Blog Dis
No! We are not machines!
2024-04-09
If I was a machine, I'd do everything in the exact same precise manner as before, utilizing the very same thought process and automatic body responses as always. If I was a machine, I wouldn't have to fight off fatigue or despair or negativity. If I was a machine, I wouldn't feel downtrodden by the monotony of the routine of work and daily life. If I was a machine, I would have sex in the very same fashion time after time after time after time.
But we are not machines. We are the human animal, subject to whims and alternating moods. This I learned to accept about myself long ago. Often my mood will turn without forethought or control by my brain. Literally, waking up some mornings, you step onto the floor and already you have some inkling as to how you might feel in the day. Yes, of course, we are all lucky to be alive, to have our limbs and prospects to challenge us. But we are not machines. I don't believe it's logical for humans to want to remain in the same profession all their lives or to eat the same foods day in and day out. It's important to inject variety into your life because, to borrow a cliché, variety is the spice of life. Without these alternating varieties, surely there'd be more murders in the world.
That is what I thought about this morning having slept through my alarm. You know you're tired when you wake up and your alarm is still chiming, and that it went on for ten minutes. I dreamt about being stuck in a strange home with a roomful of bitches who showed no compassion toward me. Desperately I fought to call a taxi, until one finally showed up with a Jamaican driver. I waved my arms at him through the window and when I put on my socks and shoes, he'd already left. I ran back into the house with the same roomful of bitches, who were still aloof and unwilling to help and somehow another taxi showed up. But this time, the taxi dropped me off at the wrong house. I ran into the house and realized the entire place was under police suspicion and being raided for drugs. Panicking, I ran out and frantically looked for an escape route.
Dreams are rarely automatic, like a machine. They cannot be predicted before you go to sleep, but I must confess to having watched on the news, moments before going to bed, the capture and incarceration of a young man who went on the lam for weeks, after killing three retirees. Clearly, the pistons in this young man's brain were not firing and he went off the deep end. Now, his life is ruined and rightly so, considering that he took the lives of innocent people. If he had behaved more like a machine, and went to work like a dutiful citizen, paid his bills, and struggled to make a better life, maybe then he'd still be a contributing participant of this world, despite just being another cog in the machine.
We are not machines, to repeat. But democracies are built upon conspiracies, that is to say you as a voting citizen agree to adhere to certain rules and laws that are designed to govern the population equitably and fairly, at least this is the conspiracy we all buy into, that the democracy is suited to meet the needs of one and all. A democracy can also mean that you're expected to behave and act like a machine, pay your taxes on time, not break the law, and stand up for your country. It's why in a state of chaos, as in a civil war, there are no rules and consequently might becomes right and anyone not behaving like a machine or a member of the ruling mob is viewed as a threat that needs to be immediately eliminated.
We are born as humans but we are expected to act like machines. The question I'd like answered is when does it pay to be a machine, if the very lifeblood of your passion is drained?
But we are not machines. We are the human animal, subject to whims and alternating moods. This I learned to accept about myself long ago. Often my mood will turn without forethought or control by my brain. Literally, waking up some mornings, you step onto the floor and already you have some inkling as to how you might feel in the day. Yes, of course, we are all lucky to be alive, to have our limbs and prospects to challenge us. But we are not machines. I don't believe it's logical for humans to want to remain in the same profession all their lives or to eat the same foods day in and day out. It's important to inject variety into your life because, to borrow a cliché, variety is the spice of life. Without these alternating varieties, surely there'd be more murders in the world.
That is what I thought about this morning having slept through my alarm. You know you're tired when you wake up and your alarm is still chiming, and that it went on for ten minutes. I dreamt about being stuck in a strange home with a roomful of bitches who showed no compassion toward me. Desperately I fought to call a taxi, until one finally showed up with a Jamaican driver. I waved my arms at him through the window and when I put on my socks and shoes, he'd already left. I ran back into the house with the same roomful of bitches, who were still aloof and unwilling to help and somehow another taxi showed up. But this time, the taxi dropped me off at the wrong house. I ran into the house and realized the entire place was under police suspicion and being raided for drugs. Panicking, I ran out and frantically looked for an escape route.
Dreams are rarely automatic, like a machine. They cannot be predicted before you go to sleep, but I must confess to having watched on the news, moments before going to bed, the capture and incarceration of a young man who went on the lam for weeks, after killing three retirees. Clearly, the pistons in this young man's brain were not firing and he went off the deep end. Now, his life is ruined and rightly so, considering that he took the lives of innocent people. If he had behaved more like a machine, and went to work like a dutiful citizen, paid his bills, and struggled to make a better life, maybe then he'd still be a contributing participant of this world, despite just being another cog in the machine.
We are not machines, to repeat. But democracies are built upon conspiracies, that is to say you as a voting citizen agree to adhere to certain rules and laws that are designed to govern the population equitably and fairly, at least this is the conspiracy we all buy into, that the democracy is suited to meet the needs of one and all. A democracy can also mean that you're expected to behave and act like a machine, pay your taxes on time, not break the law, and stand up for your country. It's why in a state of chaos, as in a civil war, there are no rules and consequently might becomes right and anyone not behaving like a machine or a member of the ruling mob is viewed as a threat that needs to be immediately eliminated.
We are born as humans but we are expected to act like machines. The question I'd like answered is when does it pay to be a machine, if the very lifeblood of your passion is drained?
