Z-qualia

If zombies are lacking humanity, what is humanity? It obviously does not depend upon the appearance of being human.

Generally, zombies are vectors of a dehumanizing contagion. A case of the zombies strips anyone exposed to it of the qualities that give life to life. Symptoms include the loss of speech, loss of ability for complex planning or tool use, necrosis of the body, lack of fine motor skills, and the increased ability to sustain physical injury. These symptoms point to a being or sub-being that doesn’t appear to have an internal life, or qualia, as the philosophers like to say. What exists instead is a dead body driven to seek out the light of the living in order to extinguish it.

What do the features of zombiehood tell us about nonzombified humanity? It seems critical that there is no ability to speak or communicate, but it may in fact just be the obvious sign that there are serious deficits of some kind. Zombies lack the ability to talk, which often allows some unsuspecting fool to get within biting range. But more importantly, uncommunicativeness overcomes the questions regarding necessary evidence of qualia in another mind. If there is an inability to communicate or to use tools, then there is probably a lack of qualia, and therefore & voila, zombie! or maybe the neighbor’s dog. The Turing test cannot be administered to beings who cannot formulate any kind of parsable sentence.

This question of other minds is an interesting meditation on what is sufficient for anyone to believe in the existence of an external reality, or any intelligent life. Or at least intelligible life. In a way this is the crux of human life, at least to me. I can comprehend the idea of perception and can extend it to other beings that appear to behave in manners similar to my own, but I can just as easily remove the privilege of equal existence as soon as I feel their behaviour has breached my own personal criteria of acceptability. This hidden moral code is based solely on the concept of self, is egoistically driven, and is therefore egoistically flawed.

This is the place that zombies come from. Zombies on film are the projection of our own inability to deal with the problem of other minds. Zombies are instantly recognizable because they possess the lack of paradigmatic human traits, such as speech, vivacity, etc. It is the dehumanizing force of the ego that removes any humanity from zombies. Any good zombie movie worth its salt explores this dynamic. What was once a fight against death itself becomes a meditation on the difference between self and other. Is it just that eternal gap between one’s own sensation of life and its external appearance in an other?

This is the crux of human life because we insist on being social. If we were content to live purely solipsistic existences, then we would never have to extend our selves to include the idea of others. Of course, we might never have developed the idea of a self in the first place.

Introduction

Don’t you just love philosophers? They find any topic worthy of examination, even though most are deemed “uninteresting”.

Zombies, in the above article, are another victim of their relentless debating. As defined in the article, zombies are exactly like humans but they are lacking “consciousness”. This take on zombies allows a little exploration of mind/body issues, but to me, really fires wide of the mark. Zombies are interesting precisely in that they were at one point “human” but no longer are, although they continue to carry out many human-typical activities. This begs the question: what characteristics are essential to our definition of "human", beyond the appearance of being alive? This is the simpler (and more interesting) version of the automata question which uses zombies as a tool to try & resolve the mind/body debate. In the above article, qualia are seen as important in locating consciousness. To me, qualia or lack of, are the essence of why zombies exist (in the human imagination) and therefore the essence of what it is to be actually human rather than just to appear to be human.

Other zombie characteristics that are intriguing are the concept of contagion, zombie mass psychology, the transformation from human into zombie, their animosity toward non-zombies and their state of decay. All of these characteristics speak volumes about what humans think it means to live a fully human life rather than some zombified half life. It looks as though this blog will be dedicated to this exploration for the next little while. Zombie fans rejoice! (Thank goodness my readership is small, possibly in the single binary digits...)

To sum up: if zombies are merely humans lacking qualia/consciousness which cannot be determined by physical testing or linguistic probing, they truly are uninteresting and irrelevant. That question can be addressed through the exploration of the Other minds problem or the question of animal consciousness. Hey philosophers, leave those zombies alone!

Preparatory Reading

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

rising sap

what'suprising?

A jingling jangle of words and thoughts
kaleiding off the four corners of my brainbox.

