Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

	Sunday, October 25, 2009

Dave Talks With Themselves Pssst! Hey, you! Mind Figment Processor That Believes Itself To Be 'Dave' (M-BID)!* It's us, the Complicity of Dave's Organs (CODO). You know, the 'real' Dave you have deluded yourself into believing 'you' somehow embody. Why are you sitting around making our fingers write blog articles when you should be contacting that woman 'Kira' who you met at that party a couple of weeks ago? We're not getting any younger you know. The chemistry was wonderful -- pheromones sparking, pupils dilating, facial flushes, sweat glands pulsing -- no question that the Complicity of Kira's Organs (COKO) and us were vibrating at the same universal frequency. Don't be put off by the fact the Mind Figment Processor That Believes Itself To Be 'Kira' (M-BIK) hasn't replied to your last e-mail. M-BIK is kinda slow like you; it hasn't really figured out that what it should be doing is merging CODO and COKO repeatedly and addictively in order to replicate our DNA. What is holding you back? You know you want to. We've been pumping out testosterone, phenylethylamine, dopamine and norepinephrine ever since we met them. You think COKO are aesthetically beautiful, and you are somewhat infatuated with M-BIK intellectually (OK, OK, we know you have some doubts about some of the ideas that it has espoused, but give it a break, it's still young). So adding that to the erotic and emotional connection, which we're looking after, we've got a royal flush here. And don't doubt for a second that it's reciprocal. You saw the way they looked at us. And M-BIK's initial messages to you were gushing, if a bit slow in coming. Yeah, we know, we're impatient -- if we had our way we'd have just got down on the floor and started as soon as we and they met. And we'd now be one, completely addicted (oh, OK, call it what you want then, 'in love'), merged, and mingling bodily fluids several times a day like jackrabbits (those COJOs have it so easy)! So what's up, M-BID? Why aren't you calling M-BIK? [M-BID replies] Well, for a start, CODO, we're too old for them. They should be 'merging bodily fluids' with those their own age. You may not be able to appreciate how offensive the idea of COOs of very different ages falling in love and/or having sex is, but we M-BO's have a thing about that. And before I get started, I'd like to understand why, to communicate with you or talk about any person, I am forced to use the plural. If you're indeed a complicity, that's singular. Talking about yourself (I'm sorry, yourselves) in the plural is just pretentious. And what's with this "Believes Itself To Be Dave" crap? What makes your claim to be 'me' (sorry, us) any more rational than mine? Just because Stewart and Cohen say so? But the real reason I'm not calling M-BIK is that I'm not sure what our relationship will turn out to be, if we have any relationship at all. It may not be love. It may not even be friendship. I just don't know her (sorry, it) well enough to know yet. Social relationships, unlike chemical attraction, are complex, subtle. They take time, they need to be sussed out, explored, given space. It takes years to even think you know some-body, and your intellectual, aesthetic, sensual and emotional connectedness can change over time. [CODO responds] Hmmm... well, the reason we speak of people as plural is because we are. We could do an organ-count if you like. The brain that you muddle-headedly believe 'you' reside in is just one of us, and a slow-witted (thank gaia for instincts!) and unsophisticated (compared to our digestive system the brain is a dope) one at that. We are. You just think you are. As for whether we're too old to merge bodily fluids with COKO, get us close and we'll see. We've had a few million years to learn how to get past your 'things'. We know, and so do COKO. You just think you know. It's possible the social conditioning that you and M-BIK have been subjected to will prevail when we get together. But we wouldn't bet on it. And we have no qualms about letting you have time and space to discover whether you and M-BIK can develop the kind of intellectual, aesthetic, sensual and emotional connectedness that you call 'love', and if so whether it will endure. We just want to mix our DNA with COKOs' now, and, if we get the chance to do that enough times, we'll generate enough oxytocin and endorphins in our bodies to keep us all together long enough to give that connectedness a real chance. And if it turns out the connectedness you think you need isn't there, or won't last, well, we'll all have had a lot of delicious, intoxicating fun in the meantime. So what do you say? Stop telling our fingers to type more of this conversation, and start telling them to type out COKO's e-mail address or phone number. What do you th... -------- * For those who haven't read Stewart and Cohen's Figments of Reality, here's its thesis, which is essential to understanding (and hopefully appreciating) this story: Living species, including humans, are emergent properties of the body's semi-autonomous processes -- We are a complicity of the separately-evolved creatures in our bodies organized for their mutual benefit (i.e. we are an 'organism'). And our brains, our intelligence, awareness, consciousness and free-will, are nothing more than an evolved, shared, feature-detection system jointly developed to advise these creatures' actions for their mutual benefit. Our brains, and our minds (the processes that our neurons, senses and motility organs carry out collectively) are their information-processing system, not 'ours'.     So this story is about Dave's body -- the complicity of Dave's organs (CODO),  speaking to his mind -- Mind Figment Processor That Believes Itself To Be 'Dave' (M-BID). ------- Category: Satire 7:45:40 PM  trackback []  comment []

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