Alex Baer: The Perspective of Placeholders, Scribbles, & Squiggles

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EarthScribbles on a page are just placeholders for errant thoughts and daydreams, drifting here and there, looking for anchor points of purchase.  These symbols and squiggles we call writing are feeble things, unable to hold a candle to personal observation.  It is a shame we haven't evolved the ability to directly share our observations with one another, whether singly or a few million at a time.

In a science fiction film, there would have to be wires, connections, and a massive control panel choked and jammed with clusters of lights and switches.  In my version, it would be accomplished without machines or equipment, but be done by a simple thought process one could learn early in life -- and be about as complex and demanding of you as having the inspiration to move across the room in order to get a drink of water, and then doing so.

Perhaps that broadcasted-direct-empathy ability would make the Game we all play, the one we typically call Life -- and Our Lives -- just too easy for a species on our particular trajectory. That ability, if we had it, would allow us to communicate too much, too deeply, and too fast:  It could blow out all our circuits.

(My theory, you see, to sidetrack us all a moment, is that there is no human learning without experience and empathy having occurred first.  It is true that some people are very empathetic, but I have a hunch most of us create empathy via our experience:  If we have burned our hand on a stove, it becomes a situation in which we have empathy for others, as well as having learned to be more careful around stoves.)

But, such a super-ability of sharing the combination of experience and empathy -- the ingredients and the resulting sensations -- would certainly allow vast seas of empathy to be instantly created in us all.  Lightning fast, we would increase our experience-and-empathy sets, via one another's first-hand experiences, sensations, and after-effects, be they of pleasure or pain.  That sort of hyper-jump-start might bring too much understanding, awareness, and development far too quickly for us to fully absorb and store, being merely human.

Maybe. But it's an interesting line to ponder.

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