The following is inspired by the much better “The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I think she brilliantly presents an example of a perspective on the question of what is at the core of a being and of a relationship. I wanted to see what it would look like if we let go of anthropocentrism and address the deep aspects of being an embodied mind in this world, regardless of composition or origin story. What do we all have in common? What would we want to know about someone with a radically different embodiment, in order to be able to have a profound relationship with them? The following is my attempt to balance the scientific analysis of this question I publish in papers with a little bit of free verse grounded in my TAME framework. These ideas benefit greatly from discussions with people like Chris Fields, Richard Watson, Karl Friston, Mark Solms, and many many others in the field and in my lab. I feel like the right title still eludes me, so I’ll keep working on that, but meanwhile:
Recognizing Kin
I don’t care whether you have a big cortex, or even a brain at all, that you have a body within the 3-dimensional world which I am so fixated on, or that your medium size and speed are easily noticed by me and my kind. I want to know if you can hold counterfactual thoughts, dreaming of long ago, of future times, and of worlds that may never be. Do you live in the here-and-now, recording the crisp details of life as they are, or must you confabulate wildly, telling creative, symmetrical, beautifully compact stories of the past and future? Do those stories define you, carrying you across the gap between moments? Are you comfortable with being a metaphor, like everything else?
It doesn’t interest me that you are now formidable and crisp. I want to know if you assembled yourself out of disorder, once and then continuously thereafter, all the while knowing that eventually your parts will rebel. Do you determine where you begin and end, and revise this boundary as needed? Do you hold firm to an internal vision of yourself, despite those who would refactor you, and yet yearn to change, grow, and merge with all who matter?
It doesn’t interest me how strong is your computational grip on a fixed path. I want to know how flexible and weird is your ability to find new ways to a goal. It doesn’t matter to me if we don’t live in the same space, or if we run at wildly different speeds down the arrow of time. I want to know that we both color our internal landscape with meaning, that we strive and suffer, as we traverse our respective worlds. Can you care deeply about your goals, knowing that they will inevitably change as you do, and that changing and transcending them is yet another goal?
I don’t care how much of the world you can perceive directly. Does your magic derive from taking responsibility for choosing what to ignore of the overwhelming reality? I want to know if your power comes from committing to a specific perspective – meticulously crafting a point of view, which is at once limiting and hugely enabling. Do you honor the other perspectives, knowing that yours is precious, but also not privileged?
It doesn’t interest me how well you can predict outcomes, or how well you know other things. Can you predict your own next perception, and work to improve that skill – to know yourself, and thus to tell a more compelling story about yourself and your world?
It doesn’t interest me how vast you are or how long-lasting; have you crafted a coherent vision that defines you, to which all your parts can’t help but subscribe? Do you commit to it fully, at every moment, and yet let it grow and change? It doesn’t interest me how well you exert leadership of others like you; do you have the vision and charisma to convince your own parts to want to help you? Do you reward them and make it easy for them to fulfill their destiny all the while fulfilling yours? Do you recognize yourself as both “I” and “We”?
Your robust, complex chemical mechanisms don’t impress me; do you have the freedom to make mistakes, because you are brave and active enough to infer expectations that may not be met? Do you have many degrees of freedom, and yet sometimes are bound inexorably to a specific action by your very own convictions?
It doesn’t interest me how hard you work to implement specific algorithms, or how complex you are. Do you have hidden facets, unexpected abilities that challenge others to discover them? And do you have the wisdom to re-interpret others’ actions as the emergent polycomputations you need so desperately?
I am not impressed by unbreakable, reliable parts. Are you clever and fluid, containing multitudes, because you commit in your heart to the fact that every part of you is fickle, and you must find your way forward despite it?
It does not interest me that you can track every particle and explain what has, or will, happen to them; Do you live backwards, like Democritus, and use causes and explanations as excuses? Or do you strive forward, with opening new vistas of responsibility as your only reward? Do you coast indifferently, like Laplace’s Daemon, surrendering to the tyranny of a microscopic perspective? Or do you choose your path with hard-won wisdom and the constant effort of expansive imagination, and teach your children to do the same?
I don’t care whether you have human DNA, or how much intelligence gave rise to your organs and how long it took; I don’t care what you look like, inside or out. Do you stand at the center of a radius of compassion big enough to care for others, especially those who are unlike you? Have you already committed to expand this radius, or not yet?
It doesn’t interest me whether you evolved randomly, or were carefully engineered;
Is the universe trying to kill you? Are you vulnerable? Then we can resist it together, for a time.
Do you swing back and forth between pushing defiantly on the world and letting your gains feed back to change you forever? Then perhaps we can resonate and enrich us both.
Do you have fundamental questions you can never answer? Do you apprehend basic truths of which you can never be certain? Then we can wonder and think together.
Do you have the wisdom to see other beings, in whatever incarnation they may have, or at least nurture the aspiration to do so? Then we can love each other.
Featured image by Midjourney.
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