Who am I?

Who am I?

That's an interesting question:

I'm 18, male, about 6 foot tall...but that's a list of facts, the kind of thing you find in a character profile in a video game manual. You could figure it out from pictures of me.

So, let's try again:

I'm a zoology student, a weak agnostic sliding between weak atheist and weak deist, a...still character profile entries, this time about my ideas and philosophies.

One more go:

I'm an aromantic asexual, introverted and with tendencies to Asperger's syndrome...Still a character profile, with nothing special, nothing that makes me alive.

So the question is am I just a character profile, a set of options from a list?

The answer is yes and no.

It's yes because, when you look at it as a list, that's what it is. Everybody can be split into different categories, and whilst if you make them narrow enough everyone ends up with their own, that's useless, so you end up splitting people into helpful groups, like 'straight' or 'gay' or 'white' or 'Asian' or 'tall' or 'thin' or whatever. What makes people different is the combinations. That's it. We're just a form with lots of details.

But there is something else. Right at the bottom of the form there's a 'history' and a 'other info' box, which are just blank. There's no limits, so you can say whatever. The history fills itself in, what happens to people, how it makes them who they are. But it's the 'other' box, the one with no rules, that's the key to whatever it is that makes us more than just a list of categories. But what goes there? Personality? Maybe, but you can split that up into enough elements that it's all just yes/no.

Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there's just that something, that spark of humanity. Or maybe I cut things up within my mind so far that there's no human left. Just a set of categories and yes/no's and lists.

I suppose I never felt exactly like I was human past the body I have. It's not that I simply view people's humanity as nothing more than brain cells firing. I do see humanity as ultimately brain cells firing but that doesn't make it anything less than what it is. It's like acomputer. Just because it can, say, do all the work you need to do (and read this), isn't lessened by the fact that it's made of silicone and metal and plastic and runs of electricity. Why is it such a bad thing for the human brain to run off carbohydrates and nitrogen and phosphorous and elecricity?

I don't see the human mind as anything really. It's there. I have no need to look deeper because the field of psychology isn't one I'm interested in. But I don't see it as anything more. I have no need to look beyond, to something outside of us, for it to be magical.

I am human, I know i am. I have the genes of Homo sapien, I was born to humans, if I wanted to I could mate (translation: have sex) with other humans, and any future offspring I have would be human. But I don't feel a part of humanity. I feel as though I'm just along for the ride.

Hence the title for this blog. I don't feel part of humanity, and feel little conection to my own human self, hence I feel I look on social issues as though i'm an outsider, and so I present them from an outsider's position.

Well I'll end here, in the hopes that you arn't put off and would read the next one.

Farewell