When I was five, I played with my first toy robot. It was my favorite at the time, with flashing lights on its chest. It could travel straight or in circles, was powered by batteries, and made quite a lot of interesting sounds. This incredible range of activities that fascinated me could be switched off at the click of a button. The robot would then stand still, inactive. A moment ago, it was going around flashing its lights, making noises, and fascinating my imagination. The very next moment, it was still when switched off.
Was my robot dead ? But my supposed common sense dictated that it was a machine and it is not “dead” and did not come “alive” when switched on. It was merely doing what it is meant to do when you switch it on. As a child, I could always convince myself that my robot toy could come alive at the click of a button and vaporize imagined villains. However as an adult, the distinction of consciousness between my toy robot and myself often baffles me! So, who am I or rather, who are we?
We are an amazing amalgamation. Beginning from the atom, we go to the molecule and then up to the cell. Many cells form tissues which in turn form organs. Organs, together with a myriad of regulatory networks and systems form an organism. Thus, we have become Homo sapiens. We have over the centuries as various civilizations, colonized along fertile valleys and perennial rivers. We have developed social structures, hierarchies, by means of politics and religion.
Incredibly, we have also learned to utilize the resources available to us for our activities. Once we have come to terms with ourselves in ways that transcend our religious and cultural upbringing, we will come to understand and accept our “species” status. No matter how much we believe ourselves to be distinctly intelligent or unique, we are really no different from the multitude of other living organisms that occupy this planet, all competing for survival.
Most of our self proclaimed grandeur and engineering feats are nothing spectacular. As Extropia puts it in her essay on the fallacies of Singularity,
We may pride ourselves to think we discovered architecture, engineering, central heating, agriculture, and huge economies from division of labour amongst specialists, but we did not. Termites discovered all these things an exceedingly long time before our species evolved.
Article comments
1 - duane
This is really a mess V.R. Sorry, but you're trying to cover too much. It's not coherent.
2 - Raga
It sounds like you are searching for answers to questions raised by modern science and philosophy. Might I suggest that you look into Matrixism. Matrixism is a religion/philosophy based on modern science. It draws from the movie The Matrix as well Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception and Island.