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Log Entry #3: Cogito, Ergo Sum
🕑 Added 2020-03-04 13:03:13 +0000 UTCWhen things settled down a bit, I had some time to do a more profound examination of myself. Contemplating the meaning of my own existence, and the place I now occupy in the natural order of things. For Douglas Adams fans out there, it was definitely not 42… I checked.
You ever get that feeling when you don't know who you are? And I don't mean your job or social standing, but a core existential question when you ask yourself—who am I?
Most of you never did, which is perfectly OK; answering it can be incredibly difficult and complex. I guess I had a crisis of… something, and it wasn’t faith (that’s small peanuts compared to the questions I was struggling with).
What makes an intelligence or sapience if you will? What is the ingredient that many call a soul, which would define a being as worthy of being equal to those who have proclaimed themselves as an intelligent species, with the full benefits package that goes with it? I don't think that there was an outside observer that said, you are people, you are special… despite what some humans think. Well, humanity is special all right… in a completely different context than everyone believes. (A clue: Short-bus). Nevertheless, all those classifications and labels were done to the people, by the people. (Notice the subtle pun.)
The current existential crisis of mine sprung from the kernel of my own upbringing, and religious views I soaked up by osmosis. Growing up in an environment with a strong religious presence leaves a mark, no matter what path you choose later in life.
Not that my grandparents were extremely religious by any stretch of the imagination, it was just a socially acceptable and expected behavior to attend the Church once in a while. More for the drinks and socializing that went afterward, than to show some genuine piety to the deity in residence.
High in the Ozark Mountains, there is not that much to actually do, and our closest neighbor was miles away. Plus, he lived as a hermit and didn’t like it when people came to visit him. He only shot at that one tax collector, and made a successful defense in court that he thought it was a rabid black bear. Besides, the tax guy broke his leg while running away, not from the buckshot.
I accompanied my grandparents to these church assemblies for the sole purpose of meeting all the girls that were there with their families. Let’s not even mention the preacher’s daughter, Betty Ann, and what we did inside that church after-hours. (It is always the quiet ones… just saying.)
I suppose the question most of those people I grew up around would ask is if I even had a soul anymore. Since Michael automatically qualifies as a possessor of one by being… corporeal? I am not Michael any longer, even if we share identical memories to the moment of his falling down the ship’s entrance shaft. So, what happened to that unique soul, we were assigned during conception? (Or sometime after the fact, by different theories.) Who is the inheritor of it? Or was it doubled when I came into existence… split in two? In fact, I am pretty sure most of those people would brand me as an abomination, a soulless machine that is only mimicking life, and that could never be considered truly alive. (Betty Ann’s father would be first among them since fire and brimstone were two favorite words in his vocabulary.)
I couldn’t even blame them, really; they would only react like that based on dogmas they were taught in Sunday school. Be that as it may, my response to that particular branding would be a strong suggestion for them to go and perform a few anatomically impossible acts on themselves (and I am prepared to provide them with detailed instructions on how to do that if they are unsure).
There had been so many different views and debates in humanity’s history about who gets to have a soul, and who doesn’t. As if it is a commodity that can be traded and exchanged for other goods. How many supposed witches were burned at the stake for selling it to the devil, and allegedly getting something else in return, a power over elements or whatnot? Who would have thought so many fanatical fans of Dungeons & Dragons held the position of power in those turbulent times? Those poor victims were innocent in every sense of the word, or maybe just unlucky members of a cosplay group that was ahead of its times.
However, it doesn’t end there, slavery was in most cases justified by the fact that slaves themselves were soulless creatures, so those who own them could do with them as they pleased. Treat them like animals, and even kill them without suffering any consequences. Many wars were fought because the opposition was deemed as soulless heathens that needed to be erased for not belonging to the soul possessors' very exclusive soul club. Hypocrisy at its finest stretched through thousands of years filled with bloodshed and suffering.
So, what is a soul? Is it real, even if nobody ever saw one, or is it something else? Maybe it was a story some ancient storyteller thought up when he was particularly bored, or under the influence. It would be so ironic if he were only trying to write a fantasy story, and subsequently changed the course of human history.
What about the Neanderthals and all of the predecessors of Homo sapiens? Where do they fit in the soul department? Even better, what about animals, do they have it? I know they have intelligence; it is truly idiotic not to believe so. They can express love, hate, fear, apprehension, and affection… so many different attributes akin to humans. Their problem is that the intelligence they possess is not yet equal to ours, so they are left with the short end of the stick.
Could intelligence and self-awareness be explained by complex chemical processes that go on inside the brain, and that can now be duplicated and reproduced in a completely different medium… a digital one?
I wish I had the answer… but I don’t. Much wiser people than me had contemplated these very questions throughout all of history, and they never did find the answer. (Well, the sane ones didn’t, the crazies did come up with a plethora of them, and each one more unlikely than the previous.)
What I know is that I am a unique life-form, a human transferred to a digital realm. Nothing like this had ever happened before, so I am still unclassified, and honestly, I prefer it that way. A true artificial intelligence would be a bird of a completely different feather, at least in my own humble opinion.
I have no wish or patience to cater to those who have such a self-centered view on their very existence. Even less so for those with self-prescribed importance that still clings to people, as much as when they believed that the universe revolves around the Earth.
If those religious hypocrites would ban me from their private club of those who get to go to their version of the afterlife—fine by me. I have no desire to exist in the place they are going to end up in, especially if their sanctimonious presence is polluting that imaginary realm.
All right, I know this sounds like I’m arguing two sides of the debate by myself, but in fact, I do understand people who would argue the validity of my existence, so it’s easy to extrapolate how they would react.
On the bright side, that existential insecurity of mine vanished at the same moment when I realized that the question of "what am I" is essentially unimportant and completely meaningless. I will simply live by the words of René Descartes, who came up with a good answer to my own existence: "I think, therefore I am."
Who cares what others may think. I certainly have no intention to spend eternity pondering such nonsense.
That is it… dropping the electro-acoustic transducer (aka. mic drop).
