The Wayward Children

These are a few moments of thought that have taken form in the essay I've been writing, The Wayward Children. So much lies unwritten, but I wanted to share some small portion of my thoughts with you. With time, more will come of these ideas.

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From whence come the traits so rarely seen? What is the source of intellectual honesty? Of empathy, rigorous thinking, and open-minded inquiry? It is in these traits that I find hope for the future of my species. But it is a hope contingent on the possibility of their cultivation. For if these attributes are no more than genetic anomalies, then their voices will taunt us, but never save us.

The exposition of ideas alone will not suffice. I would have to explore the lives of those who embodied these traits, and determine how much or how little they resembled one another. As a contrast between discovery of the intellectual life and instruction leading to it, I sought out the lives of David Hume and John Stuart Mill. And although I write with their lives in mind, I have allowed my own story to guide the inquiry. For it is there that I can best separate the learned from the inherited. I would be remiss, however, to neglect that my motivation for this approach comes as much—if not more—from the cry to understand myself.

Perhaps you and I will cry together? For we must first confront whether these traits, which so benefit our species, are of any worth to ourselves. Or if, as E.M. Cioran confesses, “forgetfulness is the only salvation."

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And so any definition of the reasonable reduces to the task of arranging yourself and your surroundings so that all your desires, preferences, and needs are met. Notice that this description allows for a broad definition of what counts as reasonable. For some whose desires have been frustrated and denied at every turn, the reasonable choice is suicide. For others more fortunate, their desires for community and love will enable them to find or create loving communities. Still, for others, it is reasonable to extinguish desires that cannot be fulfilled. This process of evaluating emotions, of discarding the hurtful and emphasizing the good, can be both beneficial and problematic. For there are some emotions and desires that would be best if laid to rest. Others, though, drive us to achieve and create things that improve or add meaning to human life. The difficulty is in knowing what to accept, and what to change.

But despite whatever attempts you make at arranging things around your desires, and despite whatever success you may have, you are still arranging the pieces on a board you did not choose in a game you did not create. And what compels you to move the pieces at all? This too was instilled within you from the history of your species.

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But though the purpose was denied, the mechanism remained—a uniquely human occurrence. Here were desires, needs, preferences, and sensations all tuned by the necessity of survival and reproduction. A complete genetic inheritance pointed towards the furthering of my species. Yet I defied their purpose. I began to feel like a wayward child, doing with my inheritance things undreamt-of by my blind and ruthless parent.

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Where identity is concerned, limitation is key. Our borders define us. If I mention the name Chloe, you know from cultural experience that I am referring to a female (which, by the way, is more than you would know if I mentioned the name Aabha). But the rest of her personality is a mystery. She could be outgoing and disorganized, or shy and meticulous with her things. Traits isolate one option over the alternatives, they limit, they identify. To exist without limitations is to exist as an undifferentiated mass, that is to say, without an identity. The emergence of self-awareness requires that it already sit atop a mountain of decisions made prior to its existence. To posit the existence of self-awareness apart from a particular context is nonsensical. What would be the content of its deliberation?

Take, for example, an invulnerable, perfectly rational, self-sustaining robot that is capable of self-awareness. It has no needs, no desires, and no preferences. What will it think about? How will it spend the time? When a being has needs, desires emerge as a way of corralling it in a direction suitable to those needs. But what will a being such as our robot do? I am tempted to say suicide, but suicide is driven by desire. Lacking any need for input, does it make sense to describe this robot as self-aware? If we strip the self of needs, desires, and preferences, then we will find that we have nothing left. Self-awareness, then, is a capacity only of those beings that have something to be aware of—that is, those beings that have something they need to be aware of.

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Though the path to knowledge is littered and blockaded, there are those who have found their way. Perhaps a time will come, after we’ve asked the questions long enough, when we will seek to cultivate such lives rather than gawking at their occasional appearance.