I act, therefore I am

"I act, therefore I am."

PHIL 224 (intro to existentialism) has a way of making me reconsider myself.  Today I looked at yesterday's post and decided to take another step back.  I'll have to start moving forward at some point, to begin really working on the problem, but I think that this time it really needs to stick.  This time, I want to get it right.  So another step back is not a bad thing.

I don't have many fears.  At no point have I ever been in danger of starving.  I've never slept without a roof or tent over my head.   I've never been isolated from human interaction.  Truthfully, all of my fears are fleeting or abstract, and for the most part I ignore them.  This was especially true when I was a child.

Having nothing to fear, I spent a good portion of my time ignoring the world.  Escapism is wonderful for those who have the freedom.  I've buried myself, at one time or another, in books, video games, and daydreams.  Sadly, escapism is my one defining and most practiced skill.  I can now hit a point during meditation where I can see moving pictures more real than reality, dreams in which I can choose my actions, imagery which exceeds to bounds of human existence.

But what has my most established skill given me?  It has robbed me of the will to work; why work on projects limited by this reality my body is trapped in, when the allowances of my mind are so different and novel?  It has robbed me of my feelings; why feel when you can choose not to?  It has robbed me of  my caring for others, my will to maintain a public image, my trust in humanity.  In short, it has taken as its cost my will to act.  It nearly robbed me of my will to live.  But if I was anything before I became so skillful, I was cautious.

That skill sticks with me too.  When I was young, I chose to develop my ability to imagine.  But the cost, I knew, was memory.  And with memory went all possibility of continued character advancement, much of my identity, and a whole host of other things I could not guess at the time.  So I built a second portion to watch the first.  It kept growing, but it was limited to what wasn't already needed.  Its memories were pushed below consciousness where ever possible. It thoughts were kept there to, so that they could not corrupt the process of imagination.  In time, their hidden place was made more important, for were they to surface they would be corrupted.  The space they used to think would be eaten by my imagination, which used all the space it could find and filled my mind with its presence, should they reappear.

I gave many functions to this second mind over the years, things that I didn't need in my dreamlands, but which were necessary to keep the pretense of humanity.  Speech, mathematics, discussion skills, all of these were handed over.  And when my mind slipped too far into toward the deep end, my subconscious (for that is how I think of it) would exert enough control to keep me from tenuous balance that had been established.

Over the years, I've been stuck with the consequences of my choices, but I never questioned my choice from so many years ago.  I had chosen to be good at imagining things, because that was something that adults were never good at.  That was a skill I could be proud of.  And the consequences were never too bad.

• I've lost ability to remember peoples faces, but I can still recognize them (since that is subconscious). 
• I can't pay attention to work of any type, unless I totally shut off my mind, a skill which I've mastered to the point of having coworkers asking about my mental disability.  
• I can't really be punished any more, since my own mind is refuge and company enough.
• I can change certain habits on a whim, but my subconscious keeps my actions over time centered on an average of my past actions, since they have seemed to work so far.
• I can lie very effectively without it hurting my conscience, by forgetting the truth and imagining a viable alternative to take its place.

and more.  so many effects that I have spent my last 10 years just quantifying them.  But above all, that untouchable subconscious which holds me from long-term deviation.  It is a relic of a time before my imagination's birth and while I have often tried to take it on, I usually aim only at some aspect or effect and miss the mass.

I would like to choose to change.  The thing is, I can't right now.  By ability to choose is held by the subconscious itself, and no being can choose to kill itself.  I have ways around that too, but to start them would require the choice to be made.

I could change at any time.  But I have isolated myself so well from the world, that it can no longer force me to change.  Without the force of nature I have stagnated.  To reestablish my connection I need merely choose.  But I cannot choose without killing who I am inside, and I can't as a human make that choice.  And as much as I've desperately struggled to give that power away to someone else, in the end it is my choice.  If they choose for me, even if I follow their instructions, I would cease to be Sammy and become some version of what they wanted.

That is my tragedy.  I exist in a cage of my own making.  I could break the cage, but it would kill the occupant.  I could leave it, but who knows what the world would make me into.  And the third option is inaction.

"I no longer act, therefore I have ceased to exist."