting criticism or reminded of an earlier conflict. This can make the same remark begin to sound different. Perhaps it was indeed a reproach. Perhaps it was not.
Dioramics invites us to attend to the situation in which a meaning became so convincing. Sometimes this creates room to ask for clarification, listen again or respond differently.
This does not always work. In fear, anger or exhaustion, that room may be barely accessible. The approach is no promise that you can bend every situation to your will. Even understanding afterwards what happened can be valuable.
Can Dioramics also be used to criticise injustice and harmful beliefs?
Yes. Understanding how a belief acquires meaning does not oblige us to accept it.
A world can be familiar and coherent for those who live in it, while others are excluded, humiliated or harmed by it. That coherence does not make it innocent. The experiences of those affected, verifiable facts and the consequences of actions provide grounds for criticism.
Power plays a role here. Not everyone has equal influence over what counts as normal, true or reasonable. Some people can impose their description of a situation; others are barely heard.
Dioramics does not in itself provide a complete ethics. Moral and political judgements are also needed. It can, however, help bring into view the assumptions that sustain a situation, whose experience counts and what remains out of view.
Is Dioramics a method, a philosophy or merely a metaphor?
The diorama metaphor is the starting point. It helps us attend to a world that appears as a meaningful whole.
Around it, a philosophical approach takes shape: questions about experience, knowledge, language and the relationship between different worlds. This approach can also be used in practice, by carefully investigating a concrete situation.
What stands out? What seems self-evident? What mood, expectation or prior history is at work? What changes when someone else describes the same situation?
In that sense, we can speak of a way of proceeding. A fixed sequence of steps, however, could easily obscure the fact that each situation may call for something different. Sometimes description helps, sometimes comparison, sometimes a conversation, sometimes detailed investigation. The metaphor offers direction, but does not determine the outcome in advance.
What would show that Dioramics falls short?
When the concept of a ‘diorama’ adds little to what can already be clearly described, there is reason to leave it aside.
It also falls short when essential differences become blurred. If scientific research, a personal memory and an unfounded claim are all called ‘dioramas’ without further distinction, little has been gained.
Another problem arises when every objection is treated merely as ‘yet another diorama’. The approach can then no longer be corrected. It protects itself by incorporating criticism into its own terms in advance.
The question therefore remains what Dioramics contributes in a concrete situation. Does it help us see something more precisely? Does it make room for what was previously missed? Can it itself be revised?
The answer need not always be yes.