interesting...

[juldea]

Well there's no bruise on my lip, although it sure feels like there should be one from my banging myself in the face with my bass guitar. Oh well, at least now only I (and all of my faithful readers) will know that I'm a dumbass.

I had a really interesting dream last night. The interesting part was where goldbug and I were trying to convince a... robot? why it was okay to destroy some things (burning a block of wood, crumpling up a piece of paper) but not others (other people, animals). It wasn't quite that distinction, because I remember goldbug's argument (she tried the convincing first) was that the other things weren't real. I was real, and goldbug was real, and the robot was real, but a toothpick isn't and a file on your computer isn't. When that didn't convince the robot (actually, the robot didn't understand it - it couldn't see the difference between real and not-real), I tried. My argument went something like this (with these two exact examples):

I have this black coat from the mall that I got recently. It's a nice coat, and I like it. It has some qualities - black, soft, fuzzy, long, 3 buttons, etc. But, if for some reason, my coat were destroyed, I wouldn't be devestated. And if I wanted to, I could get another coat, just like it. A coat that was still black, soft, fuzzy, long, and with 3 buttons, from the exact same manufacturer.

As well as the coat, I have Pixel. Pixel is nice and I like her. :) Pixel has qualities - she's small, white with grey/brown/black stripes, and covered with soft fur. But she doesn't just have physical qualities, she has emotional ones too - she's bitchy, and hungry at night, and affectionate in the morning, and likes to have her head stroked. If something would happen to Pixel, I couldn't go to someone and get an exact copy of her made. Even if I could manipulate cat genes to get a cat that LOOKED like her, the personality wouldn't necessarily be Pixel. Pixel isn't handmade, and that's why she's special.

Maybe I'm saying something that will throw me into a big loop of hypocrisy with some other things I've said about nature/role of man, but I think what my dream was trying to tell me was that the most special things are those that aren't handmade - that happen just because. The pattern of the clouds in the sky, how jason's got dark hair but if he grows a goatee it has flecks of red in it, the night sky when you're out in the middle of nowhere... and Pixel and Matrix.

Comments

[goldbug.livejournal.com]

i think maybe you should say "human-made" or something like that instead of "handmade", since most of the things that humans create aren't done (directly) by hand, and "handmade" indicates a kind of craftmanship that is rare these days, and perhaps more precious than machine-made goods.

Re:

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Well, that was the understanding. Although I think handmade works well enough - if I make a pair of pants for Robert, and he tears them up, then assumedly I would have the power to make an identical pair for him.

[ex-dervish821.livejournal.com]

but if you bought a new dress that looked just like your white-with-black-roses dress, it wouldn't be an exact replacement, would it?

Re:

[juldea.livejournal.com]

It would be if I bought it from the same company! I mean, close enough. Maybe a flower or two would be in a different place or something.