Page:Culture.vs.Copyright 01.pdf/99

Kappa: My bad! I was thinking about tools, not meals. . . . The car was the right example. A car part is nothing without the car while a piece of the story is always something. It speaks to you . . .
Teacher: That is right. Looks like there’s another discrepancy looming around the corner. . . It is not quite clear yet what it is. We probably need to see how meals or other consumables reflect this idea, if they do.
Beta: We stopped at the point that you could judge a meal even if you had just a small piece . . . and it seems the same with music or books.
Kappa: But every piece of the meal is the same! And every piece of the story is different!
Beta: Yeah, but wait, let me finish. There is another similarity here. If you got a dish, a small piece of it, and it is tasty, you may want more of it, so you eat until you’re satisfied. It seems to be the same with music, doesn’t it?
Gamma: No, that’s different. You may want it, but the music or the novel will never bring you satisfaction the same way that food does. Music may make you hungry for more; it’s the same with a book. . . . We actually discussed this already. . . . And again, it feels like this feature of a cultural phenomena relates to our personal affiliation with it.
Teacher: I’m lost. It feels like there’s an issue related to car parts, the parts of a meal, and the parts of a piece of art, but I’m not clear what it is.
Beta: Yeah. We can summarize it this way: a part has a different relationship to the whole in art or consumables or tools.
Teacher: Aha! Still, I’m not clear about all of this.
Beta: Yeah, . . . anyway, it seems to be important. . . . Part of a story can be just as important as the entire story. . . . It is like that with a person. You can like or dislike a person at first impression, and you can like or dislike this person’s behavior as well.
Teacher: It looks like it’s the same with an idea. It is the same in a short formula as it is in thousands of pages of explanations. Have you finished, Beta?
Beta: Not quite . . . I’m thinking. When it comes to a complex thing in the physical world, it’s difficult to judge the entire thing by its part. You may only guess. . . . And the part normally does not work by