The story thus far

After months of rain and sometimes snow, the skies cleared and opened into sun. The constant noise of falling wetness changed into a thousand birds and insects singing. Even the plants seemed to sound out their speedy growth under the sun. All these motions and waves lifted into the spacious blue canopy, and yet there was still room for hazy spring dreams.

I had at last returned home to the country after many years spent under an urban thrall. There had come a point that I identified myself as sick, but had no symptoms anyone recognized as anything other than “normal”. Seeing the doctors and therapists changed nothing except my certainty that I was unwell. I began to doubt my own veracity, then my own existence. Soon I had developed a full-blown anxiety disorder, apparently out of nowhere according to the health professionals. It was then I decided that I could no longer trust anyone but myself to discover and cure the source of my sickness.

I left the city, then, but it didn’t leave me. Trying to shake an awful emptiness, I flew from coast to coast, from country to country. The void hung tenaciously on. Eventually, I allowed myself to take some help and move in to a small house in the country. This self-imposed retreat was in fact not a retreat at all, but a return to reality. I began to see that the city was in fact not the centre of the universe, but only its periphery, a black hole on the edge of reality that desired to pull everything into it. In the middle of nowhere, I found the center of everything.

For years I had been trying to find out what my purpose was in life, what I was here to do. In the sound and silence of the forest, the trees told me the answer. What was their purpose? Certainly they did not exist to just provide oxygen for animals. I slowly became aware that I had learned in the city to take everything for granted. I assumed the entire world was aimed at humanity, either for or against us. My anthrocentricism reinforced my egocentricism, and so my sickness. Lying on my back in the sun and the dirt, I happily let go. Now there was only nature living and dying all around and in me.

autoerosanthropy

This is the perfect day to have as a lover.

All my charms

Everything in hand, house, car, career careening out into nothing. Everything accumulated like charms clasping tight links in the story of life. Never there, always half the distance to here even when well in hand. What’s well in hand when the hand comes off? All parts are detachable: life love money and all the rest. Just like charms held tight in links circling the fist, always just out of reach.
All parts parted ad infinitum. Every atom an object of desire. Every hand out of hand. Endless desire, endless charms, endless running, endless endlessness.

Remembering Newfoundland: Fluid Environment

Like fish in water, people generally overlook the fact that we live in a fluid environment. Unless, of course, it develops a current that we are forced to admit we swim in. 100 km/h winds definitely have more direction and force than the more buoyant regular air pressure we bob around in on average days. This wind is a tumultuous river compared to a calmer days’ walk in a lake. The rapidly passing atmosphere also creates a real feeling of how asphyxiation might occur out in the middle of all that air: what if you can only draw rarefied low-pressure air into your little lungs, or worse, the low-pressure feels like it’s sucking the air out of you. The environment breathes you, and pop! one less oxygen-sucker on the planet. Trees at high altitude hint at what high-pressure life would look like. Tall and spindly, it’s easy to see they are having a hard time sucking what they need out of the air. (Kinda like the high-pressure/low-nutrition world of supermodelling, although why and what they’re sucking is probably very different.) You’d think at the rate we cut them down and humiliate them with our fecal bathroom rituals we were competing for the same airy resources, but we aren’t.( From a tree-evolutionary perspective, in tree history, what kind of monsters are humans? We wreak their genocide, then mangle and mash the corpses into a paste which we dry and subsequently use to clean our very dirty orifices. What ring of hell does a tree go to for that, and for what sins, in tree lore?)
What would happen if everyone on the planet—everyone human, at the least—inhaled and exhaled at the same moment? Would we have to plan it, the breathing of the planet, or would it just come like the inevitable genius of the billionth typewriting monkey? Would the giant Morpho in the sky flap its wings and counteract that concerted contraction and expansion or would we be left on our own, sucking each other in then blowing each other away? I believe in the giant Morpho in the sky. And I believe in the flying spaghetti monster too, or I at least believe they could be mythical cognates of one another.
The water in the toilet waves every time the wind pushes against the house. Is the water staying plumb still with the rest of the house moving around it? Golly! In Newfoundland you get your sea legs on land!

trilingual Canada?

