Busting the Myth of Making a Difference

It is true that living beings in the past have determined the circumstances of other, presently living beings.  I need not list examples of world-movers and world-shapers because they are the essence of the most basic history classes, which we all have taken.  It is probable that in their individual minds, they felt the pangs of thinking as a human: by this I mean their feeling like doers—agents—their not being pulled along like a lame donkey but rather pulling themselves along —pulling their own donkeys—by their own…donkeystraps.

There is something about humans that makes them feel privileged above other animals and cues them to give themselves a lengthy, heartfelt toast just for showing up at the soiree of the animal kingdom.  But I’m sure donkeys would give themselves a proud eeyonk! if they had the chance to see themselves carry the kinds of loads they carry.  (Shout out to all the nice asses out there.)  And that’s precisely what gives humans the opportunity to praise themselves: their ability to objectify themselves, see themselves and so admire themselves.

But what are they really admiring, and is it really what we think it is?

What is a person?  It is not a human being who.  “A what?”  No, who!  “So what is the who?”  It’s the way a person does, and, also, it’s what a person is.  “It’s what?”  If we assume that anything is what it is because of how it is or what it does, then a person is the same way: the essence of the person is the way persons are.  And what are they like?  Maybe I can show you.

Would you love your parents if they were unfeeling robots—not that they wouldn’t show affection or manifest care or look as if they love you, but would you love them if they had no minds?  The thought itself is frightening.  How could you trust them?  If they have no minds, they would feel no remorse accidentally killing you.

They could be reprogrammed in an instant.  They could turn on you before you got a chance to shut them off and—bam, you’re dead, or maimed, or captured, or some other horrible robot-induced betrayal and suffering.  To have no mind is effectively to have no soul.

What a grave consequence, to lose one’s soul!

Some say it’s not worth gaining the whole world if you lose your soul.  But what a disproportionately grave consequence for losing something of which no one can ever be sure to have any ownership in the first place.  You can be sure that you’ve lost your wallet, or your car, or your house, or even a limb—but how can you check to see if you’ve lost your soul?

Better yet, how can you be sure that you ever had one?

A person is an inference, a creation by unconscious logic of a selfsame subject behind another set of eyes.  She—the person—is a sending-out of oneself into another body, an imagining of it from the inside and back towards oneself.  It is an exchange, an experiment, a building of the Empire State Building upon ground whose firmness you yourself have not had opportunity to test, but of whose fidelity all testimony seems strongly to confirm.

A person—the very idea of others—this is a game that everyone, every person, is compelled to play despite having never expressed an interest.

No one has ever seen a person, really.  They’re hard, if not impossible, to see.

To be a person is to objectify yourself.

Personhood is a relationship between a subject and an object. You cannot be a person unless there is someone else to treat you as such.  For what good is it to be a person if you are the only one?  From what does your title differentiate you?

You are a singularity, not a kind; an anomaly, not a category.

You have no need of a word for yourself.

Nor can you be a person to yourself unless you yourself are the other to whom you relate.

The act of “looking inward” creates this other; it pretends to see the workings of consciousness as though they belonged to someone else—as thought they were another’s, and could be seen.  The inalienable rights of persons, therefore, such as the right to life and the pursuit of happiness, are not so inalienable after all; rather, they are alienable as soon as there are no aliens.  This goes for all rights, all freedom, and all laws.

Thus “person” is a role to play in a community of similar beings.  It is a name given to an object that dictates exactly what can and shall be done to it, what it can and shall do to itself or to others, how others ought to think about it, and, in the special case of persons, how it ought to think about itself.  

The person is a unique category, for the category itself was created by persons to classify themselves.  Also, being a person is not something that a human has absolutely, or inherently; it is a social role, and it is given to humans by those humans who have the power to give it. 

“What gives humans this power?”  That is like asking, what gives a tree the power to sprout leaves?  Or, what gives the sky the power to be blue?  The power to create meaning is a power of human physiology, a consequence of chemical equilibriums and enzymes comingling with their substrates and DNA self-replicating and subatomic particles cleaving to one another with a faithfulness that should strike despair into the hearts of any honest human couple.

What gives humans this power to decide what things are?  No one gives it to them—it is a fundamental human trait: to make some meaning out of life.

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You are the universe.

You are the universe in two distinct ways.  First, you are the only world you will ever know; therefore, you are the only world.  Second, your consciousness, the tool you use to explore the universe, is a part of the universe.  There is no spirit; there is only matter.  Therefore, the same things that make up the book you’re reading make up the brain and eyes that read the book.  The universe is curious in that way.

For more information on the universe, visit this post.