Futurology is simple. Technology is unpredictable, desire all too predictable. We have noticed humans prefer a virtual reality to the true physical world, people prefer visible light. All such preferences are trivial and obvious, and of course unchosen. This is why we can know what we shall do.
The base and most powerful drives are short-coded once future-proof generalisations. This constitutes the soul of mankind. Rivers of thought, elaborate at estuary, are simple at source and can be read with a mirror.
Would-be neo-luddites who imagine they don't wish to play, may not. The extinct cannot influence future events, the game will play out in their absence. 'Better late than ever' none shall hear them say. It remains true however, that immortality shall be the death of us.
The Self is fluid, it's location inconstant. 'It's behind you!' shout the children at the pantomime, and behind turns with looking. The writer feels the pen at the nib, at the page, this extension of Self is why we shall die.
The richest fool is quick to see how his circumstances could be improved. Improvements beyond imagination, and perfectly real as Self, are literally irresistable. Isolated pockets may live on, with fuel, but unconnected are of no influence.
The end of Self is written by the base desire to communicate.
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The self has always been a leaky vessel into which we pour our experience in a seeming attempt to add the further experience of coherence. Genetic “spandrel” or memetic artefact, the "self" may add an extra layer of emotional saliency evaluation. Then again, it may merely give this impression.
ReplyDeletePeak saliency leading to action is the problem for big brains, drowning in data, sensed and recalled, too much in the balance to decide, and we stand dithering or proceeding with little confidence.
The dithering is ditched by many means, for instance, the comic blow to the head to unstick the stuck, or its more common equivalent, getting religion.
The leaky self often solves this problem by ceding decision making in part or in whole to other leaky selves and perhaps as a quid pro quo effectively decides for others, unencumbered by direct consequences. The liberation that results from this new supra-organism of shared (displaced) decision making is paid for by a susceptibility to new organic diseases.