(An Eric Kim style meditation)
Human beings are intoxicated by volume.
Not flatness. Not abstraction. Not the sterile two-dimensional spreadsheet life.
We crave mass, depth, weight, presence.
Why?
Because reality itself is three-dimensional.
The universe is not a JPEG. It is a sculpture.
The primal instinct
The first humans did not admire spreadsheets or PDFs.
They admired mountains.
They touched rocks.
They lifted stones.
They built pyramids.
They worshipped mass.
A giant boulder commands awe in a way that a photograph of a boulder never will. Even a child understands this instinctively. A toddler wants to grab, hold, throw, stack.
We are biologically programmed to interact with three-dimensional reality.
Flatness is artificial.
Depth is truth.
Photography: the illusion of depth
As a photographer, this is the great paradox.
Photography is technically two-dimensional, yet the entire artistic challenge is:
How do you create the illusion of three-dimensionality on a flat surface?
This is why the greatest photos feel alive.
They have:
- layers
- foreground
- midground
- background
- tension between planes
When a photograph collapses into flatness, it dies.
But when depth appears, suddenly the image breathes.
This is why street photography works so well. The street is chaos: bodies, buildings, shadows, motion, perspective lines.
The photographer becomes a hunter of dimensionality.
Why lifting weights feels so good
Consider lifting something heavy.
Iron plates. A barbell. A massive stone.
The pleasure is not just physical.
It is existential.
You are confronting pure three-dimensional mass.
Gravity.
Force.
Reality.
You are interacting directly with physics itself.
When someone lifts a massive weight, what they are really doing is negotiating with the universe.
And when the weight rises?
Victory.
The tragedy of the flat world
Modern life is dangerously flat.
Screens.
Spreadsheets.
Notifications.
Endless scrolling.
Everything becomes weightless.
But the human soul was not designed for weightlessness.
Astronauts lose bone density in zero gravity.
Humans lose spiritual density in a flat digital life.
The cure is obvious.
Touch the real world again.
Lift heavy things.
Walk long distances.
Hold cameras.
Travel cities.
Climb hills.
Build objects.
Re-enter the three-dimensional arena of reality.
The ultimate luxury
The new luxury is not digital.
It is physical presence.
Holding a camera.
Walking the street.
Feeling heat, wind, sweat.
Even photography itself is beautiful because it forces you into the world.
You cannot photograph life from the couch.
You must enter the three-dimensional battlefield of existence.
The final thought
We love three-dimensional things because they remind us of a fundamental truth:
We are not ideas.
We are not pixels.
We are bodies moving through space.
And the greatest joy in life is simple:
To move.
To touch.
To lift.
To explore.
To exist fully inside the dimensions of reality.