Every month I am overcome by the huge and baffling variety of “feminine hygiene products”, a strange name for menstrual wear of all kinds. What does femininity have to do with getting your period? Personally, I am far less likely to strap on a frock and act the demure shrinking violet at that time of the month than any other. Unless the definition of feminine changed while I was sleeping and it now means something akin to “emotionally raging & cramp infested, possibly tactless to the point of cruelty”, I really don’t see what traditional big-haired femininity has to do with the monthly flow of blood twixt our legs.
But this wasn’t the particular linguistic phenomenon that caught my attention last time I confronted the wall of pads in my local grocery store. In fact, it wasn’t until I had already run the comparative-shopping gauntlet and arrived home that I even noticed it.
Every child in Canada from coast to coast to coast has the opportunity of learning not one but two official languages. The opportunity to actually converse in the two official languages varies with your mileage away from the Bill 101 hotspots rooted in Eastern Canada, but ever and always the back of a shampoo bottle or cereal box will avail some kind of linguistic opportunity. In places where the other official language has never been uttered, it still universally spackles the sides of commercial goods. Whether it will ever be useful to carry on a discussion about proper hair care in the other language or not is debatable, but these small acts of translation are the glue that keep our country assembled, that make us curious and delighted about our cultural and linguistic diversity.
In the States, bilingualism has grown out of necessity rather than legislation. English is the unofficial language of the USA, which means that all their legal documents are written in English. In some states such as New Mexico, laws are written in both English and Spanish, and both languages are found on most goods in stores these days. In fact, driving across the border from western Canada where English predominates into the western States, Spanish is immediately apparent in storefront signage. The United States of America’s unofficial language is indisputably Spanish. Of course, this is more or less apparent depending where in the country you are. The further south you go, the more Spanish there is, and ditto the further west. And, of course, this causes varying degrees of joy and consternation depending on who you talk to.
What, though, was Spanish doing up here in Canada? French, unlike its Latinate cousin, is rarely found in the USA. Imports and foods are an exception, as is New Orleans, but other than that, French is rare in the States. This is evident from the pronunciation of various city names which were once French in origin but now have been thoroughly Americanized into some original unrecognizability.
But there it was on the package: overnight • de nuit • nocturnas. Ah, nocturnas, I thought, that’s pretty. Napkins • serviettes • toallas… Toallas?! Ok, that’s not so pretty. Well, compared to the good old anglo-saxon “napkins” it still sounds good. But “toallas” also sounds huge! Not so comforting to the menstrual woman who already feels like this could be the month she bleeds to death.
So how did this Spanish get on my pads? I was pretty sure that the American packaging wouldn’t contain a word of French. Why does the Canadian one have Spanish? Is this our unofficial third language? to be continued…

Aside: because Canada has two official languages that are both official languages because there is no way we want to designate one as being more official than the other because by so doing we incur either the Separatist wrath of Quebec or the alienation of Western provinces, Newfoundland and all other Anglo strongholds, does that mean that a third language like Spanish would be a first unofficial language, or a third unofficial language, or would it vary from place to place depending on whatever linguistic reality was present, because in many places there is another indigenous language in use that is far more relevant to daily living than Spanish, although the presence of Spanish on household goods could be seen in a providential light by some sectors of the population as being a perfect opportunity to brush up a little before fleeing the Canadian winter in favor of a place where knowing the Spanish equivalent for “towel” and “shampoo” could really come in handy.

no woman is an e-land?

here we were where winter was everywhere wherever was.


snow stood shadow-asunder still shrouded under a sun

heinous amountainous


insert somewhere here

NFL

Newfoundland! Newfinland! Newfundland! Newfunland!

Railing at the Anna Templeton for Textile Arts

Yes, I’m back again on the Rock. A strange choice, perhaps, when fuel prices are soaring and everything salad-like and familiar is on the mainland. But, here I am, and like most people I carry my world with me wherever I go. So, Planet Claire now resides here in the new home of Misty and Rob.

