Haruki Murakami on reality

A thought-provoking piece in the NY Times from one of my favorite authors (and Javiera's too!), Haruki Murakami - you really should go read it right now:

We often wonder what it would have been like if 9/11had never happened — or at least if that plan had not succeeded so perfectly. Then the world would have been very different from what it is now. America might have had a different president (a major possibility), and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars might never have happened (an even greater possibility).

Let’s call the world we actually have now Reality A and the world that we might have had if 9/11 had never happened Reality B. Then we can’t help but notice that the world of Reality B appears to be realer and more rational than the world of Reality A. To put it in different terms, we are living a world that has an even lower level of reality than the unreal world.   ...read more

Right? And once you're done with that, you should really go & track down one of his novels & read it. Here's some suggestions: