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Stop Being a Machine

June 25, 2016 by Geoff Leave a Comment

Read this tweet today:

I truly believe the most subversive thing you can do today is spend as much of the day as possible nurturing what is not machine-like in you

— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) June 25, 2016

I think that the point, to seek the truly human things about yourself and to make them grow is key to being happy.

Many movies with machines portray them as “becoming human” when they start having feelings, emotions, or impulses.

But really, response to stimulus is precisely what we share with machines. Our impulses to eat, to feel anger, and to be hurt or offended are all good but these are no different from what we could program a machine to do or at least to emulate.

The difference is that we are not only consious of these stimuli (a feat no machine could ever match)*, we can also intend.

Underneath our actions is intention. Even the person who through no brain damage has become a zombie on the treadmill of T.V., crappy jobs, and unhealthy food has at some level intended for this to be so.

What makes us different from machines is that we can intend which means that we can reason (even machines only reason when they’re told to), we can create, and we can imagine.

So to be less machine-like in your life would seem to center around what you intend. As a consequence creating and reasoning make you distinctively non-mechanistic because they can only be done through choice.

 

 

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  • When Helpful Ideas Replace Central Ideals: On Being… by Geoff

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