Pitcher plant on Cape Spear

Summer arrived nearly two weeks after I did, and so I got to experience two full seasons of lilac blossoms; one in Vancouver and the other here. They are just about finished, and the local vegetables are now nearly large enough to be eaten. There is a farmers’ market most weekends where local veggies, meat and baking as well as a few crafts can be bought. The sea is also coming to St. John’s, and the capelin will soon be rolling into its nearest shores. The whales are already offshore gorging their gorgeous selves on the wee fish.

Signal Hill in the fog

Humpback Whales

Humpback whales with tourists

The warm weather has enthused locals and nonlocals alike, musical and otherwise. The 14th annual Sound Symposium is now ON, and includes a daily horn symphony that is played in the harbour on the various steamwhistles and horns in the bay. It tends to be a little abstract and a lot loud. I was lucky enough to get a chance to go to the opening night gala for free and see a variety of musical shows that included choral music and a circus. Of course, everyone in St. John’s is born holding some kind of instrument in their fetal fist so seeing musical talent is a near every day event here. Even so, the crowd was enthusiastic about each performance in the varied lineup.
Lupins, lupins everywhere!

I now have a job, another baking job working for two of the best people to work for ever. The bakery itself is called Sweet Relic and is in the oldest building in St. John's. If you are in the area, make sure to come by and taste some of the best baking in the city made by the kitchen boss Patricia. You'll probably be buying it from cafe boss Russell, so that means you will get to see what I mean by good folks.

Mexico in 6 photos or less

We started out to Mexico in half a foot of snow, with the wind blowing and snow falling heavily. At first we—my mom, her boyfriend Dan and myself—weren’t sure if we were heading into worse weather than what we were leaving behind. Kelowna was experiencing its first midwinter blizzard and the streets were no more than two narrow trenches through the snow, all other lines and boundaries buried in white. Which could kind of be said about Kelowna in general: all culture, nature and previous civilizations now buried in white (people).

Anyway, the radio promised better times ahead once we reached Summerland, so we persisted on in faith. The snowflakes were as big as small birds, capable of covering the palm of your hand. These falling small birds made it hard to see much, and we moved forward at a safe and slow pace. Traffic coming in to the city was a mix of the cautious, the foolhardy and those in a ploughtruck-led conga line. Most cars were able to stay on the road.


Once we reached Summerland we saw the promise given by the radio oracle was the truth. The snow thinned, falling in enough air to see through, to see further and drive faster. At the U.S. border they let us through with no thorough vehicle or body cavity search, Allah be praised, and the snow continued on through Washington state. The only noticeable difference south of the border was the periodic presence of symbolic patriotism: the American flag.

I never really know what to think about this flaunting of the flag. Does it mean the people flying it are staunch supporters of the U.S. government even way out here in rural States, or does it mean that they are pureblood survivalists who will defend their right to bear arms even if that means they might have to destroy their own government, or is it just absolute and unwavering allegiance to the idea that is the U.S. of A, or just to the flag itself? I am curious, but I am not curious enough to try knocking on the door of a potentially armed stranger defending their property in order to find out.


Washington was awash in white, and we stayed in snow all through the high mountain passes that led us into the next states of our trip. Each day we had a blustery frozen start that usually progressed into sun and melting. At one point of the day’s thaw, in a straight stretch of road not in the mountains, we saw the remnants of a three-semi pile-up. It looks like they were sniffing each other’s tailpipes a little too closely.

It was near Reno that I felt like my life could be a video game, although it was Danny who was playing it. I don’t think there is a driving game called “Terrified Passenger” yet. But this might give you the wrong impression. Dan is my hero; he drove us safely through the snow and back again, and much more in between. We had become used to winter long before we reached Nevada, but the snowdevils kicked up there by an incoming storm system were a new creature altogether. Driving through the desert toward the horizon we could see white tornadoes blowing up across the ridges and over the highway. We missed being hit by all of them, but unfortunately we didn’t miss the town of Burton Wells.

