alive in death

what does it mean to die? To be alive is to be mentally conscious of my physical self. When I think about an object, a thing, a person, an entity, an institution, an overarching existence; an “other”, am I still being at my current position in space and time? Because being aware of my physical self or, ’self’ requires my consciousness to drift to different positions of others, in order to “see” myself. Then, am I even alive? Probably because I can command my body using psycho-motor skills, and tell the biological components (to a certain degree) to carry out what I want to do. But for me even to carry out that action, requires my self to embody or interact with the object/entity/memory in order to perceive my self, in turn generating instructions to my biological systems and physical self to execute it.

The physical self is “dead” as my consciousness drifts to different dimensions. It seems like I’m always outside of myself, like a remote control, controlling myself externally whilst taking different positions and embodying objects that are outside the space-time continuum. So am I really alive? and in order to be alive, do we have to be ‘dead’? I think I can relate this to what Michael Holquist wrote when he cited the Bakthinian theory of dialogism; “in dialogism, the very capacity to have consciousness is based on otherness; relativity, self/other is a relations of simultaneity.” He explained using an example of a person slashing his own finger with a knife, then the other person next to him will emphatize with him. In this situation, the other’s physical self is ‘dead’, and his consciousness embodied the other in order to ‘feel’ the pain and emphatize with the person who is in pain. For him to do this, he not only takes the view of the person in pain, but recollects numerous and countless individuals in society and their actions as well. It is what Bakthin calls, “the surplus of seeing“.  In writing this blog, my consciousness is now amongst all of you readers, nowhere near me – outside spatial & temporal dimensions – and continously authoring myself as I type this.

then can I say that death is the irreversible termination of the mind from the body? I wish NTU had philosophy. Fuck.

- the rusted one

~ by Min on 5th July, 2009.