Illusions of Self
I think I exist in the wrong century.
Amazing, fantastical news like the results of UC Berkeley Professor Jack Gallant’s team research that proves that you can recreate, in technicolor pixels on a monitor, what your brain is envisioning just makes me sad. I feel like a junk heap of slowly rusting parts. “K, try cranking it up now…,” “No, wait! I found it! We’re ok. That rebelious spark didn’t originate from independent thought, just a crossed wire. All fixed now. You can return to being a productive battery in the Matrix, Joani…”
I probably should have never watched that movie. I still have regularly recurring thoughts wondering if it didn’t portray more truth than fiction – on literal levels, as well as nailing humans dead-on metaphorically. Then I get pissed off about the Matrix humans needing painful existences to not reject their programming. I promise that if you let me stay young, with working joints, and the illusion of freedom, I’ll be happy!
But that’s it, really… all the layers of illusions being stripped away. The more mechanical that science discovers us to be, whether adjusting our personalities and dispositions with this chemical or that, or translating our dreams into movies for anyone to see, the more I wonder if I’m really anyone at all…
