REDWOOD
written by AGATHA WONG
edited by MACUETA LIU
Are we faulty machines? Do we exist? What is consciousness?
We are doomed to be in a flesh prison for all eternity.
And believe me, this prison of flesh is not the most glamorous place to be. The flesh prison contains you, and you contain the flesh prison.
The mere suggestion that my subconscious dictates who I am more than what I can articulate with thoughts unnerve me like no other. What we believe to be our ‘selves’ has no say in what our ‘selves’ are: our psychological phenomena result from factors outside our control. We all have a central drive, a mechanism to survival that forms our programming. With this, we navigate the nebulous miasma of life like a program.
When engaging in social matters, one of Life’s greatest tribulations, our outputs are often learned responses, carefully cultivated to ensure the greatest chance of survival in one’s milieu. In my personal experience, these responses serve as a protective measure to regulate hormonal balance. For example, In response to perceived social threats, our hormones fluctuate accordingly and with these hormones come the tendency to self-destruct.
Like JunsKitchen’s cats repeatedly ringing a bell because they have associated that with an appetitive stimulus(literally), we pair our responses with certain changes in hormone levels, causing us to act subconsciously according to our needs.
In the arena of social contact, I am not acting out of my autonomy; By providing a stimulus, I am eliciting a response from others designed to in turn elicit a response from myself. Is this irony not amusing? By so desperately vying for the correct response from others to fill certain imbalances (or the Void). I am, counter-intuitively, creating a dependency.
And then there is the danger of irrepressible fear lurking around every corner; with each mine I evade, there is another one waiting around the corner, greedily licking at the chance to reduce me to but a stammering fool. If such abject fear is meant to protect me, why does it impede me?
If our programs do not work the way we’d like them to, does that make us all faulty machines? Are we an aberrance in the system?
Knowing that others operate in similar manners calms the beast inside me; it quells my palpitations. On the contrary, I do not find rejoice in the hardships suffered by others; schadenfreude has never tempted me. But why do I crave for others to be vulnerable? Is it to be less fearful of my vulnerability?
My vulnerability scares me.
At times, I lack the energy to simply think. I am so tired that I can do nothing but offer vapid smiles and contort the corners of my eyes, so much so that my countenance somehow resembles a facsimile of happiness and churn out pre-planned responses to idle chatter and offer depreciating witticisms so the esteem of someone I do not care to know further yet desperately crave the approval which may be raised. Is it worth it to expend what little energy I have left on small talk; in return for small solace? Sometimes, I feel like some inert gas.
I like to tell myself that I am observant of the struggles of others, but really, I’m just projecting the most pathetic version of myself onto others just to feel understood. It’s like a business transaction; they get their comforts, and I get to delude myself with thoughts of saints and martyrs.
According to Freud, moral development proceeds when the selfish, un-altruistic desires of the individual are repressed and replaced by the values of cardinal socializing agents in their life; that is to say, he postulated that socialization was the primary force behind moral development.
I make others, and others make me. I am the cavity and the plaster. Though this is a good thing, as it ensures the survival of humanity as a collective species.
Regardless, is it really that bad to be a faulty program? When I stumble upon happy occurrences, such as a friend thinking about me, or a positive shift in social environment out of pure chance rather than my own doing, I feel the lingering shadow of a smile sneaking up on my face, or my angst ceasing for just a moment, brief as it is.
If I am to be a machine, these inherent drives to survival or positive reactions are what fuel my engine. If I must exist like this until the end of existence, it does not pain me that much.
Do you think you exist? If so, How? And why?
Love,
Me