Random post

 Ramble.

I rate it 2.5/10

I saw this online, and got to thinking. It made me think. Especially the part of the individual not existing prior to the community. I’m just riffing on a few themes in my mind.

The community existed prior to me, and I came out of it. As an emergent property of the community.

**

I think therefore I am.

Or

I am because we are.

**

I came about as an emergent property of the people who all were a part of my life.

The friends, family, places, books and culture all are part of who I am. And I don't exist except as an emergent and emerging property of them. I am a derivative of them. There is no such thing as a pure individual.

**

But then the flip side is that eventually you say...

Well it is now and I am here. And I am thinking, aren't I? I think therefore I am. Maybe, but not really. Would I still be an I if I didn't think about it? If someone else told me that I existed, I would still exist even if I didn't think about it within myself.

I exist because others invested in me and caused me to become a being, but then eventually I got ahold of individual consciousness. Or in other words became conscious of being an I well enough to talk about it or think weight it in words.

None of that is interesting or new. However...

**

What happens if....

Everything that makes up who you are or became is lies and nonsense and rubbish!?!?!?!?!? And none of the people you cared about or were supposed to care about, or the places, or the beliefs, or anything was real!? What if even the books were corrupted by the fae!?

What if the only things truly real in our life were things like book, computer games, music and cats. And then even many of the books were false. Even Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. And maybe climbing trees was real. What if everything that caused you to exist never existed?

We are only actually people through other people. But what if the people were nothing? And false?

And then what if we become people through other people, and then eventually emerge as individuals. We choose, and become individuals. And the people through which we became people, and developed those habits of humanity and full personhood, fall away like training wheels.

But what if the people through which you became human were false all along, and there was nothing of value there to begin with. Where does that leave you as as person and an individual.

**

There is no such thing as an individual. Not truly. A person is a person through people. But then many of us (not all), become a person as a discrete object, without having to be one through people.

And then we are truly an individual. But we're still part of the things that made us into that actual individual, placed in history. But then it is like wave particle duality. Which one are you at that point of time?? Well it's just the lens.

**

Other related matter:

Things simply are true or false. Correct or incorrect. Right or wrong. I am right, and I say so. I explain myself briefly. But then leave it at that.

But at the same time, the map is not the territory, and fish traps aren't what they contain. The word is not the thing. See also five bound men and the elephant.

But you have to crawl before you can walk. Walk before you can run. And run before you can sprint.

And you need to learn true and false, before you can manage to do the clever stuff. You need to be able to read a map plainly, give instructions clearly, and follow directions, before you can navigate well. And then only after that can you say "the map is not the territory" and make it into a tasteful concept.

And if you can't run, sprint, jump, climb, dodge or evade you can't play tag.

You have probably got to learn how to think clearly before you can think in a fluid manner. Learn your right/wrong plain and clear, your arithmetic, your Newton before you do your quantum. You have to learn to think clearly, and develop good abstract thinking skills (such as being able to use logic, reason, argue in favour of truth, debate one side and another, try to be right according to truth. Discipline and train the mind. To do your duty to be correct, pursue rectitude, be intellectually responsible, acclimatise oneself to a certain and particular culture of intellect and thought… and many other things) before you can think in a more fluid way, like with all of that quantum stuff. This is assuming you wish to be cognitively useful.

[This point is slightly off to the side of “A person is a person through other people”. I went off on a bit of a tangent. Some people act as though they just fell out of a coconut tree as a discrete and complete object.]

There is also a lot of reading, study, practise, thought, conversation and reflection and analysis that go into it.

**

Uhh. The most important bit to me is that the people didn’t exist in the first place. The people through who I became a person. They never existed. Nothing in my life existed.

“What if the only things truly real in our life were things like book, computer games, music and cats. And then even many of the books were false. Even Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. And maybe climbing trees was real. What if everything that caused you to exist never existed.”

That’s the important bit.

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