Wednesday, March 6, 2019

What IS "My Life"

Humans are caught between a depression-producing neurally-connected web of poorly maintained and difficult to clearly recall memories, regrets, and missed opportunities, AND an anxiety-producing amorphous cloud of hopes, fears, plans, dreams, expectations and simulations of which, probably, 95-99+% will never, ever come to pass.

There one is, 
"Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle 
With "Me".

But, what IS "Me"? Realize, without imagination and fantasy, that there is no "self", but a smattering of "consciousness of brain activity" that we call senses: sounds, smells, tastes, visions, thoughts, feelings, etc., and, making matters muddier, that same consciousness is a byproduct of brain activity. So which came first? "Consciousness of brain activity", or "Brain activated consciousness"?
 When the brain dies, consciousness dies. 
No more mind, no more thoughts and no more sensations. 
No more "ghost in the brain".  No more "soul". 
And, no more "me".

And, what IS "My Life"? When the party is over, and the guests have all retired to their corner of the world brain that last contained them, what is my life then? There is no Who that lives on, and on. There is just YOU THERE, RIGHT NOW, conscious of the "squiggles on this page", words, sentences, and the environment around your head and body, whilst hundreds of thousands of randomly arising associations are making your short-term AIM to read this damn silliness in front of you, all the more difficult. It is kind of amazing that anything actually gets done at all.
Is ANYONE still with me?

After all is thought, said and done, there are no Human Beings either. They are, for most people alive today, another species, or even a sub-species. Non-human animals don't act this way; they are genetically inclined to be one-with those of their own species till death - and sometimes, even one-with those not of their own species. But many humans, by the age of 7-14-21 or so, are already exhibiting signs of being a freak, an outcast, anti-socially damaged goods, and "not of this world". The next thing you know, they are acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and locating "gun free zones" to take out their seemingly abnormal brain firings of another kind (but are they... really?), on the surrounding life forms. Try to find a non-human life form that acts this way, excluding deadly viruses and other pathogens that have no idea what's going on, or maybe, no creature that acts this way has any idea what's going on.

Humans are just a couple neural-firings away from EITHER descending into a distorted chasm of negative hostility based upon self-survival, or self-destruction, at ANY COST... OR, ascending into a clarified crescendo of epiphanic mind music of cosmic proportions, OR, something in-between, or out-landish.