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pompous?
Hmmm... yesterday's post read OK to me when I sent it. I'd been thinking about consciousness and immortality a lot lately for a story I'm writing. But when I re-read it today it sounds pompous to me. Is it just the (slightly starved) light headed state I'm in today? Or does it read that way to you too?
I don't want to sound know-it-all, so if it comes across that way I need to fix it.
(I actually think of myself as slightly stupid.)
I don't want to sound know-it-all, so if it comes across that way I need to fix it.
(I actually think of myself as slightly stupid.)
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But then is it really the same plant which regrows or another to replace it from the same stem?
If it's another and yet part of the original, then it would be like children growing from the seed of their parents. In which case, I suppose that makes ME mortal, since I leave no physical seeds of myself. On the other hand, part of what is me is in my brothers and their offspring.
I've always believed that as long as some part of us is left behind - a word, a kindness that somehow progresses on to another generation is immortality.
It's one reason I write. Someday hundreds of years from now, someone may come across something wrote and it hits home for them. Gads - I sure hope if they find something I wrote, it's good and not just some rubbish I meant to discard!
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Oh yeah, I didn't think of the example of cuttings. They are a great example of immortality -- in the weirdest way. That Navel orange you are eating? It is the same plant as the one on the other side of the planet someone else is eating. All those Navel oranges in the supermarket? They all come from the same immortal plant. It can't reproduce by seed, because it doesn't have any. It relies upon people to clone and spread it.
Daffodils are interesting because (I believe) the daffodil is the same plant. It produces more bulbs, but from my understanding the original daffodil keeps on living, unable to complete its program if you don't let it flower. (I may be wrong here, but I think it's correct.) And there is a very real sense that the other bulbd are the same plant too.
Oooh! Aphids! They use parthenogenesis to reproduce when conditions are unfavorable for males. So you could say that in certain situations aphids could theoretically be immortal, though each individual grows old and dies. But as they are all clones they are in another sense all the one animal.
Oh yeah, there are some species of Whiptail lizard that exist only as females. There are no males. The females have lesbian couplings in which there is no genetic exchange -- it is purely a behavioral making love thing -- and give birth to more little versions of themselves. They live mostly in southwestern USA and in Mexico. There are about 15 species of them. I read about them in Scientific American years ago. You can find a little bit about them on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis (about halfway down the article).
I like the idea of leaving stuff behind as some small attempt at immortality. Children are a form of that. I can't have kids, but my sister's kids are the next best thing. (They are a total blast! -- Wonderful, smart kids.) Kindness is another way to leave a mark. Evil is despised and deleted as quickly as possible, but kindness mostly grows.
As for people happening upon some of your work and you hoping it is something worthwhile, then I guess a way to raise the chances of that is to create as much cool stuff as possible. :) I wish I wrote as much as you... but I have problems focussing.
I gotta try more...