But I digress... so I was trolling today and thinking about how several days ago, while walking home from work I realized...I had his pattern down. This early on. It is my own special neural wiring network hell. I don't know how to explain it, except that emotional apophenia brews in me, amongst other things. I would digress again here and say how relieved I was when I was reading Pattern Recognition, but back to the problem at hand.
It's not really a problem, I can infer reactions, thoughts and comments that will come from the patterns I recognize in his body language and speech patterns. I can predict things that will be said or done. And this is not a problem with him, it's a problem with me, because it gives me the license to be manipulative if I want, and I can't help myself sometimes, and I think this is bad. Moreover while trolling I noticed the rapport with people and it's like we all have preset commands that we follow and we have standard actions to reel people in. I know this isn't a groundbreaking realization but sometimes we're more machine than we think we are. Or perhaps it's a chicken/egg scenario because computer function was based on our logic. Making it not chicken/egg at all.
I wonder where my copy of Spiritual Machines is.
Anyway, so I've been somewhat disgusted by myself in this - by also recognizing my own reflexes, the way I act when I'm excited about something, or more specifically someone. How there was a preset muscle memory pathway for me, and how easily I just slipped into it. I feel so trapped by my physicality, my body, I loathe being human, it's not enough. It's never enough.
Maybe that's why I like "The Winter Market" so much. It encapsulates the idea that you could translate yourself into some sort of, not program, but sentience that doesn't have the inherent limits of this suit of flesh. Yet at the same time there's an absolute terrible fragility and grace about the human body that is achingly beautiful and brings me to my knees. This delicate balance is so well played in "The Winter Market" that my heart breaks and I just sit there and stare and think, process the quietude of my brain. It feels good and makes me forget the inconsistency of human being/s.
1 comment:
This reminded me of something I meant to say to you a while back. I saw some sort of talk given by Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens on youtube some months ago. Fry, I paraphrase badly, said that humans were the only animals that wished to be something other than what they were, that we dream of being astronauts, footballers etc. He used a tree frog as an analogy; tree frogs are tree frogs 100% of their time, they don't dream of one day becoming a polar bear. In your absolute self-awareness, you are a tree frog
Post a Comment