where to begin? just read marshal brain’s the day you discard your body (which i will get back to in due course) and it put me in mind of a very particular kind of dread. it’s a dread which does not seem to have a name (at least not one i can find) but which i feel certain is widespread, in varying degrees of severity, all the same. the best way to describe it would be to call it the dread of being an organism. not a dread at being alive exactly, which is to say not the fear of consciousness, but rather a dread of all the soft, meaty, blemished, gooey, slimy, stinky, hairy, biology which makes life possible.
in order to accurately approximate this dread you might combine
Scatophobia,
Molysmophobia,
Autophobia,
Cacophobia,
Monopathophobia,
Chaetophobia,
Chirophobia,
Defecaloesiophobia,
Eremophobia,
Proctophobia,
Eurotophobia,
Geniophobia,
Misophobia,
Genuphobia,
Olfactophobia,
Hygrophobia,
Gerascophobia,
Gymnophobia,
Atelophobia,
Helminthophobia,
Ithyphallophobia,
Menophobia,
Pathophobia,
Blennophobi,
Rhypophobia,
Urophobia,
(plus a hundred others)
and then remove the paralyzing aspect of a phobia, replacing it with a dull, diffuse, back of the mind type of disquiet instead.
shitting, eating, aging, drinking, pissing, growing, sweating, bleeding, cuming, puking, itching, nose hair, skin, cuts, toe nails, cuticles, plaque, ear wax, dandruff, shmegma, puss, pimples, boogers, warts, boils, sores, scabs, scars, hemorrhoids, kidney stones, arthritis, aches, bloating, rashes, cramps, bad breath, bruises, cavities, fat, varicose veins, gas, parasites, viruses, bacteria, disease… the list of daily horrors, minor and major, is endless.
who has not at some point thought: “christ! if only i weren’t this quivering, gurgling, meat machine! then i’d feel alright.”
i must admit to it. i’ve often felt that if i had a choice i’d prefer to be made up entirely of stainless steel, porcelain, titanium, granite and diamond. electricity could course through me, or saline solution, or motor oil, hell i don’t give a shit. so long as i was not made of guts and gook and other such delicious varieties of soft, wet, pulsating maggot food. the up-keep alone is exhausting!
i sometimes think it is exactly this feeling which keeps people smoking and boozing and gorging themselves. i mean, if you could actually win… if sheer effort lead to permanent physical perfection, if trying really hard payed off in total decay-proofing, if exercise and nutrition would turn this lumpy red meat into dextrous living amber, well i’d be working my ass off! but it doesn’t. “yes but…” yes but nothing. all roads lead to the junk-heap no matter which you walk to get there- the long or the short.
anyhow, this leads me back to marshal brain’s the day you discard your body. it’s a long pep-talk of sorts getting you in the mood to cast off the meat coat forever. rah! rah! rah! it begins with a simple observation-
Stop for a moment and think about your favorite science fiction stories. There are a bunch of them out there to choose from. For example, there are the two most popular science fiction franchises of all time: Star Wars and Star Trek. Both of them have brought in billions of dollars through movies, syndication, books and merchandise. There are popular TV shows—everything from Lost in Space to Battlestar Galactica. There are the big movies like I, Robot and 2001: A Space Odyssey. From the world of video games there are incredibly popular titles like Halo and Half-life. And then there are the well-known science fiction books like Brave New World, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ringworld and Neuromancer. In other words, you have a very large body of work to choose from when it comes to science fiction.
Here is something that fascinates me. In all of these major science fiction stories there is one universal thread. There is one thing that they all have in common.
In every one of these science fiction stories, human beings have bodies.
he finds that odd, and in the context of far flung future-tech societies, he has a point.
brain then goes on to outline exactly why he thinks people will gladly embrace the eventuality of consciousness without bodies. now as i’ve said, i often feel the whole body thing is a major pain in the ass, so you’d think i’d be all for the “Brain Storage Facilities” he lays out (where your brain and thousands of others are stored in hardened steel and concrete buildings that are impervious to bombs, earthquakes, hurricanes and so on) but actually his argument had the exact opposite effect.
the manuscript outlines the concept in such a way as to make the benefits seem oddly banal. no more “peeing and pooping,” no more body odor, virtual eating without danger of obesity, no more long travel times, and better porn. i could not help but wonder, what would motivate a brain in a jar, who knows full well he is a brain in a jar, to continue thinking about blow jobs? truth is there is only one meaningful benefit to being a consciousness without a body, near immortality. but why bother with immortality if you spend it living a banal virtual version of the real thing? fucking and eating? that’s what bodies are for. i don’t want to fuck and eat for eternity! that sounds awful. nor do i want the augmented virtual reality of swimming underwater for long periods and flying. how silly. immortality is for something else completely. isn’t it?
in point of fact what i could not stop thinking was, if you are aware that you are a brain in a jar, living a virtual life, what would be the motivation? what would be at stake? what would be to gain? would you simply be acting out of the desire to “do” as much as possible before the “Brain Storage Facility” and everything else was gobbled by the sun? would you be working against the clock, racing that inevitable day when the poor meat-bags who preform up-keep duties on your brain canister go on a revolutionary rampage and smash the works?
even if there were some foolproof method of providing indefinite security for your slimy disembodied brain would everything be permitted in this virtual world? would i be allowed to sodomize your virtual grandmother every evening like clockwork just before she fell virtually asleep? could you just go around murdering avatars since it would not be “real?” it would still be the place your consciousness “lived.” getting raped and hacked up every ten minutes would not be much fun at all! so would this virtual world then require laws and virtual police and governance? you see where i’m going with this?
on top of all that there is the little problem that we don’t really know what consciousness
is, philosophically or biologically, and that is whole other family-sized can of grossly wriggling blood worms.
anyhow, rather than continue on in this vein, or leaving you with nothing more substantial to chew, i will now offer up some pertinent linkage which can keep the curious busy for a good long portion of their remaining time in imperfect meat-space.
guide to the philosophy of mind.
facing up to the problem of consciousness.
descartes and the legacy of dualism.
the rise and fall of reality deliberations on the mind-body problem.
the mind-brain problem an introduction for beginners.
what is the mind / body problem?
mind transfer at wikipedia.
the mechanism of mind transfer.
becoming a figment of your computer’s imagination.
the consequences of uploading the human brain.
transhumanism at wikipedia.
organism and psyche in a participatory universe.
and lastly- change your body, keep your soul.
sweet dreams.