Quite a while1 ago I wrote about my experience of aphantasia. At the time I said2:
It’s forced me to live in the present. But, like Zeman, I don’t feel that that’s entirely a bad thing, something to suffer from. A difference, not a handicap.
These days, that’s not true at ALL. Not only that, I’m angry. I don’t remember my past, good and bad, and I don’t even remember what I don’t remember.
EDIT: A previous version of this was unkind, perhaps too much so.
Not a lot of philosophy stands out to me. It feels like, since the Greeks, we’ve gotten pretty bogged down in proofs and formulations, with very little to show for it. Of course, the hell do I know? Some things have stood out to me, though. So follows, in no particular order, a short (living) list of things I have found that inspired my intrest:
The edge of vision otherwise dark I have a blind mind’s eye.
I don’t see mental images. It’s incredibly difficult to describe what I do see, but certainly not the vivid mental imagery that I’m told others experience.[1]I’ve also recently figured out I am a broadly visual learner. Which renders my memory next to useless. Since if I learn through imagery, and yet my image recall is short circuited…I can’t very well learn anything can I!
I’ve mused before about my irreconcilable dual philosophy. The part of me that inspires the ‘Neither do I’ in my “Adrenaline Junkie afraid to die…doesn’t make sense, neither do I” — it’s not just there for the rhyme!
In the shower1 just now it hit me what that is.
It’s a Jekyll and Hyde philosophy.
Sometimes, I attempt optimism with earnest. I see the world for what it could be, rather than the twisted anarchy that it is.
Its seems to me that bikers share more than just fun, speed and recklessness.
That is to say, to ride a motorcycle is one thing, to *be a biker *is quite another.
Biking is more than just a mode of transport in ways I haven’t yet quite put my finger on. It’s a way of life to a degree.
Whether or not a particular life outlook gives you a desire to ride, or whether it is more that being a rider leads to a changed life outlook is nuts and bolts.
I wrote the other day about 10xing. Taking a goal, or an achievement, and striking for 10x that. It sounds crazy, and its supposed to.
Life is too short, no matter how long it is. Because there’s just too much to experience. The volume of things is growing at an insane rate. We live in an age where there’s a million different things to watch, read, listen to…on and on. Creators are pumping out better and better content at ever increasing rates, which is itself a very positive sign of a societal shift towards creativity.
Sunset. Golden reds and yellows pouring, fading away, succumbing to the clutching grasp of creeping twilight, the strangling darkness.
For most people, those sentences conjured a vivid mental image. I would surmise that those for which an image appeared were unaware that it was only most, and not all, people that ‘see’ mental images. In fact, the converse is probably true — those for which no image appeared are probably confused to discover that most people actually see images, the mind’s eye functioning much the same as a real eye.
The question posed in the title is a particular example of a wider question: What makes us human? Are we nothing but the sum of our parts, or is there something more to it?
I believe that consciousness and self-awareness is what defines a ‘self’. Put another way, to be ‘you’ necessitates knowledge that you are ‘you’. Unlike some, I do not believe our physical bodies play any part in defining who or what we are.