What, Me Worry?: Brain power

Ever wonder why you can't think for yourself? Probably not, because if you did, it would prove that you were in fact thinking for yourself. The brain is a muscle that requires daily exercise that you're probably not providing. At some point one must ask oneself, what is it all about? Why am I here? And most importantly, who am I?

Most people are too busy tending to everyday chores to think about their existence; you never take a step back and examine your lives. Too many take their answers from books and from people they respect, be it their priest, doctor, parent, school professor or preferred politician. For thousands of years religious groups have been at the forefront of this movement. While religion simply provides answers, it rarely attempts to make a case for accepting them based on reason, or critical thinking. The answers are simply handed down by a religious authority to be accepted on faith, no questions asked.

Not only is this process of thinking rather shallow, it is downright potentially dangerous. If we have learned anything in the 20th century it is that human beings are moral sheep. We are disastrously programmed to follow without question the moral lead of those in authority.For easy reference please research the following: Nazi Germany, Rwanda, the Bush election (and the American Religious Belt,) and the Harper election.

Getting back to my original point — we need to learn to exercise our brains to prevent them turning into a gelatinous meatball incapable of making even the smallest of decisions without a guiding hand. So I've decided to provide you with some brain candy for your intellectual sweet tooth. The solution to the problem is not the answer you must remember, it is the thought process that is important.

So I ask again, who are we? Who are you? If you leaf through a pile of old baby photographs, has it ever occurred to you that the baby in those pictures isn't you at all? The cells that made up the flesh of that baby, the cells that made up the hair on that babies head, the cells that made up its organs and brain have all died and long ago been replaced by new cells. So the obvious answer that the person you see in that picture is you from a material standpoint is a weak one. So who are you then?

Professor Stephen Law provided me with the following philosophical puzzle. So say the year is 3222, and an abundant oil supply has been discovered on a distant planet (goodbye Iraq War, hello space race.) Unfortunately it takes hundreds of years for one of our ships to travel from earth to this planet. Luckily a Deepspace Mining Company introduced a machine called the Telematic three years ago. They use it to ‘teleport' employees to and from work on this distant planet on a daily basis.

Let's say it is discovered that the ‘Telematic' isn't flinging particles of our body across space at light speed at all, but rather it is scanning your body and recording exactly how it is put together. This information is then transmitted to a similar machine on this distant planet where a perfect atom for atom duplicate is created. Your original body is then vaporised. The person stepping out of the machine at work is in every respect exactly like the person who stepped into the machine on earth, but with a brand new body.

So a nagging question would start to emerge for the poor oil workers on this distant planet. If the body I left behind on Earth this morning has been incinerated, then who am I? Does this mean that my wife has been a widow for the past three years? Etc, etc.

Now I pose the question again, who are we? If my identity is not my flesh and bone, is it simply my memories? Are we nothing but an idea? Are we little more than the thoughts that bounce around in our heads? Let me pose this question. What would happen if this machine accidentally created two exact replicas of the same person? Two new bodies would appear, both retaining the same memories. The last thing both of these bodies remember is stepping into the Telematic and pressing the button. They both possess the exact same memories of their childhood, they both think they are married to the same person, and so on and so forth.

So which one I ask you, are you?

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