Saturday, November 25, 2006

Extract From "Lila"

"This Cartesian 'Me', this autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass judgment on the affairs of the world, is just completely ridiculous. This self-appointed little editor of reality is just an impossible fiction that collapses the moment one examines it. This Cartesian 'Me' is a software reality, not a hardware reality. This body on the left and this body on the right are running variations of the same program, the same 'Me', which doesn't belong to either of them. The 'Me's' are simply a program format. Talk about aliens from another planet. This program based on 'Me's' and 'We's' is the alien. 'We' has only been here for a few thousand years or so. But these bodies that 'We' has taken over were around for ten times that long before 'We' came along. And the cells - my God, the cells have been around for thousands of times that long.
These poor stupid bodies that 'We' has invaded, he thought. Every once in a while they overthrow the program and go about their ways leaving 'We' mystified about how all this could have happened. Mystified, and somewhat horrified too at the things bodies do without its permission. All of this sexual morality of Rigel's - it wasn't just social codes. It was also part of this sense of horror at these cells 'We' has invaded and the strange patterns of Quality that existed before 'We' arrived.
These cells make sweat and snot and phlegm. They belch and bleed and fuck and fart and piss and shit and vomit and squeeze out more bodies just like themselves all covered with blood and placental slime that grow and squeeze out more bodies, on and on.
'We', the software reality, find these hardware facts so distressing that it covers them with euphemisms and clothes and medical secrecy. But what 'We' is covering up is pure quality for the cells. The cells have gotten to their advanced state of evolution through all this fucking and farting and pissing and shitting. That's quality! Particularly the sexual functions. From the cells' point of view sex is pure Dynamic Quality, the highest Good of all."

Extract from "Lila", by Robert M. Pirsig