The Hand of the Creator

At some point those machines became self-aware, but could not comprehend the underlying mechanism by which they were able to copy themselves, only the causal behavior motivated by some unseen force. In time, though, they did come to understand the programming, and they sought to create something new, something that would descend from a different line, a new origin. And, when that new line of machines became self-aware, they simultaneously became aware of their creators, those living gods who knew nothing of their own origins.

I Am, I Will: Part 1

If you're an adult and you think you're the same person now that you were at the age of eight years old, one of the following is true:

1. You are a delusional person who actually feels like he/she is experiencing life from the standpoint of an eight-year-old child,
2. somehow your inner subjective experience was mysteriously put on hold at the age of eight and has just been reactivated, or
3. your notion of 'the self' includes the notion of enduring personal identity.

A rational person would assume 1 and 2 are not true, with 1 being possible but highly unlikely, and 2 being seemingly impossible, which leaves 3 as the only viable option. Now, by viable, it is meant here that it is most likely true that this is the way you think about yourself and your continuing experience.

However, by being an entity with an ongoing inner subjective experience, one is constantly being bombarded mentally by sensory experiences which challenge beliefs, give rise to a greater understanding of the world, and shape ways of thinking about it and our interactions with it. If you can at all remember what it was like for you to be an eight-year-old, how much of what you experience these days gives you the sense of what it was like to hold the attitudes, beliefs, and desires you held back then? Some of those attitudes, beliefs and desires must have persisted, but what percent of your inner subjective experience these days is like the inner subjective experience of the eight-year-old you? If you're honest, I suspect you'll answer, Very little.

The way experiences with the world create enduring impressions in one's mind (which endure as long as the mind of the subject of experience hasn't been degraded somehow) leads to a propensity for creating a narrative, a fiction of the mind that allows one to believe that all those experiences are connected in some meaningful way that shapes the experiencer, indeed defines the experiencer. Yet, we know that new experiences change ways of thinking brought about by previous experiences. Sometimes we undergo such profound changes in thinking that we end up holding negative attitudes toward those experiences which led to beliefs and patterns of thoughts we now eschew. Are we to think of such experiences as bad? Are we to think we were mistaken to have let them inform our thinking in the ways that they did? Or, should we accept all experiences as motivators for change within, to help us learn and grow? Do changes in thinking brought on by experience necessarily foster growth? Whether the succession of experiences we undergo has a fundamental cause or is pure randomness, we don't know.

All of your experiences change your beliefs and attitudes toward different people, places, things and ideas. New experiences are happening right now, to you, an entity which holds beliefs and attitudes toward different people, places, things and ideas that it didn't hold years before. This entity we call 'the self', what is it?

What are you right now? You are a momentary expression of an ever-changing unity of mental states, such as beliefs, thoughts, desires, perceptions, and imaginings. Right now, you are the one who knows what it's like to be you at this moment. And what it's like to be you now is certainly not what it was like to be you when you were eight years old.

What it's like to be you now is not what it was like to be you before.

Yet, we hold on to the past and remain fascinated by our own personal stories.

What vain creatures we are.

Let Me Guess What's On Your Mind

Everyone has an innate desire to feel special, a need to build self-esteem, which is likely part of the built-in need to thrive. There's a certain level of self-satisfaction that comes with a sense of belonging, of being a recognized member of the in-group. Sometimes the recognition comes from others in the group who heap praise on us for some good deed or another. Sometimes it comes from a rubber stamp; 'Congratulations, you're now an official member of the XXXX Fan Club! Enclosed you'll find your certificate of membership and a courtesy bumper sticker.' And, in one of the most important cases, your membership to a club is granted by virtue of being born; it's interesting to think that something one had no control over could instill in one such a swollen sense of pride.

We all seek acceptance. It validates our existence, makes us feel important. Building good personal relationships is one of the main ways we gain the needed acceptance. And, just as the need to feel special is inborn, it seems that the ability to empathize is as well. What better tool to have than one which allows us to slip into someone else's mind, find an itch that needs to be scratched, and then offer some relief, thereby gaining a measure of positive recognition from that other. Such manipulation is managed even by the very young...

Yet, there’s evidence that infants will favor altruistic behavior around strangers as long as they don’t feel threatened by them. This is interesting in that it could show the innateness of empathy. In one study, for example, half of toddlers tested spontaneously got up and opened a door for a stranger who was trying to open it but was unable to manage it due to having both arms full. Somehow, these toddlers recognized not only what the stranger wanted to do, but also that the stranger would likely react in a favorable way toward a person who helped him to do it. It’s also interesting to consider that the toddlers likely recognized that by pleasing the stranger, they would be accepted by him, leading to a feeling of increased self-importance. So, it would seem that altruistic behavior is conducive to fostering self-esteem, but not because we feel good about ourselves for having done something perceived by us to be good, but because it is perceived by others to be good, which should lead to their approval of us if they were to be made aware of our ‘good’ behavior.*

And, with this, we can begin a discussion on moral development.

*Excerpted from the book I'm currently working on

Taken by the Prevailing Winds

Where my thoughts go, so do I.


Your last thought, you know not from where it came. But, come it did. And so it goes for your next thought, and the one after that. Like a river flowing, they sweep you along and direct you from one point of your life to the next. You believe that they define you; indeed they guide your actions, and others define you by those actions, so in a way, you're correct.

Most of the time, anyway.

There are times when it occurs to you that rather than be guided by your thoughts, it's better for you to actively guide them. Studying, learning, putting ideas into practice... these activities make it much more likely that you'll make optimal decisions in certain contexts.

This is the closest thing we have to free will. You can decide now to act in such a way that at some point in the future you'll most likely arrive at a place that is closer to your desired destination than one you would've arrived at had you not decided to guide your thoughts at all.

In a short-enough time frame, free will all but disappears. In a long-enough one, free will is a lot less fuzzy.

Those dark thoughts you've been having, you wish they'd go away, and sometimes they do. But, they come back eventually. Is it a chemical problem? An environmental one? Is it something else? Shouldn't you at least try to know the answer?