> "By the continuity of our culture we signify
> that we are human. And all continuities are broken. We have lost our
> immortality. We could grow three heads and thirty feet, and our skins
> become blue scales, and so long as Homer and Michelangelo and Sophocles
> live, mankind lives. And they are gone. If we were globes of green fire,
> or red crusts on a rock, or shining bundles of wire, and still we
> remembered who we had been, we would still be men."
>
> -- _Son of Man_ (1971)
> Robert Silverberg
Right, so by remembering that we had been infants, we would still be infants.
By that same reckoning, we should *forget* that we had been infants, so that
we *will not* still be infants, so that we can become mature humans... then
forget that we had been mature humans... so that we can become transhumans,
etc.
Those who choose to remain as men cannot see beyond the crowds of mankind.
Better to catch a single glimpse of the boundless universe beyond ideation
than to live forever with Homer and Michelangelo and Sophocles in the museum
of dead ideas.
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism
Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
(Everything that can happen = more than anyone can imagine.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:45 MDT