Mar 25, 2011

The most free prison

      I can blame xkcd for this one.
           I'm trapped in the most free prison (I don't know the correct spelling for free-est... freest might be it, but it just looks wrong).  This prison allows me to see two distorted spots of light which change as I move.  I'm surrounded by easily manipulative meat.  This prison gives me sensations of an external world which I naively assume to exist as it looks, smells, feels, tastes, and sounds like (though I miss on some sounds I know because my hearing's really not that good).  This prison is my body.  The two lights, though they seem as one, are my eyes.  The meat is my brain and body.  And now I can use all of this to experience reality to the best (well sometimes the best) of my ability.  And in all honesty I don't ever really doubt that the world felt from my familiar prison is real.  Nor do I ever get down about having a conscious mind trapped in a body, it's what I have and there's no reason to get worked up over it. 
       Occasionally I think it's good though to just admire what I can and can't do.  I can't immediately see from the top of a tower just by wanting to, my having a body sees to that, but on the other hand, I have the freedom of mobility at all which my body allows.  What a curious thing is life.

"It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious."
-Alfred North Whitehead
(I have no idea who that is, but I like the quote.  I guess this means I'm unusual, which comes as no surprise.)

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