Shall We?

All this ever can be is an exploration into myself because it is too hard to step out of that, to step away from that search. I will give up the pretense before I even start. That's all I could ever hope to accomplish and I may as well enjoy my time doing it through watching other, writing fiction and learning anything I can.

I have been thinking lately about what makes up us. I hate the banality of the question but it is a decent starting point. Perhaps the weakest answer to me is nature. It occurred to me today when I saw a shirt in crew cuts talking about DNA that I would not be surprised to hear an elementary school kid tell me something about DNA when realistically, up to sixty years ago it was scared discussed. I've mentioned before about these tests that people have done on biological twins separated at birth that shows they display some of the same quirks and that these things a built into them in their brains. Boring. Lets try again. Nature before DNA then was simply what your mother did, what your father did: you were born this way. At least with better understanding of genes we now understand that things can even skip generations.

Nurture at least has some potential in my opinion. Watching something everyday leads one to think that is the way of the world: ring a bell, get food. Conditioning is intriguing to me but now we know that these things can take place in vitro as well. One of the things that we encourage people to do when they are depressed is to listen to music that is a drastically different emotion than that which they are feeling because people can be like sponges and absorb emotions.

It is, naturally, the debate of the humanities and sciences to determine who we are, how did we end up as we did.

I personally hate them both as anyone who has spent much time talking to me already knows. I detest the idea of anything or anyone influencing who I have become. I refuse to acknowledge that my parents were in any way related to how i now interact with the world around. i believe that i react the way i do, think the way i do, am who i am because i chose to be so.

Naturally, this is rather juvenile as one could simply ask what led me to want what i want. How did i decide what was right or wrong. My question would be is God nature or nurture?

It was obviously Descartes who proclaimed 'i think therefor i am,' but goodness knows kodak has made a fortune convincing us 'they remember therefor i was,' and lets be honest we all tend to think 'ive been friended therefor i matter.' recently two movies have made me question these a bit. i watched the fountain which puts forth the notion that truly it doesnt matter if we are alive or dead because we are always in someway living. we come from the elements of the earth and as we die we break back down to those same elements which in turn make up the food for the birds, the grass on hills and therefor we never really were and yet always are. i also watched sourcecode which seemingly suggests that we are manipulation of electrical currency able to be fed the world through currents that we interpret making us essentially nothing more than a translation machine.

it was this latter thought that made me start writing today. in all of this it doesnt seem to make a huge different day to day. regardless of whether my genes have made me cross my arms right over left or left over right i still get lost in my own thoughts. ad whether or not i bully those around or rush to their aid like the mothers that raised me, i still am restricted in someways by ability to learn. if God has laid out plan of sins for which i will burn in hell it is still up to me to decide if I think those are evil. what i am curious about is why we go to the trouble to define ourselves.

for me it is an easy answer, i am searching for a way to relate to people, to understand them. i am looking for the string theory of social interaction and near as i can tell, we are who we want to be perceived as. having an image of ourselves is what makes us.

recently it was brought up that there can be no such think as slavery within bdsm. (took a turn there hm?). there were over 300 comments with people debating this point back and forth. the ones who said it was impossible cited behaviors like safe words and being able to break up with the master. those who clung to the idea that slavery was possible talked about their punishments when they stepped out of line. obviously they have missed the point which is also to miss the power in my opinion. it is only meaningful to give away yourself if you have a choice to no longer being asking who you are as a person. if you are needing to discus punishments, if you are needing to announce your submissive status, youve given away nothing, youve changed nothing. doesnt mean its wrong, it means it is still just a concept and not who you are.  it means youre still responding to all of the external influences that have told you this is who you are to be.

for me, all i want to know is why the person posted the comment initially. the answer to me is so obvious and clearly to them as well. so why entertain the trouble of it. if it was to stir people up, she succeeded but that hardly seems like a true end. i want to know why. why did everyone feel the need to respond: what was the threat to who they felt they were, to their vision of themselves?

tragically, none of us are anything more than temporary. our genes, our thoughts, our cultures wont save us. but we all know that. we all know this, we know our fate and we know that no matter our beliefs, our strives for immortality through innovation, that we shall die. we are all perfectly aware that no matter how many photos are snapped we will turn to dust. napoleon made his death a constant reminder of his greatness with his tomb. the leaders of the world would always have to be on their knees to him. but still he rots in a box. so why do we go to such lengths to further something we already know is in our heads. anyway bdsm slave knows she is able to leave and that her only beauty is in admitting that. so why doth thou protest so much?

why care how we get the vision we are trying to manifest when we dont know why we are fighting so hard to keep it? and is that the only reason we are trying to figure out what makes us these scenes of self summary, just to have the ability to hold tighter to them? i just want to understand everyone, in one breath.