Animality

We are animals, biological beings. Part of that biology is intellect. Perhaps there is something more that defines us, some spirit soul entity, but I think not. Alan Watts described the animated corpse theory in The Book. If there is a soul that exists without the body, then that is what we would be, animated corpses. But he is not denying the nonmaterial existence of individual self. He also puts forth the idea of universal self. I think of this using a radio as analogy. Consciousness exists as pontential, a signal like a band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Individualility is the reception of a limited set of frequencies focused by the pattern that makes up the individual body. I, that part of all of us that we experience as self, is produced by the interplay of the particles and field that manifest as physical reality. My particular conscious me is a station that tunes into the collection of patterns that make up me. I'll have to keep working on this to express it more elegantly.

I did not mean to get stuck on the underlying nature of existence. I sat down to write about animality. The quality of existence that is brought on by animal desire, the biological machine (one I don't recommend flipping off). But now I will spin off onto another tangent.

In my last blog, I wondered why ensuring safe drinking water for all the world's citizens is not a priority. One facet of this can be discussed through Dependency Theory. Now if Leonidas comes along and reads this, he'd probably accuse me of being a collectivist, his favorite insult. So in predefense, I'm using Dependency Theory to provide some framework for discussion. I'm certainly not advocating state control of business activity. State as umpire to the empire, let the teams play. With that out of the way, Dependency Theory provides some insight into the disparity of wealth between nations. International business activity aided by lackey government powers do indeed implement machines that keep countries impoverished. Our standard of living depends upon cheap labor and goods. Various machines built and maintained by international businesses work to keep in place policies and political structures in other nations that benefit the first world to the detriment of the vast majority of citizens in the affected third world countries. My usual example is the toppling of the democratically elected government in Guatamala by United Fruit and the CIA to prevent land reform that would've had a negative finacial impact for United Fruit and its shareholders.

Dependency Theory doesn't directly explain why so many people have unsafe drinking water (for that is the illustrative example I'm using). The lack of committed effort by the world community in ensuring ready access to a safe source of the second most important thing to human beings can be explained by the newly created Collatoral Damage Theory. This theory, which I'm making up as I write, says that in focusing on the acquistion and wealth, unintential harm is caused through neglect. The philosophical constructs necessary to be a cog in the machines described by Dependency Theory include superiority and a blame the victim. Those in the machine using these beliefs to keep their conscience at bay while they perform dehumanizing acts lack motivation to provide safe water. If you're engaged in mining activity that is polluting the local water supply, you'd have to admit that your action is causing a problem before you'd be willing to take steps to protect the water. In order for it to be a problem, you'd have to care about the people who's water supply it is. So you just don't think about it and continue to do the work because it's creating wealth and wealth is good for everybody. The disease caused by the polluted water is Collatoral Damage, and the perpetuators need to deny personal ownership of the sorrow in order to continue to commit the acts.

All just thought. No new research was conducted on the formation of these opinions.