From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Wed Dec 08 1999 - 12:15:43 MST
> hal@finney.org writes:
>
> > Is this a universal phenomenon? Does everyone experience this as a
> > traumatic moment, after which you know that your days are numbered?
Dear Hal,
As a small (3-4 year old) child I became convinced that I was an | object | of
awareness. While of course I had "subjective" experience (fantasies, feelings,
thoughts) I found there no evidence of that child my parents pointed at or
anything corresponding to my name. All references to myself originating from
the environment denoted a "me", e.g. the front of this body. I experienced
sickness and pain as properties of this body, which was not so much "my"
body as my location. When people disappeared (i.e. died) it hardly concerned
me at all as a problem. In many cases I missed them, but I knew the absence
was permanent. Death was simply what happened to your lap when you stood
up.
Being an object of awareness by an Unknown Knower was, however, problema-
tic with respect to its persistence, motivation and social distribution. Most
troubling, I suppose, was the growing realization that it was remotely controlled,
and there was nothing to be done about it. A sort of inchoate morality emerged
similar I learned much later to Kant's maxim that the purpose of life was not to
seek happiness, but to seek to be worthy of happiness -- only with a a Berklyian
epistemological twist; if esse est percepi, then morality was about seeking to be
worthy of being perceived by this Unknown Knower.
As I matured, I realized there wasn't anything I could do about "making myself
worthy" except to remain uncompromisingly true to certain principles -- and that all
the rest is child-like trust. None of this is really temporal -- "how long?" in this
context is of no emotional significance. As far as the body is concerned, embry-
onic development and necrosis are simply a part of the phenomenal world, and
unexceptionable at that.
Thank you for asking,
Bob
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
=======================
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