About Eduardo Porter
**Why "Being There"? **
I named this thing after a novel by Jerzy Kosinski that was made into a movie by Hal Ashby. It’s a fabulous send-up of the ruling class. In the movie, a simple, homeless, probably illiterate gardner played by Peter Sellers bumps into an upright member of the ruling class, who confuses him for a sage, ushering him into the upper echelons of power.
Weirdly, perhaps, what stuck with me was the way the book captures how our understanding of the world is shaped by our aspirations, appetites, desires and hopes. It reminds us that our image of the world is shaped by what we want and what we fear.