infection of evil
This is very interesting. It is something we all know, but I personally have never thought about it. Why do we form emotional attachments to objects, to the point of mysticism- that is if you could have a perfect replica of something you owned and attached value to, but knew it was one.... you probably would refuse, even though physically there would be no difference.To be honest, I would reccomend reading the thread, as most of the ideas I would bring up are covered there, various examinations of being disturbed by the idea, for example, or getting a serial killers heart in a transplant... it has been infected somehow, perhaps...
This brings me to a discussion I was having with a friend the other day about teleportation. Even if it was physically possible, he argued, it would be wrong because it involved killing someone. The argument goes, teleportation involves essentially disintegrating a person, and then at some other point reconstituting them exactly as they were just before this process. He argued this would not be you, but a clone. But how? You personally would notice no difference, if it wentperfectly, as your mind along with your body would be in exactly the same state as it was before. To me, I do not believe that this would be a different person. If it has my consciousness, it is me. Consider if, through some incident, my mind was transfered into that of a beetle's... clearly in no way would that be physically me, but my thoughts would (in this bizzare example) remain intact. After all, our skin leaves us during in life, in fact all our cells will be replenished and die during our lifetime, so in effect we will be a completely different person, although it would take a lot longer than teleportation.
What do you guys think?
posted by Mr K @ 5:27 pm
3 Comments:
Well you already know my opinion on this, but I'll reiterate it here.
I beleive the body is a machine - a very cool and complex machine, but a machine nonetheless. Therefore I also beleive everything that makes up a persons mind is contained within their brain. While I agree the idea of there being some mystical energy (or soul if you like) beyond this is nice, I cannot and will not base an opinion on this unless it is proven.
Therefore I think that if a person were destroyed and recreated to the very last detail, then that person would be exactly the same - in fact if this took place over some time then they would be more themselves than the observers as we are actually changing constantly.
On the earlier comment concerning evil I'll admit that I couldn't be bothered to read the whole thread, but it reminded me of an interesting conversation I had yesterday while watching the BFG. I just thought it was interesting how different children's tv programs are. I was mainly thinking of 80's tv and basically my point was that UK shows had flawed heroes and bad guys that were sometimes not that bad. (This was while the BFG was farting - Whizz-pop! Whizz-bang!). I then thought about the American shows I used to watch where there was a clear division between good and evil - He-man for instnace would always be good and Skeletor was always evil with no redeeming qualities. This seems to reflect the mentality of America in general (not everyone, but the majority). I just wondered if this could be part of the reason.
To be fair, skeletor had no body, so therefore was gutted and it made him evil.
I would wade in with some stuff about cartoons but to be honest I have no idea which ones were british and which were american.
Give me lists!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
British Cartoons:
Danger Mouse
Count Duckula
Roobarb and Custard
SuperTed (Had the best intro ever I reckon!)
BananaMan
Crystal Tipps & Alistair
Family Ness
Willo the Wisp
American Cartoons:
He-man
GI Joe
Tom and Jerry
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Bucky O'Hare
Ducktales
Defenders of the Earth
Inspector Gadget
Sharkey & George
Thunder Cats
Phew- will that do?
I'm not sure whether this proves my point or not.
Post a Comment
<< Home