It\u2019s interesting to me that so many teenagers develop the idea that nobody understands them, that they\u2019re uniquely self-aware and that (almost) every other person is merely a robotic automaton. It\u2019s amusingly depicted in xkcd 610: Sheeple. \u201cLook at all these people. Glassy-eyed automatons going about their daily lives, never stopping to look around and think! I\u2019m the only conscious human in a world of sheep.\u201d
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\nThe inverse idea is presented in some schools of zen or spirituality\u2013 that everybody around you is an incredibly enlightened teacher, put on this earth to teach you things that you might not even realise you\u2019re here to be taught. Also an interesting idea. But right now I\u2019m more fascinated by the first one. What if it were somehow true? What if you really WERE the only conscious human in the world? What would the implications be?
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\nThe first thought you might have is that you can do absolutely anything you wanted without worrying about what other people thought or cared. You can hurt and abuse people if you feel so inclined\u2013 they\u2019re not really people, after all. But this doesn\u2019t nearly work out as well as it might seem. Because while people might be glassy-eyed automatons, they\u2019d still get hurt and upset, and they\u2019d still respond negatively to your abuse. If you commit a crime in a world of sheep, the sheep are still going to punish you for it. So you still have to be mindful of the thoughts and feelings of the sheep.
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\nThere\u2019s some nuance there, though. There\u2019s no reason to worry about the sheep laughing at you or mocking you and so on, because you shouldn\u2019t have to be concerned about the opinions of sheep\u2013 except when the sheep might choose to cause you harm.
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\nHere\u2019s where it gets a little messy. As a conscious human being, you\u2019re wired to feel emotion, sympathy, shame, guilt\u2013 even if you\u2019re surrounded by lesser minds. You\u2019d still enjoy the affection of a puppy, you\u2019d still feel pained witnessing the lonely cries of an abandoned kitten. Those emotions are instinctive, developed over hundreds of thousands of years as social creatures. We were social creatures before we were solitary individuals, and our minds (and bodies?) are designed for it. Herd mentalities are powerful phenomenon. Fear of social ostracisation is a powerful fear. Desire for prestige and social standing is a powerful impulse. These processes continue to function even if we learn that we\u2019re in a world of sheep. Perhaps they might be lessened over time\u2013 perhaps we\u2019d learn to recognise the impulses as impulses, and have the space to think about how we actually want to respond.
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\nThat seems like a good idea even if we lived in a world of thoughtful, enlightened, conscious beings.
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\nWhat else would change? Suppose okay, you no longer worry about the opinions of others except when they might be used to cause you harm. You remain a generally friendly person, treating people as you would treat beloved stray animals\u2013 you give them space, you speak kindly to them, you\u2019re warm and friendly. But you keep your distance from any that are violent, threatening pro otherwise unpleasant. You find a happy balance. What\u2019s next?
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\nWell, the next thing you might realise is that you can\u2019t count on anybody else\u2019s thinking, because a sheep\u2019s thinking is generally ill-fitted for a conscious being. You might ask for people\u2019s perspective in order to collect data, but you wouldn\u2019t hold anybody else\u2019s opinion as intrinsically more valuable than your own. You might trust an expert (say, an electrician-sheep) because of his expertise in a domain that you\u2019re not familiar with, but you wouldn\u2019t take him seriously when asking him about how to live your life. What you should prioritise, what you should focus on. Unless, perhaps, you ran into a sheep who was living a life that you admired. Suppose you encountered a successful entrepreneur-sheep, or a patriarch-sheep, and you recognized them as living lives that you\u2019d want to emulate. As having circumstances that you\u2019d like for yourself. Then yes, you\u2019d solicit their advice. But again, you wouldn\u2019t hold the advice itself as intrinsically sacred\u2013 you\u2019d think \u201cthis is what the entrepreneur-sheep said\u201d, and analyse it critically to see if there\u2019s anything that he left out, anything that he misinterpreted and so on.
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\nYou especially wouldn\u2019t worry about arguing with sheep in the abstract. You wouldn\u2019t get your hands dirty in sheep forums, unless you were trying to achieve a particular result\u2013 trying to elicit a particular response, for example. But you wouldn\u2019t lose sleep over the opinions of sheep. You would see it as all a game, and not be to attached to it.
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\nYou would be lonely. Or would you be? Would you ever be fully able to engage with any other being? What is the need or desire to engage with other beings, anyway? Some people have pet dogs and claim that it got rid of their depression. That seems to work. The actual complexity of the mind you\u2019re interacting with is apparently not nearly as important as the seeming sincerity of the affection on display.
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\nWhat am I even talking about. Why did I pursue this train of thought to begin with? I wanted to figure out if a sincerely solipsistic worldview would change my behaviour or life in any way. Would it make me miserable? I find that the answer is\u2026 I really don\u2019t know. It seems improbable that glassy-eyed automatons might be more interesting than me, but it\u2019s clear that there do exist people who are more interesting than me. So rather than pursue \u201cmaximum consciousness\u201d, which we have no idea how to measure or verify, we could maybe pursue \u201cmaximum interestingness\u201d. \u00a0That seems vaguely correct.
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\nWhat if we went back to the zen question instead? What if everyone were enlightened teachers? How would that change interactions? I suppose it would prompt more engagement, more awareness, more attention from the part of the student.
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\nI suppose that\u2019s probably generally a good thing. So maybe the directive here is simply to be mindful.
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It\u2019s interesting to me that so many teenagers develop the idea that nobody understands them, that they\u2019re uniquely self-aware and that (almost) every other person is merely a robotic automaton. It\u2019s amusingly depicted in xkcd 610: Sheeple. \u201cLook at all these people. Glassy-eyed automatons going about their daily lives, never… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit"],"yoast_head":"\n