The Human soul - a fictional (or so we believe) object created to fill
the gap, to explain the parts of our nature which science has no
chance of explaining. It is the constant you add to your equation so
the result matches, it is the stuffing in your pie - without which,
life would be dull and with only a crust on which to live.
We live with our soul, some more than others. It makes us weak when we
are in love, it makes us strong when we are outraged. We fight battles
with our muscles, but without our soul, it would be a battle we would
soon loose. This is no spiritual journey, the above was my explanation
of the soul, the definition I will use from this point on - your
definition might be different, so much is.
Welcome to the new era of the human mind, I am not quite sure if this
is the era of more and better use of our brain, as the computer seems
to be doing all the difficult calculations. Our task in todays techno
society is to be abstract in any way possible, and still be perfect in
any other. We need to create art, theorems, poetry and hardware (for
the computers) which means we need to be creative, we need to fly out
in the same direction as autism, yet we still need to be logical and
ready to analyse every single thing that happens. Our life is chaotic -
so welcome, I hope you have enjoyed it so fare, if you haven't - then
tough luck because it doesn't seem to be changing any time soon.
"The Practical guide to Soul Removal" - kind of like a "Soul Removal
for dummies" title isn't it ? You are not removing your soul - not
deliberately anyway. We live with computers, interact with them, they
are the links between human communication. Every transaction,
telephone conversation, TV signal, practically anything except speech
one on one, passes through some manner of data manipulation machine -
this can be frightening, for several reasons.
When communicating, with each other, we use body language, the tone in
our voice gives our intentions away, our speech - the content of our
words, probably only supply 1/6 of the total information we supply
during a conversation. The last 5/6 is what ? Body language, and the
tone in our voice will probably only be 1/3 of that - the rest is
inexplicable. When talking to a person, you get a hunch about what
they mean - its not in their words, they don't show it - their voice is
monotone, so what is it ? Is it their soul ? Do we communicate partly
with our soul, is that what makes us special from the primates, that
we are self concerned and that we rely, not only on a language, but
also on this self consciousness in order to communicate fully ?
Some might argue for or against this, but lets say its true - can
computers transfer our soul via wires ? Is our soul digitize-able ? Can
we be converted to 0's and 1's ? I think most people will agree that
this is almost impossible, so what is the loss ? When our
conversations are sent via computers, what is lost in the process ?
Besides the obvious frequencies we cant hear, wave lengths we don't
sense, our soul might be lost in the process too. A telephone
conversation is never the same as talking in person - and even with
the aid of a video phone, it is even more awkward to talk together -
even though perhaps 4/5 of the conversation information is passed to
us, body language, words, tone of the voice (if it were a loss less
compression), but still - it seems as if the last 1/5 is the most
important part - our soul never follows us through the wires ?
Perhaps the fact that our soul stays behind, is what fascinates
people, and perhaps it is the reason why more and more people use
e-mail to communicate, and not letters (where you have yet another
factor - the handwriting), or why they call and don't talk together in
person when it is possible to do so. We are afraid to show our soul,
we wish to hide it as our own private property. Is the world so open
that we feel the only part of us still 100% private is our soul, or
are we captives of the modern age, unable to express our feelings
correctly. Of course, we can express feelings, but are they ours, and
are they what our soul really feels ? If we were able to emancipate
ourselves and talk the truth, would it be lost [the truth] during
transmission?
Perhaps the world is more dangerous than we think, imagine a body
captured in the world of computers and the Internet, without a soul to
guide it - no wonder some are frustrated. The body is our vessel, the
soul is our sail - we are stranded without it, but we sink without.
By: Kristian Frederiksen (zwanderer). Black box issue #12