Nature of Humanity (essentially the same or different?)
The world is full of people who, individually, are more variable than the shapes of snowflakes but who seem to become almost identical when placed in a large group. I suppose I’m a bit of a person watcher… it comes from simply sitting and watching/listening rather than talking to people, and its amazing the differences you see when you really look at a person everything from appearance, to mannerisms, to personalities. But if you take a step backwards and look at different groups of people, the larger the groups the fewer differences between them you see. I’m not talking about appearance or clothing but more in terms of behaviour. This makes me wonder whether this indicates that we are essentially all the same at the core or that our sameness is superficial and it is only in the elimination of too many important details, of pulling the microscope back too far. So that the differences are lost.
This in turn makes me wonder whether it really matters, but then again isn’t it the question that we all seem to ask ourselves… what is different about me… or am I the same as those around me? Are we the same as those we dislike or are we different.
Our construction, the biology bit of it in any case, would lead one to suspect that we are all essentially the same. Every living being on this earth is given shape using the same language or code. The same repeating sequences of amino acids, phosphates and sugars. So perhaps on that basis every living being is essentially the same at the core. Then can we justify hate or revulsion of any other living thing… even something so widely loathed as a spider or a cockroach? Or are we simply repulsed by such things as the show us aspects of ourselves we don’t want to see?
On the other hand the variation possible using the genetic code is so vast as to be innumerable… so the potential for difference, the basis upon which we are all built gives immeasurable variety.
If, however, we are essentially different does that not leave us even more isolated from those around us? Does I not make us, as individuals compleyely unable to truly understand one another only able to reach across the great chasm that separates us from everyone else with a tenuous and fragile line of shared situation, language, touch…
Both outlooks seem bleak as I’ve written them here. And perhaps they are. But here I will adopt an existentialist viewpoint: Things are bleak, they always will be so all you can do is keep on going and try lessen the bleakness…
Anyhow back to the question at hand…. Both viewpoints seem so mutually exclusive and yet I find that I believe both… and I don’t mean to say that in such a way that suggests I believe one in some situations and the other in others… I believe them both… simultaneously. I believe both that everyone, every person, every being share the same essential core, not of humanity… but of… life, I suppose. Though that isn’t even quite the right word for it. I believe that because of this core common to all that we are all intrinsically connected… kind of a collective unconscious of all life… But at the same time I believe that we are all isolated from everyone, and everything else by our access to the world. Everything we see, we know, we are told, is filtered through our senses, our experiences. I truly believe that no one can truly understand another person’s feelings or experience even if they have gone through the same… I suppose an easy example would be someone who likes mushrooms as opposed to someone who doesn’t. They both have eaten the same thing… but both have come to completely different conclusions… and perhaps even taste completely different things.
Wll anyway yet another reason why I tend yo consider myself one big bag of contradictions…. Heck just look at the characters that pop into my head… all of them have come from me and really are just different aspects of me. I sometimes feel I have more personalities than someone diagnosed with the disorder… Its just that all mine are blended together in one mix that is then what the world sees…. Or doesn’’t see thather…. There are some personalities that are much stronger than others… at least on the surface. Scathach for example represents a darker more aggressive side of me… but though it seems a strong piece it is really quite buried under the rest of my traits… which is probably one of the reasons I enjoy writing her character so much… it allows me to unbury that side of me and just get some of it out.
Well, anyhow, enough from me… its almost 3:00 and I’ve gotten enough out of my mind that I should be able to sleep now… sometimes I think that writing these Random Musings, as I’ve taken to calling them, is really just a non-magic version of a pensieve (A reference to Harry Potter for those who started giving me weird looks at that moment) they allow me to just lay thoughts that are swirling around my head too quickly to quiet them… and then they lose their urgency and sort of return quietly to the back-shelf until next time… anyway I have to work tomorrow so I tear myself away from these writings with some reluctance. Until next time…
This in turn makes me wonder whether it really matters, but then again isn’t it the question that we all seem to ask ourselves… what is different about me… or am I the same as those around me? Are we the same as those we dislike or are we different.
Our construction, the biology bit of it in any case, would lead one to suspect that we are all essentially the same. Every living being on this earth is given shape using the same language or code. The same repeating sequences of amino acids, phosphates and sugars. So perhaps on that basis every living being is essentially the same at the core. Then can we justify hate or revulsion of any other living thing… even something so widely loathed as a spider or a cockroach? Or are we simply repulsed by such things as the show us aspects of ourselves we don’t want to see?
On the other hand the variation possible using the genetic code is so vast as to be innumerable… so the potential for difference, the basis upon which we are all built gives immeasurable variety.
If, however, we are essentially different does that not leave us even more isolated from those around us? Does I not make us, as individuals compleyely unable to truly understand one another only able to reach across the great chasm that separates us from everyone else with a tenuous and fragile line of shared situation, language, touch…
Both outlooks seem bleak as I’ve written them here. And perhaps they are. But here I will adopt an existentialist viewpoint: Things are bleak, they always will be so all you can do is keep on going and try lessen the bleakness…
Anyhow back to the question at hand…. Both viewpoints seem so mutually exclusive and yet I find that I believe both… and I don’t mean to say that in such a way that suggests I believe one in some situations and the other in others… I believe them both… simultaneously. I believe both that everyone, every person, every being share the same essential core, not of humanity… but of… life, I suppose. Though that isn’t even quite the right word for it. I believe that because of this core common to all that we are all intrinsically connected… kind of a collective unconscious of all life… But at the same time I believe that we are all isolated from everyone, and everything else by our access to the world. Everything we see, we know, we are told, is filtered through our senses, our experiences. I truly believe that no one can truly understand another person’s feelings or experience even if they have gone through the same… I suppose an easy example would be someone who likes mushrooms as opposed to someone who doesn’t. They both have eaten the same thing… but both have come to completely different conclusions… and perhaps even taste completely different things.
Wll anyway yet another reason why I tend yo consider myself one big bag of contradictions…. Heck just look at the characters that pop into my head… all of them have come from me and really are just different aspects of me. I sometimes feel I have more personalities than someone diagnosed with the disorder… Its just that all mine are blended together in one mix that is then what the world sees…. Or doesn’’t see thather…. There are some personalities that are much stronger than others… at least on the surface. Scathach for example represents a darker more aggressive side of me… but though it seems a strong piece it is really quite buried under the rest of my traits… which is probably one of the reasons I enjoy writing her character so much… it allows me to unbury that side of me and just get some of it out.
Well, anyhow, enough from me… its almost 3:00 and I’ve gotten enough out of my mind that I should be able to sleep now… sometimes I think that writing these Random Musings, as I’ve taken to calling them, is really just a non-magic version of a pensieve (A reference to Harry Potter for those who started giving me weird looks at that moment) they allow me to just lay thoughts that are swirling around my head too quickly to quiet them… and then they lose their urgency and sort of return quietly to the back-shelf until next time… anyway I have to work tomorrow so I tear myself away from these writings with some reluctance. Until next time…
posted by Old Earth Accretionist | 2:41 a.m.
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