News:

PD.com: Ten minutes of your life that you can never get back.

Main Menu

Who are you anyway ?

Started by Jesrad, July 23, 2008, 12:48:14 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Jesrad

This is a counterthought of a much older post of mine where I called upon the statistically-expected geniuses of the world to Get Up And Do Something Already: with 6 billion people alive, we should have about as many Great Artists / Scientists as there have been during the last several millenia, yet we don't, so I shall blame them for their own inaptitude at living up to my mathematically-backed expectations of them. This text thakes the opposite stand: that we do not have those many geniuses, and why. Maybe playing on those two conflicting views can bring something up in unsuspecting readers ?

What does it mean being a distinct entity from other similar entities around you ? Apart from occupying a specific vat of flesh and some volume above a chair at the moment you're reading this, where's the contrast coming from ? How's the seperating between That Guy / That Other Guy based on ?

If your mind and memories were pulled across and put into another humanoid bag of protoplasm would the result still be "yourself" ? Deep down to the bottom, what is "you" ?

I PROCLAIM THE NONEXISTENCE OF SOULS

If "being you" means making the choices that you make, then you probably got millions of dopplegangers out there behaving just like you, eating the same breakfast cereals or drinking the same brand of coffee. Oh the fraternity !

And trying to get away from the choices you make, by making other choices, is little less futile than trying to get away from yourself. You're stuck with your identity, you're doomed to being yourself, just deal with it.

Your memories ? Do they define you or did you actually get to define them, really ? Apart from recollections of more choices you made, there's nothing there unique about you except for accidents you or anyone had no control over. Contemplate and weep: all that is really "you" is nothing more than a particular series of accidents.

Your ideas ? Are they really yours, or did you get them from someone else, actually ? Did you ever come up with something no one thought up before ? Think hard: with 6 billion domestic apes on the planet and growing, what's the chance you got even ONE unique idea that you can define your entire identity around, which no one ever had before ?

Face it: everything that passes through your brain is really someone else's identity-froth, collected and passed on until it got stuck there somehow. It means you're not a specific "someone", but really a mix of other people's identities poured by accidents in that particular blob of greasy neurons in your head. You're not even really living yet. You're not someone, yet. You're not, yet.

STOP JUST PERPETUATING THE EXISTENCE OF OTHERS
GET STARTED EXISTING YOURSELF BEFORE YOU DIE
The Ends Are The Means (and vice-versa)
The Path is wherever you drop your feet - not the other way 'round. Just get going already !

Rumckle

The old, "This is Your Life" speech from fight club.  :D

Anyway, the intro actually got me thinking:

Quote from: Jesrad on July 23, 2008, 12:48:14 PM
This is a counterthought of a much older post of mine where I called upon the statistically-expected geniuses of the world to Get Up And Do Something Already: with 6 billion people alive, we should have about as many Great Artists / Scientists as there have been during the last several millenia, yet we don't, so I shall blame them for their own inaptitude at living up to my mathematically-backed expectations of them. This text thakes the opposite stand: that we do not have those many geniuses, and why. Maybe playing on those two conflicting views can bring something up in unsuspecting readers ?

I'd say the problem is that it is too hard to collaborate, sure together all the genius's may stand a chance in a revolution, but unfortunately it is much too difficult for them (us maybe?) to come together. Plus add to the fact that even the great minds of the world have shrapnel in them that will stop them agreeing on issues, everybody has had some level of brainwashing performed on them.
It's not trolling, it's just satire.

Jesrad

QuoteThe old, "This is Your Life" speech from fight club.
Hmmm. I hadn't realized. The ultimate hidden point of the text is to offer insight in Actual Immortality through the continuation of one's identity through others. If thousands of people continue to do whatever you were doing when you were alive, just as if you were still doing it, then you're still there and kicking, for all it matters.

I mean, Discordianism should be able to make offers of Afterlife, too, if you stretch it hard enough.

QuoteI'd say the problem is that it is too hard to collaborate, sure together all the genius's may stand a chance in a revolution, but unfortunately it is much too difficult for them (us maybe?) to come together.
Eh, who ever said anything about coming together and collaborating ? Stigmergy works regardless, it can even make telepathy look awfully impractical and clumsy. The Revolution will be decentralized (and profitable).
The Ends Are The Means (and vice-versa)
The Path is wherever you drop your feet - not the other way 'round. Just get going already !

Cramulus

Good rant!

I love this line:

Quotewith 6 billion people alive, we should have about as many Great Artists / Scientists as there have been during the last several millenia, yet we don't, so I shall blame them for their own inaptitude at living up to my mathematically-backed expectations of them.


Voodoo


Quote
..so I shall blame them for their own inaptitude at living up to my mathematically-backed expectations of them.

my wife says the same thing about my naughty bits.

The Good Reverend Roger

I have a soul.

It's just very, very small.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Rumckle

Quote from: Jesrad on July 23, 2008, 01:30:07 PM
Eh, who ever said anything about coming together and collaborating ? Stigmergy works regardless, it can even make telepathy look awfully impractical and clumsy. The Revolution will be decentralized (and profitable).

Yeah, but The Machine uses stigmergy as well.

Discordians should stick apart ?

It's not trolling, it's just satire.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Rumckle on July 24, 2008, 03:28:26 AM
Discordians should stick apart ?

Why?  Because some filthy old beatnik said so?
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Rumckle

That's what the ? mark was for, because beatniks are generally too high to take seriously, except about the brown acid
It's not trolling, it's just satire.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Rumckle on July 24, 2008, 03:37:51 AM
That's what the ? mark was for, because beatniks are generally too high to take seriously, except about the brown acid

What?   :lulz:

The Beatnik era was LONG dead when Woodstock hit.

Wrong decade altogether.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Voodoo


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Beatniks wrote pretty much everything worth reading in the 20th century.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


AFK

Ray Bradbury and Tolkien were Beatniks? 
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

LMNO


Voodoo

Tolkien makes my brain hurt.

Bradbury is the only real person in the world, the rest of us are robots, or something.