The Gradual Deconstruction of Unique Little Snowflakes...

Can one “thought” be more important than another “thought” if all such impulses originate in the same place (brain) and are composed of the same electrochemical ‘stuff’? Is a thought impulse to meditate any more significant or profound than the thought impulse to pick a bugger from your nose? Both result in an action, however, you’re programmed to feel a tad bit guilty about digging around in your face. Is guilt nothing more than hating the thought impulses that arise in your head in the belief you have a choice in what impulses your brain provides and when?

Every experience you have ever had, you had in the brain.

No matter where you were, you were only ‘there’ in your brain and every place you ever visited was experienced by you because of that 3lb lump between your ears. All the woohoo, whizbangs you got from years of vigilant spiritual practices, were provided to you exclusively in the fissured fat housed firmly in your cranium.

The very “self’ you identify with, is a direct result of billions of microscopic neurons all linked up with one another generating different impulses from different experiences and storing that information for future use and “you” will rely on this information throughout your entire life, much of it without conscious intent because you had no choice in the formation of your brain circuitry and, hence, no choice in what it provides.

You experience yourself in a brain and even bodily sensations and impulses are brain processed. Every emotion is generated in your brain through unique circuitry linked up in your head, processing responses in nano-seconds in ways that only you could experience and no one else.

Seems you really are a unique little snowflake after all!

Unfortunately, “you” exist as nothing more than a brain and have no personal responsibility beyond the impulses that brain provides. You are free of all guilt, shame and remorse for all the nasty sheit you did wrong your entire life simply because you have never had personal responsibility for the thoughts that arise in your head. Everything you did had to have been done exactly as “you” did it and it couldn’t have been done otherwise.

So why suffer?

Did you decide to have that thought before you had it or did it just simply happen? Do you choose a thought before you think it or has every thought been influenced by other thoughts themselves influenced by external events resulting in programmed responses?

Have you ever had a thought that was not directly influenced by external events, including bodily impulses? Have you ever had a thought that you could proclaim was the result of your being a unique little snowflake and was not influenced by external events and programmed responses?

The raw brute reality of the naturally occurring causal order is a fact that we are not particularly fond of and we employ fictional realities to escape that fact, requiring each programmed fiction be linked up to a myriad of other circuits, all influencing one another.

You have attached to numerous fictional realities to aid in getting out of your head. Most intentions to control thought are motivated to relieve you of thought impulses you do not wish to think and you don’t like the fact that we have no control over our thinking. It’s not that you don’t like your life, it’s that you don’t like the ‘thought’ impulses bouncing around in head cheese that inform you that your life sucks. You then look to fictions to redirect electrochemical impulses. Such fictions can be found in religio-spiritual ideologies which often seek to emphasize egocentric consciousness as something special and unique and outside the predetermined causal order. Or we just turn our brain over to the TV, which then externally influences the direction of neuro-circuit impulses and this is why egocentrics require entertainment to escape their own non-volitional brain impulses.

Yet, no matter how you seek to escape your mind, practice your thought control techniques, meditate for hours, pretend to “be in the now,” study scripture, chant your mantra, do the rosary, achieve “no mind,” etc, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah, you can’t escape the raw brute reality of living in an indifferent causal order along with other egocentrics who seem to always find a way to fook up your kumbaya plans for enlightenment, generating brain impulses you do not want to ‘think,’ but can’t avoid and, hence, grit and grind over.

But am I not in control of these words I write? I learned these words and, hence, they were provided to me, each one generated and contained by its own neuro-circuit in the language centers of the brain. Your brain-centered, electrochemical ‘thought’ impulses were given to you and there are only so many ways words/concepts can be strung together to generate ‘meaning.’ But what lifelong series of events brought me to this point in which my brain is utilizing neuro-circuits to string together these words in just this way? Am I really in control of impulses that motivate other impulses that generate these sentences?

However, many claim that this mechanistic engagement with the predetermined causal order (God?) is just another story. Yet, is the fact that the sun rises and sets simply another story? Possibly, if we stretch the imagination far enough we can come up with all kinds of other hocus pocus conclusions to explain that fact (and there are many such stories out there). However, we cannot deny it is a fact that you use to conduct your entire life, every day of your life. Days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, etc, are all fictional boundaries not found in nature, but based on a rising and setting sun and necessary for egocentric existence in a fictional social paradigm.

So when science completely deconstructs and reduces the ‘self’ to a simple, mechanistic brain process, what stories will be told and how will we live out our lives knowing this as a fact similar to the rising and setting of the sun?

Will you hate science for taking "you" away from your "self"? Will “you” still struggle mightily to consider your ‘self’ a special little snowflake, demanding everyone else see you as such, else you will 'feel' bad? When it is discovered that the ‘self’ is merely a location in a cranium, and has nothing to do with agency, because no free-will exists amongst billions of neurons transmitting impulses based on influences beyond the brain’s control (as it has been programmed to do) along trillions of dendrite wires, how will you conduct your life?

Will it make a difference knowing you have no free-will in what you think and do and that you are nothing but a puppet directed by a predetermined causal order that preceded your existence, but granted that existence nevertheless?

Will you be “happier” knowing there’s really nobody up there and that it makes no difference what you “think”? Will you finally experience the freedom that not having a ‘self’ to contend with provides? Will what you ‘do,’ no longer take on grave significance upon recognition that there is no ‘doer’ of anything ever done? And if no ‘doer’ ever did anything, will you experience an incredible relief for all the “bad” things you did that still require you experience guilt and remorse? Will the hatred for those who have ‘done’ wrong to you simply dissolve into thin air because there is no longer anyone to blame? How much attention will “you” require when there is no “you.”

What will the world be like when no one considers themselves special little snowflakes?

Artwork by Karl Persson - "Lunch Monkey"