Our last night in Nevada was in Burton Wells during a full-blown blizzard. Luckily (?), we found a cheap bunker of a motel complete with mildew so there was no chance we were going to be blown away either by the storm or by the quality of our lodgings. Enough said.

The next morning we drove out of the last of that state, through one side of a storm straight into its peaceful eye. Driving toward the thing was like driving into a white wall. Fortunately we were in the desert and the road ahead was dead flat and dead straight. The wind pushed us hard all over the road, and the air was so thick with snow that visibility was zero. When we got through this turbulent wall, we were suddenly in the eye of the storm: a column of clear air that opened up to a blue sky we hadn’t seen for days, with no wind or snow. It was like an oasis of calm that could only be kept by traveling within the storm itself. It wasn’t too many miles before we reached the other side and were buffeted once again back through to winter. The snow and wind continued until we reached the mountains on the far side of the plains, where winter began to magically fade away. Its grip continued to loosen, and by the time we started to see signs telling us how far we were from the modern Babylon, Las Vegas, the roads were dry and the skies were clear.

Another leg of the journey completed, our next gauntlet was the crazy spaghetti bowl surrounding the 24-hour meat ball of Las Vegas. Danny once again showed his quality as with sweaty palms all around, we drove on to the long exit/entrance ramp that surrounds Las Vegas. Traffic merged and exited on both sides of the highway; cars, puffy escalades and semis wove through at 100 kph, crossing three of the five lanes in order to get to their exit: it was a giant and deadly game of Tetris.

If another racing game is ever made, it should be “Home Run: Las Vegas 5:10”. The only possibly good thing about rush hour would be that the cars would have to move a lot slower. Maybe. And I imagine the late night Las Vegas spaghetti bowl is often peppered with fresh corpses ground to bleeding bits in high impact collisions. Maybe I say this because I watch too much TV, or maybe I’ve seen too many car accidents, or maybe that is just about right. With the splatter factor high, why hasn’t the gaming industry gone there yet? And America is the land of highways and guns as well, so there's another winning combination just waiting to be exploited.

Our next but very different hurtle was the Hoover Dam. We had arrived in Las Vegas on December 31st, and while we were on our way out of Sin Central that very night, everyone else and their dog was heading in, determined to break their resolutions before they made them. It took three hours for us to wind our way over the dam and back on to a freeway. From the number of vehicles stuck bumper to bumper, it looked like there were going to be an ocean of folks ringing in the new year in the middle of the Hoover Dam.
Once we were out of Nevada and out of the storm of snow and cars, we had only the not so stinky town of Ajo and the Organ Pipe National Monument to go, and then we were in to Sonoita, Mexico. Felicitously, we had acquired an informative second-hand placemat in Pendleton that mapped out all the cactuses for us.

The border into Mexico was as highly porous as reputed; we had to hunt down a border guard to fill out our visitors’ visas and stamp our passports. After this, we were truly in Mexico, and the bilingualism that had started in Washington state became steadily more Spanish.

Like Nevada, the earth was dry, and dust was plentiful. Every roadside thing was covered with the stuff, the desiccated dead, the skin, eyelashes, and bellybutton lint of Mexico settled and unsettled itself in great gusts of air. The dead were still in motion, animated by the wind and living in among all of life. Here, the living silt looked different, throwing the sun’s light back to us.

The further we drove from the border, the more lustrous the dirt. Along the roads saguaro cactuses sprung straight up from their rocky beds and waved their crooked arms. In the fields, chiles and sandias pulsed at each green extremity. And everywhere the air moved the earth, reflected light spun and shone.

Even in the mountains away from the open plains the stuff was everywhere. It filtered in between the thick trees, bringing down light like tiny microscopic angels. An unnamed class of celestials, we dubbed them the Moteans. The deeper we drove, the thicker the light rained and the larger its grains until sure shapes made from recycled Mexico could be seen swimming in the light. As we reached the end of the forest, the winds grew heavier and blew away all extra travelers that had landed on our car. Only the occasional wing remained, stuck flapping and bodiless on the door, window or roof. Now the entire body of the van sparkled under its veneer of sparkling scales, our mariposa baptism.