Your body

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hey, how do you like that thing? Pretty neat, isn't it? I mean, if you think about it.

So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white. It grows, and if you're lucky it all works like it's supposed to; totally sweet functional legs for perambulation, arms with dexterous graspers on the end, built-in audio and video perception devices, a noisemaker. Pretty fucking awesome! If you're lucky, you get to keep this thing for upward of 90 years, which is a pretty sweet deal even though it starts to break down a bit before the end. These things come in roughly three varieties; male, female, and both. The male ones have primarily external sexual reproductive organs at the lower limb Y-junction, and the female ones have primarily internal sexual reproductive organs for incubating more meat-bags, with the entrance at the same Y-junction. The both ones have some combination of the two and are somewhat of an anomaly.

For some reason a lot of the people inhabiting the meat-bags have decided to define themselves based on what sort of meat-bag they happen to have gotten dumped into. They've made up all kinds of fairly arbitrary assignations like "pretty" and "ugly", which are subject to change at any time for no reason whatsoever, then they identify their self-ness based on these assignations. They've also created categories for different colors of meat-bag, and for different forms of sexual behavior. They have created behavioral categories for the male and the female, which they call "gender". People are expected to pick one to identify with, and this identity dictates their behavior.

Yes, they actually do this! I'm not even making it up.

The hard thing to keep in mind, once you're here, is that your meat-bag is actually just a really cool biological machine. It gets hard to remember, because almost all of the people in their meat-bags all around you are totally buying into the idea that their bags define their personhood, but it's all bullshit. I mean, of course the thing influences your behavior; odds are high that you'll have the desire to mate with other meat-bags, mostly other-sex ones, and all of the machinations of your meat-bag, the chemicals it releases to control various functions, will affect your thoughts and feelings. But still, those aspects are fairly incidental; your vehicle will need a certain amount of care while you're in it, and it may be kind of eccentric and require special care, but that's only to be expected. The main thing to never forget is that the color of it, the sex of it, whether it is at any given moment in time "pretty" or "ugly"... these are all incidental. You would still be you in a void with a thought-operated keyboard for communication. You would still be you if all of these incidentals were excised from you and you were just a featureless blob in a jar. As long as your meat-bag continues to function, you continue to exist, and you are you.

So take care of the damn thing, appreciate it, and don't place too much value on identifying your person-hood based on what kind you got. It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one.

Also, fuck you Kai.

[Sister_Gothique]

AMEN!


Very well put.

[Kai]

actually, you are the meatbag, we are meatbags. You can't really separate the biology from the psychology, and the personhood comes from that emergence.

Still, basically all the same meatbags with different minor details.

[Reginald Ret]

actually, you are the meatbag, we are meatbags. You can't really separate the biology from the psychology, and the personhood comes from that emergence.

Still, basically all the same meatbags with different minor details.

thats how i understood this

As long as your meat-bag continues to function, you continue to exist, and you are you.

[East Coast Hustle]

FUCK YEAH NIGEL.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

[Template]

actually, you are the meatbag, we are meatbags. You can't really separate the biology from the psychology, and the personhood comes from that emergence.

Still, basically all the same meatbags with different minor details.

Still, a thing != its labels.  No reason to construct your arbitrary identity according to arbitrary-but-popular beliefs about your body

[Bu🤠ns]

nice, nigel!

because he's been in my current spectrum of awareness lately, im reminded of a quote by alan watts:

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
Alan Watts

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

nice, nigel!

because he's been in my current spectrum of awareness lately, im reminded of a quote by alan watts:

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
Alan Watts

That's beautiful!

[Adios]

I am not a meatbag. I am a spirit trapped in a meatbag for a relatively short amount of time.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

However you want to view it, it's still a fucking meat-bag. Or a skin-sack full of meat, whatever.

[Adios]

However you want to view it, it's still a fucking meat-bag. Or a skin-sack full of meat, whatever.

whatever.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yes.

[Adios]

Here's the thing. One can choose to view life from any angle, I choose to view life from a different angle than you.