An Idiot Abroad

I've been enjoying 'An Idiot Abroad', Ricky Gervais and Stephen Marchant sending Karl Pilkington on adventures around the world. Karl is a talent, trenchant, observant , sweet through all his sourness. He is the sort of genuinely funny but entirely unassuming person who would never become a star. Ricky Gervais edited Extras with him (I think) and realised how comical he could be.

Hegel's Master and Servant analysis ends up being an analysis of how self-consciousness attunes itself to a reality of being one among many. The problem of other minds doesn't pose itself anywhere that other minds represent serious threats. Master and Servant shows how freedom is conserved inwardly bythe servant when the master expends his own limited store of freedom outwardly. The Servant is therefore enriched, being conscious of his own and the Master's point of view. The great thing about Karl Pilkington is how interesting his deliberately small world is. I'm sure he was joking when he talked about the moon as being 'like Tenerife' - everyone wanted to go there in the 60's and 70's, but then they realised it wasn't that great. You can make a man bungee jump, but it prompts no reflection. The bungee-jumper on the other hand, is a furious ball of anxious reflection, alive to everything he wants and everything the paymaster wants.

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