Humanity Double Shot

The writing project I'm working on now is largely about people, so I'm finding it easiest to work on at a crowded coffee shop, where there are plenty of specimens to observe, "in the wild", as it were.

Observations

-People order some fucked up weird coffee drinks. Not just with particular milk choices, but with tons of weird stuff in it.

-People are always weird about how they ask someone if a seat is taken.

-People almost always turn muffins upside down, and then pull pieces off from the bottom (i.e. the actual top).

-People look at each other all the time.

The last one is the most interesting. People are always looking at each other and sizing each other up. But this doesn't really cut it, description-wise. They are not just sizing each other up, but also judging each other, but also looking at each other like pieces of sexual meat, but also trying to avoid looking like they are looking at other people, but also looking at their clothes, or hair, or body type, but also looking at each other to see if they are looking at each other.

Of course, we know that people look at each other in these ways all the time, but the strange part is that they are doing it all at once, without really conforming to any of these stereotypes of Other-interactions.

And maybe I'm overly paranoid, and this is why I am projecting all these thoughts and motivations onto other people, or maybe I'm just over-analyzing it because I'm writing about it.

Anyway, it strikes me that any form of theorization about the Other needs to take the coffee-shop phenomenon of human interaction into account. That real dissociated interaction with the Other happens while doing other things, and while doing many things at once. How could you be judging someone's dress while simultaneously scanning them as a potential sexual partner? Not because they are same thing, but because you are doing both at once. Subjectification and objectification seem to happen simultaneously, as two component activities, rather than uniquely. Not even as opposite poles, but sort of a length X width of perspective, inherent in stereo vision. Caffeine is raising awareness, and our Otherness sensors are functioning on over drive. I mean, why would people spend so much effort trying to avoid watching each other, when they are all doing it, separately but equally?

It's time for another cup of coffee, to and to get back to what I'm actually writing.

Stop looking at me.

Ask the Interdome!

People spend an awful lot of time concerning themselves with "contexts". They complain about past quotes being taken out of context, whether or not present facts are considered in context, and about the proper context for actions or words in the future.

I say, forget the context! Let's go right to the text on this one! We're going to learn more if we just experience a shit-load of text than if we spend our time making sure it all fits together. Let the word-vomit begin, and ask the Interdome: "are we machines?"

"...then the question of whether or not we are machines would simply be the question of whether or not we are man-made (i.e., "artifacts"), which we clearly aren't (so far), but so what?"

"What I like is that we are machines OR devices. That latter word takes us even further out of the picture as actual people."

"...I want to stress here that I claim only that humans are composed of mechanical parts, not that we ARE machines."

"You know, I as a sort of strong scientist think that we are machines."

"If we are machines, then, we cannot say that God reveals his presence to us, and any awareness we have of God's presence must be explained in some other way."

"Logically, there are two possibilities: diminish our sense of self-worth because we discover we are machines, or raise our appreciation of the power of machines because we discover we are machines."

"We are machines, as are our spouses, our children, and our dogs..."

"They think we are machines while we work as hard as we can. "

"Apparently, we are conditioned to believe that we are machines, that our actions are determined by the stimuli we receive and by our prior conditioning."

"Of course, we do not experience ourselves as machines, but I told myself that we are machines under a double curse – the illusion of being more than machines and the desire for the illusion to be true. "

"But given what we now know about how the world works there isn't any question that we are machines: if by "machine" we mean a physical system capable of performing certain functions, then it is obvious that we are biological machines."

"We are machines that are constructed so as to inform ourselves that we have no purpose and no beauty."

"We are machines, like anything else. We are, however, glorious and marvelous machines, the kind of machine that other machines should look up to."