.
I must digress at this point and give the reader a full understanding of Percy's "it- experience. Percy begins his essay discussing Garcia Lopez de Cardenas and the overwhelming emotions he must have felt at discovering the Grand Canyon. He names this emotion the "P- factor. Each person after Cardenas would lack the full experience that Cardenas himself felt. What Cardenas received was the full "P- and what the rest of us receive is just a portion of the "P-. The reason for this phenomenon (according to Percy) is that the Grand Canyon has been reproduced in millions of images. Percy says, " the sightseer measures his satisfaction by the degree to which the canyon conforms to the performed complex."" Each of us, before ever seeing the Canyon has a preconceived idea as to its grandeur. It is this commercialization of the Canyon that leaves us all cheated out of truly seeing it. .
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING "OUT-.
This problem that the sightseer at the Grand Canyon has is not exclusive to the sightseer (which Percy refers to at length). No, in fact, to interpret Percy in this context exclusively would be to denying the bigger picture that I felt Percy was trying to impress upon us. The point - we live in a society that has images and information everywhere. It is our job, to discern what we see and experience. We need to question ourselves to keep our experiences in check. I wonder if Percy were alive today, what would he have said about the Internet? We live in a technological and commercialized society and through those mediums we are able to access information on any subject in split seconds. It is human nature that we form images of the information and sights we view. These images however, leave each of us less surprised when we see the real McCoy. .
Percy contends that the unknown is much more thrilling than the known. Think back on the first time you remember seeing something new.