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?
[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’.
——- Category: Satire
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Interesting. I think that Eckhart Tolle (I’m currently reading A New Earth) would say that neither CODO nor M-BID is the ‘real’ Dave.
I see the perspective of Figments of Reality as I understand it from the little I’ve read here, to be pretty squarely in the mainstream deterministic scientific outlook, that consciousness is merely an interesting epiphenomenon. The determinism is assumed and therefore found. Agency and freedom go out the window (a big bugbear of mine, you might know). If so, then ain’t no point in caring ’bout nothing.And it’s very nearly correct. Though luckily I doubt if anyone deeply believes in strict determinism, we’re a lot less free in some ways than we usually assume (more so in others). And yet we have this hint of freedom – this other ‘real *I*’ Steve alludes to…tiny in scope as yet but able to grow, blossom…D.H. Lawrence wrote (in the poem ‘Being Alive’, 1929 I think) “The world is waiting for a new great wave of generosity,or for a great wave of death”As unlikely as it seems (and as ‘New Age crap’ as you might call it), this other real Self is the only place a new change is going to come. Nowhere else seems to work.Oh and btw your post reminded me less of Eckhart Tolle, more of Robin Williams’ quip about how men are given a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to run one at a time… ;)
Thanks for this Dave … it goes to show that a bit of whit, satire and creative writing can explain things for us no amount of textbook learning could. I was right in there following every micro gram of hormone rushing around as you you spoke of K and as she thought of you. I wonder if the world is not a gigantically wired pheromes network and if the wind is in the right direction you can become aroused by the arousal of your target miles away.Anyway I was going to say … ISN*T THIS THING YOU DESCRIBE EXACTLY THE REASON FOR CULTURE? Culture is a mechanism tribes develop to thrive amidst their own and the external nature?And doesn’t your story illustrate the paucity of our present culture that has gone so far in Sweden at least, that men desiring women is seen as a really low thing …. even men wanting their wives…..Talk abuut dysfunctional. Still. Sells a lot of Internet porn.