[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

its about the spread of genes but the process itself is also blind and purposeless.

precisely, genes are just random pieces of code hashing it out just like everything else.

Originally Posted by dead_battery

but you cant accurately say that genes can 'eat your fuck' because your (sense of) will does not possess the power to override your neurobiology.

any (perceived) teleology is simply the product of natural selection; genes ("individual" genes if you will) have no great agenda and don't coordinate your actions as an alien reptilian conspiracy.

the sense of individuality is a product of those genes (some of them anyway). this is mostly because individuals make good gene packets.

but where i think you're misreading i think is in seeing a direct line between a one-party one-leader gene conspiracy and predetermined action-- it's not like that, it's more of a genetic melee and its interactions with the environment.

also there is such thing as emergent systems-- that sense of individuality for example.

which is what makes things like suicide or cancer possible (suicide doesn't "spread genes"). one level of organization at odds with another. it's not all linear and cohesive at all.

but true, true, true enough, the genes don't care one shit about the individual either-- maybe it's the species, maybe it's the whole mass of dna, but more likely there is no privileged anything and it's just formations and disintegrations-- no agenda of any kind.

for a comparable model read up on the "pandemonium" theory of the mind. or old chinese medicine, where the body is nearly nothing other than the cooperation or competition of various "organs". (or the greeks and their humor theory)

the sense of will/ etc is not one with the underlying genes. they are clashing all the time because even the underlying genes are clashing all the time.

Originally Posted by dead_battery

individualism alone is not enough for any man.

but of course not. i like a healthy distance though.

Originally Posted by dead_battery

but the real question here is what personal crisis has caused this thread to exist?

oh, this reminds me of that trite shit people say in speeches about the chinese character (blech), but true enough even if trite, it's an opportunity of sorts-- to create a living space the way i fucking want.

to put it in a way that you can immediately relate to (since you've mentioned your own project), i am trying to make human need soylent. and i realized there is a necessary tradeoff between those two needs (identity + freedom) as defined in that list , kinda like in the way copper and zinc or calcium and magnesium or sodium and potassium need a certain balance-- too much of one or too little of the other makes you sick or kills you.

in other words, i'm making an economic calculation to fit my particular needs. which is harder to estimate than minerals. and i realized that i value "freedom" (delicious) a whole fuckton more than i value "identity" (which in other than small doses gives me rashes). power (which isn't mentioned in the list) is a kind of violator for me actually because it gets me deeper into group identity and severely limits my choices.

tl;dr; i need lots of elbow room