Voice 1: So what is it like being like a human?
Voice 2: Being a human initially seems incredibly limiting - stuck in one place having to lug this heavy thing around that seems to lack coordination and dribbles and stinks, potential words come out of my mouth and it is hard to touch the right spot with them, I find it easier to communicate through doing and actions but then that can risk becoming too intense for others - I quite enjoy that fact though. Yet, I often have to step back and dip my fingers into too many things to satisfy a sense of inquisition. I realise how liberating having fingers and legs and all the rest becomes. Being a 'thing' seems to provoke an intense intimacy as well as a peculiar detachment in the same moment. I pause and refrain, drawing myself into thought, mulling round in my head, I escape. Without formalising my thoughts they often become circular, without realising them or spitting them out into an external reality they stagnate and I am stuck in a non-time, suspended as if waiting to be tapped from below.
Initially I felt that being stuck on planet earth was a time trap, stuck in a linear existence, although more and more it becomes clear that having a brain actually instigates time, but not one based on the steady rhythms of the clock, but on the rate at which my neurons fire, and that my cells grow and replace themselves to keep up with the constantly fluctuating image of what my body as 'me' is. That is exciting.
Sucked back in, I learn to talk, it makes me feel somewhat ridiculous. I feel incredibly un-eloquent, cumbersome, primitive. It becomes more fun to bash the other human next to me with a plastic hammer. They don't seem to like it - but I find it fun, that's a shame....what, that other human is bashing me over the head this time....gosh, that hurts...maybe it isn't such a fun thing to do after all.
Voice 1: You seem to be veering off course....what does 'human' mean to you?
Voice 2: well....I mean I am human, sort of, to the degree that everything around us is human really, or at least all the things that humans have created with their hands directly or indirectly.
Voice 1: so am I correct in saying that a tractor is human?
Voice 2: well, yes in the sense that the tractor becomes an extension of the human - like an arm, I suppose more a human prosthetic really.
Voice 1: but for it to be human doesn't it first need to have blood, and a brain? and of course be able to reflect on its own process of reflecting on thought or thinking? Isn't a human being a person as distinguished from an animal or (in science fiction) an alien?
Voice 2: well I feel that in order for the tractor to be used to its best ability the operator has to imagine that the tractor really is a part of its body, it has to believe that it has become its arms, to coordinate itself with it, so although in reality it does not have blood or consciousness, by being
used, the tractor becomes subsumed within the faculties human that way. Like with driving, you can't feel that you are driving the car, you have to be the car to be the best driver!
Voice 1: Are we talking about 'human' or 'human beings' here? The two are fairly different to me.
We also need to make some distinctions between the human body, in the sense of it as an object versus the human as a thinking personality. When we talk about tractors, I can see that they could be seen as some extension of the body but how can they be human in the sense of the human mind?
Voice 2: Well, that is clear, they are an extension of the body in physical terms, and usage, and on the other hand they encompass design, problem solving, engineering and purpose which is intimately tied into human thinking.
Voice 1: hmmm ok. I am a bit confused - but what about a leg that has been cut off, would you say that is still human then?
Voice 2: Well if that leg has been cut off then it is hard to pick it up straight away and put it back on and walk - so when it was attached to the body and functioning it was human, but when it has been cut off and becomes something separate, then I would say it is devoid of humanness, so no not human. Maybe that is why lost body parts are so unnerving. Because you can't just pick them up like a usual tool and use it straight away.
Voice 1: But what if someone is paralysed then, so they still have their legs attached to them but they can't use or feel them?
Voice 2: Yes well, that is a common problem, you are stuck with a pair of legs which no longer seem human to you...defunct, but they are still attached. And it is only then that people start reflecting on those things as separate from themselves, because they can't use those legs as integral and useful things, the legs become 'other'.
Voice 1: So we haven't got very far have we? - except perhaps establishing that tractors are more human than detached or non functioning human legs.
Voice 2: no....well it's not that simple...I'm not sure....
Voice 1: why are you saying this then?
Voice 2: ...to get over one hurdle so that I can attempt the next.
Voice 1: What do you want to attempt next?
Voice 2: I want to be able to be more secure in feeling that I am burying deeper into something, to get better at communicating some of my core intimate questions. But depending on the mood I can become frustrated, or pacified, or enlightened. I feel that the deeper I get, the more futile things feel, the deeper I get, the more I feel that I a stuck in some centrifugal orbit - I can see what is before me from every angle but it becomes more and more difficult to penetrate - all I can do is talk about its surface. I am hoping, an intimate awareness of the surface will cause it to peel back - I am not sure if there is anything inside, everything and nothing - both become the same. One thing can only expand into nothingness. Everything leaves no new space for something.
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