Most of us who have been to college are at least passingly familiar with the philosophical idea that to become wise, you must admit that you know nothing.
Not literally, of course. In the sense that one opens one’s mind to the idea that anything you know might be false. An illusion. A lie. A phantom of the mind.
This prepares the student to learn new things, and unlearn old ones. A better way to phrase it might be that you must admit that you know nothing for certain.
But telling young, intelligent people that they know nothing really grabs their attention.
Anyhow, for intelligent and capable people, the idea of questioning everything you think you know in search of errors to correct is a bracing but tolerable idea.
But how much deeper does it cut to admit that you know nothing about yourself?
The person you think you are – the one you think you know – is nothing but a theory based on what you have observed about yourself.
When you look in the mirror, you don’t see yourself – you see an image of yourself, and your idea of who and what you are is just as superficial.
The real you is the person looking at the mirror. And you can’t get to know who you really are until you turn away from the mirror of the false self and look at the world as it truly is, with your own eyes, from your own unique perspective.
That’s the whole deal behind people going on a long journey to “find themselves”. Through ordeal, exploration, and adventure, the false self is stripped away, letting the true self underneath come to the surface so you can get to know yourself.
Luckily, most young people do this instinctively, on one level or another. Whether it’s backpacking through Peru or just moving out of the suburbs and into the city or anything in between, the real life hero’s journey requires leaving behind all you think you know about yourself from your childhood and finding out who the heck you really are.
Not me, of course, but I’m special.
As are, I suspect, a lot of us other failure to launch types. We never made it to that stage of life. That’s why we didn’t launch.
That’s just another in the vast array of life stages I completely failed to complete. Heck, most of them I never even started. It’s like my intellect was so advanced that it soaked up all the human potential meant for literally everything else.
That’s why I sometimes feel like this big brain of mind is more of a parasite than a symbiote. Like I am some kind of deformed freak stuck lugging this massive mind around without any notion of what the hell to do with it.
Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a “mental freak show”. Nobody is going to pay to see the Amazing Fruvous and his Magical Brain.
I’ll figure something out eventually. All this power must be worth money to somebody.
Anyhow, issues of selfhood have been on my mind lately because I have a very strong feeling that I don’t know myself at all and that the way forward for me is going to require me to surrender a great deal of what I think I know about myself in order to make room for a newer, better, truer idea of who I am to bloom.
I don’t know who I am. For all I know, I might be anybody. I have some things I think I know about who I am, but I could be completely wrong. Anything anyone, including me, thinks they know about who I am might turn out to be completely wrong.
Even the things I rather like about myself.
But the purification of self is beginning, and I don’t who I’ll be when it’s done.
But I think he’ll be a pretty cool guy.
More after the break.
A post scarcity world
I should probably finish watching the video before talking about it, but meh.
And there’s something our host and narrator says that set me off, he said that in our world, everything is about money.
And that is simply not true. But the capitalist delusion that creates that impression is the main factor in why people fail so often when they try to imagine post-scarcity.
Actually, almost none of what most of us do every day is about money. Yes, we need to get paid for our labour in order to live, but for most people in most jobs there is no direct relationship between how much they work and how much they make.
So every day except payday, and most of payday too, what makes people do their job is not money, it’s the fact that it’s their job. Their responsibility. If they don’t do it, people will get mad at them and they will get in trouble. And the pseudo-tribe that forms in every single workplace will disapprove of them and they will lose status.
And that would be exactly the same in a post-scarcity future.
Think about it. If technology made food, shelter, electricity, et al one percent of the price that it is now, you would not have to work to live.
But people WOULD still work. We are born to work. Our social instincts demand that we contribute to the collective. Work gives us far more than mere income. It gives us purpose, direction, organization, focus, an outlet for our energies and our abilities, and a place in society as a worthy citizen.
Sure, the 90 plus percent of the world with jobs often thinks that if they didn’t need money to live, it would be like a permanent vacation.
But vacations are rest and rest is only meaningful when contrasted with effort. You have to be resting from something. Resting after something.
I am sure every Federation citizen could spend all day on the Holodeck and never do a single bit of work. And I am sure some do.
But I am even more sure that most people don’t.
Because take it from me, long term unemployment rots the soul.
Human beings are not born to remain idle. We need jobs not just to live but to give our days on other some kind of meaning.
And money doesn’t even really enter into it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.