October 29, 2007
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What makes every human a unique person? I’m sure that there are many different answers that will satisfy different people, and I think the commenters from last post all give good responses. It’s an interesting question because virtually everyone assumes that they are in some way fundamentally different from everyone else. But why is that so?
One reason you are ultimately separated from being even remotely like any other person is that no one has ever lived your specific life. This was the point missdebster made quite well. The fact is, when you wake up tomorrow, you will be living a day that no one in humanity has ever seen before, in the context of your own current thoughts, and with a past few days and mood that no one else has ever had. You will have conversations with people that no one else has ever had. Every view you have as you look around you will be completely unexperienced by any other person ever. Nearly every aspect of your daily life, your thoughts, words, views, and moods, framed within your personal story and history, is utterly unique. Actually, the more thought I give it, the more unique everyone’s life seems to be. All the words, facial expressions, and every intricate detail of every given day makes it an illusion that life is ever the same as it was before.
But this perhaps only treats one side of the problem. Establishing that every human life is different because of their subjective circumstances doesn’t in fact establish that every human has a unique essence that no one else has ever had.
My friend Matt answered the problem like this: in medieval theology there is a hierarchy of beings that ranks the intelligibility of things. From lowest intelligibility to highest it runs like this: inanimate objects, plants, animals, humans, angels, God.
Another word for intelligibility is ‘knowability.’ So the idea is that the higher you go in the hierarchy the more there is to know about that thing. And of course this makes perfect sense; how much do you, or can you, even know another person? No person is really ever known in their entirety by another person. No matter how well you know someone, there is always at least just a little bit left to know or understand. And that little bit never decreases in amount, which is truly the essence of every person being an individual. In one lifetime, you may perhaps come to know one other person extremely well, but you will only approach truly knowing who they are as a limit.
Recently I had been thinking about how severe the limits to knowing other people are anyway. Friday night I slept for sixteen hours, and during this slumber I dreamt. But to say I merely dreamt is inaccurate; it seemed like I spent years and years away in a world ruled by different physical and social laws because of how strange it was, and then woke up and was revisiting our planet by doing so. How can anyone else ever really know or visualize what I am talking about? Whenever I have extravegantly unexplainable dreams, I always wake up and think, “Dang. And no one else will ever really know.”
Saturday night my friend Alex and I went to see the symphony. I realized while we were waiting for the show to begin, perhaps listening to a symphony is like getting a glimpse into the composer’s mind, and that maybe a symphony is the best representation for what sort of thing goes on in any person’s mind. All day swarming thoughts and moods form a unique sounding symphony, and no two minds are playing the same song.
Ok enough of these posts, I mean you’re unique and blah blah blah. We all knew it anyways.
Comments (4)
i like the reference to limits. it makes me think of calculus.
didn’t you write before about how we cannot express everything in our minds, how we are all individuals in that way? it was interesting, but i don’t remember all of what you said about it.
But it’s what we all know anyways that we always forget! That’s why we sometimes need to look at the ordinary from someone elses perspective besides our own, to remind us of the great things we already know but have become habituated to.
Yeah evryones unique but God is comon to all of us. We all react to Him in ither rejection or love.
Another interesting thought is that God is the only one that trully knows us all. He created us and He planed our lives. He knows us better than we know ourselves.
What do you think about that?
Oh and another thing. I don’t think God would laph at you as if He didnt expect you to make silly choices in life. If He knows you He understands you. And maybe He might chukle but I asume only if you chukle about something trully funny.