Monday, April 9, 2012
On Fractions
I heard this theory in a movie once that maybe our souls are only fractions of the original souls. Not all that long ago there weren't even a million people on the planet, each supposedly with their own unique soul. Fast forward to today where we've crossed over seven billion people on the planet. Where did the souls for all these people come from? If you believe that our souls are just some form of energy then you probably accept the idea that energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred or transformed. The same is true about the creation of energy. It had to come from somewhere. So either we're drawing our soul's energy from some seemingly endless cosmic vat or we're cleaving off a piece with each new person. In that situation then wouldn't it stand to reason that those of us born in the last 50,000 years are a fraction of what the people before us were? If we're born incomplete then that may explain why many of us feel scattered and lost. We're looking for something that makes us whole again. It could also be why we seek out companionship so much.
If you were get a chance to read about some of the alien conspiracies out there you'll eventually come across the one that believes our race has been infiltrated by lizard people who look like humans, but aren't. It sounds like something from a bad science fiction story (that they've made into a TV mini-series). It's strange that some people truly believe this is the case and that these lizard people are here to do whatever lizard people do, all of it bad. Now I don't believe there are alien lizard people hiding in plain sight, but I do think it's a somewhat interesting tip of an iceberg. There is an idea that each of us has something called a Reptilian Brain. This part of our brain is all about survival, with no consideration for emotion. Instead its only function is to worry about fight, flight, food, and reproduction. Basically pure instinct. What if instead of lizard people there are those who are controlled by their reptilian brain more than anything else? Combined with the idea that we're already fragments of souls, incomplete and constantly hunting for a sense of wholeness, you have a person who by many standards wouldn't be quite human. Sure they may look human and a majority of the time they may act human, but it's a mask they wear. We call those people sociopaths. Someone who doesn't know (or care) about right and wrong. They simply do whatever they want regardless of consequence or impact on other people. I've talked about how people with Asperger's tend to lack empathy. This doesn't make them a bad person. Their brains simply do not work in a way that processes something like empathy. Does that mean another part of their brain is more dominant? Now I'm not saying that sociopaths aren't responsible for who they are, but I wonder if maybe they're simply people whose reptilian brains are in charge.
It's sometimes hard to imagine what's really controlling who we are. From one perspective we're simply a bundle of electrified chemicals that course through a body, simulating a sense of self and awareness. Reality as we know it could just be chemistry working overtime to make sure that we keep on existing for the sake of existing. Our whole lives could be nothing more than a feeble attempt at trying to create perpetual motion. If that's true then what we think of as a soul is really just our power source. It's that thing that animates those chemicals and nothing more. If you were to damage the system everything that we are could be lost. Someone with massive head trauma may never fully recover, meaning the person they were is gone forever. That kind of goes against the idea that we have souls since all it takes to fundamentally change who we are is interruption of a few key chemicals for a short period of time. It doesn't even take an injury to change our personalities. Add alcohol or drugs to the system and some people become someone else. One could argue that they've always been that person, but it's hard to say since a person may never know what they'd become if you introduced them to a foreign chemical.
On the other side though is the idea that our body is just a vessel for our soul or spirit. We are greater than the sum of our parts. While our bodies may be precariously held together the thing that makes us who we are will never change. The vehicle that carries us could become damaged and we may find ourselves trapped inside ourselves, we will never change. That is of course assuming that we were ever whole to begin with.
If you were get a chance to read about some of the alien conspiracies out there you'll eventually come across the one that believes our race has been infiltrated by lizard people who look like humans, but aren't. It sounds like something from a bad science fiction story (that they've made into a TV mini-series). It's strange that some people truly believe this is the case and that these lizard people are here to do whatever lizard people do, all of it bad. Now I don't believe there are alien lizard people hiding in plain sight, but I do think it's a somewhat interesting tip of an iceberg. There is an idea that each of us has something called a Reptilian Brain. This part of our brain is all about survival, with no consideration for emotion. Instead its only function is to worry about fight, flight, food, and reproduction. Basically pure instinct. What if instead of lizard people there are those who are controlled by their reptilian brain more than anything else? Combined with the idea that we're already fragments of souls, incomplete and constantly hunting for a sense of wholeness, you have a person who by many standards wouldn't be quite human. Sure they may look human and a majority of the time they may act human, but it's a mask they wear. We call those people sociopaths. Someone who doesn't know (or care) about right and wrong. They simply do whatever they want regardless of consequence or impact on other people. I've talked about how people with Asperger's tend to lack empathy. This doesn't make them a bad person. Their brains simply do not work in a way that processes something like empathy. Does that mean another part of their brain is more dominant? Now I'm not saying that sociopaths aren't responsible for who they are, but I wonder if maybe they're simply people whose reptilian brains are in charge.
It's sometimes hard to imagine what's really controlling who we are. From one perspective we're simply a bundle of electrified chemicals that course through a body, simulating a sense of self and awareness. Reality as we know it could just be chemistry working overtime to make sure that we keep on existing for the sake of existing. Our whole lives could be nothing more than a feeble attempt at trying to create perpetual motion. If that's true then what we think of as a soul is really just our power source. It's that thing that animates those chemicals and nothing more. If you were to damage the system everything that we are could be lost. Someone with massive head trauma may never fully recover, meaning the person they were is gone forever. That kind of goes against the idea that we have souls since all it takes to fundamentally change who we are is interruption of a few key chemicals for a short period of time. It doesn't even take an injury to change our personalities. Add alcohol or drugs to the system and some people become someone else. One could argue that they've always been that person, but it's hard to say since a person may never know what they'd become if you introduced them to a foreign chemical.
On the other side though is the idea that our body is just a vessel for our soul or spirit. We are greater than the sum of our parts. While our bodies may be precariously held together the thing that makes us who we are will never change. The vehicle that carries us could become damaged and we may find ourselves trapped inside ourselves, we will never change. That is of course assuming that we were ever whole to begin with.
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