Ceiling Fan Lobotomy: On existing. Mmm-yes.
Date Friday, March 29, 2024 - 01:10 AM PST
Topic Theories


It is often that I ask myself, ‘What am I? What is death? What is living?’ I sit and ponder these questions endlessly, correlating my cognitive data into logical constructs. I am of course limited by the amount of data I have being only one person, and am capable of obtaining due to the limitations of current human knowledge.
However, aside from such obstacles, I have been able to come up with a few thoughts. I exclude all spiritual and emotional aspects as they are not always reliable or provable, and hinder my thinking.“What am I?” Am I a body?

Do I only exist in my mind? Are those things different or the same as they appear to be inseparable? Some questions cannot be answered, but they can be pondered through philosophy. Am I my body? Perhaps. Everything in my body, and every action or thought I take can be traced back to a chemical or electrical reaction used to perpetuate my existence and help me survive. This phenomena is both currently known as fact and still being explored (of course omitting reasons for why it happens). Perhaps I am the matter in my body. Does that mean it has to be in a certain shape? If you were to place me into a large industrial blender, I would die.

Therefore it is suggested that my matter has to be in a particular order to be me. However, how is that true if my body isn’t a stable shape? My heart beats, pumping blood and nutrients throughout my body. Matter changes, shape changes. My body is never in a consistent shape due to the matter exchange going on throughout my body. If I am never in the same consistent shape am I still myself, or am I a different person every passing moment? Where’s the distinction if change is constant?

What if I was to have a shock to my heart at the moment when the rhythm is weakest, and it were to stop my heart? My body would still be in a shape otherwise unmistakable to a living body, unlike what I would be like in the industrial blender, though I still would be dead. Shape therefore seems to have a correlation, but does not seem to be the reason for why I am alive, or why I am not dead. Is life a pattern of matter? Perhaps.Maybe I am the matter in my body. It would seem like the matter in my body is me, and cannot be anyone else at one time.

What about over time; over many years of living? Over my lifetime I will breathe; I will eat and defecate; I will shed skin cells. Is the matter in my body me? What about the matter that will become me: or the matter that was me? I will consume a large amount of matter in my lifetime. If I am currently the matter that I consumed, is the matter I expelled still me?Am I my body or my mind again; as in is the matter in my brain me, or the matter in my extremities and body? Are they different or the same as my heart beats and exchanges matter from the two regions?

Say there is an apple on the counter. I am going to eat it unless some force stops me. I will absorb the apple and it will become part of my body and brain alike, my being and my sentience. Is the apple me before I eat it? What about in the orchard? How about when the matter was coming into being, billions of years ago (according to the best big bang theory)? In the opposite way, are the waste products I exhale that linger in the air still me? Lets say a person in the room inhales the air I have breathed out. The air existed in all parts of my body, and was concentrated into an exhaled plume that they breathed in and absorbed. Are they now me? How about partially? If I do the same, am I them?

Over time are we distinct or different from one another? If we aren’t different, as we have had the same matter in our being, were we ever different?Am I the matter I am composed of and/or the shape the matter is in? There seems to be conflicting ideas being composed here. If life is the shape of matter, then how could I die and have my body intact via a shock to the heart. If life is the shape I am in, then how could I be alive if I am constantly changing shape by simply living?

Am I the matter I have absorbed over my existence and lifetime? Does the matter I will absorb and have absorbed feel and think the way I do right now, or must it be in a certain shape to do so, as in my own shape?

The data I have as of now does not seem to answer these questions concerning the physical make up of my body in correlation of life and death. I have come up to several roadblocks with a side of cognitive dissonance, which makes me wonder once again ‘Who am I?’, or what is the difference between life and death?

What is driving my existence, my mind or my body? Is it my sentience or the complex chemical reactions driven by my deoxyribonucleic acid, amino acids, and proteins? Are they one in the same? Is one the product of the other? Is the deoxyribonucleic acid driving my sentience through its tedious chemical reactions? What does it want to do that for?

Why is my mind driving for these questions? What am I? Am I dead or am I living? Am I trying to understand myself right now or am I a pawn for existence trying to understand itself?Where is my sentience? Does it exist in my brain? The matter in my brain changes and leaves; it comes and goes. Is my sentience everywhere my former and future matter lies?

There is still more data to be collected, and correlated. So many unanswered questions still exist, and so many new ideas and experiences to have. I can’t help but feel a full spectrum of emotion at these prospects, as I am both excited and frightened.

What am I?

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