what if we're the lucky ones

73.1 years is the last statistic for life expectancy according to the World Health Organization it's probably not completely accurate regardless of the accuracy of the assessment that is the general time frame of a human life at the time I'm living in historically there's always been rough estimates and observations recorded by Scholars and historians but these were not systematic or widely reliable as they are now and while a majority of History has a lot of missing data or unrecorded events my time has endless data and almost every single major or minor event is captured and sort

of a fzed through the commentary and frequent repeated retellings of it that's not to say we've advanced in the information itself for example I was told all throughout my childhood that we're going to face a population crisis now as an adult we are facing a birthing crisis it's more so that we have the tools to see almost any information we want to if we want to I'd give examples but you know exactly what I mean what comes with this is the everpresent opportunity to see things you would likely be better off without knowing how hot

dogs are made how much plastic is found in the food we eat the truth behind quote unquote natural flavors but also things regarding mortality I can read one of the most common killers in my time I can read ahead and see how we're all likely going to die I can see what is likely going to be my death this knowledge I view as a curse I don't want it I don't want to know about it I don't even want to know that I can know about it because I think there is some knowledge the human

mind was not supposed to adjust to or not equipped to deal with it's like seeing spoilers for a book you're enjoying except it's not a book it's your life and then you have to carry the spoilers around until you live them out and it doesn't just have to be mortality I remember distinctly being in class one day discussing artificial intelligence and I thought in the future whether it would become normal in day-to-day life and wondered whether I would think about this very moment of introspection of that future while living it out it was weird it

felt out of time it felt surreal in a way that hasn't been written about yet I slowly saw that future happen and now it's just normal and now I think about that moment a lot and I wonder whether I will feel that way on my deathbed looking back at this moment of introspection about my death I don't want to get the idea across before I present my idea that I in any way romanticize nature or love it or think that it's some sort of inherent good that we serve nature is cruel vicious beautiful and chaotic

it is cyclical but changing harmonious but disruptive it is a living contradiction that somehow all fits together it is not something I adore or admire or hate or despise it's more complex than that and our Collective response is more complex as well most of routine modern life is about ignoring our in nature for better or worse and choosing to be better than it our natural inclination is towards high calorie foods rich in sugars and fats which were historically scarce and valuable however Modern Life often requires us to consciously choose healthier options and Portion Control to

maintain health and prevent diseases like obesity and diabetes rather than getting mad at things that upset us we've learned emotional regulation to control ourselves when faced with obstacles moving beyond that most of our history is about changing the environment around us in supposedly unnatural ways to be more beneficial to towards us all settlements transportation and surveillance has been done to navigate and build off nature nature is something we put up with wrestle with admire and change we have to become harmonious with it despite the unharmonious world we inhabit we don't hide from nature or ignore

it it's just we selectively choose to ignore certain parts of it or focus on others when most people think of the word nature it's lush green fields and forests loud animals and sabanas but probably not harsh wind storms forest fires and animalon animal savagery the lust and hunger that forces nature to rip itself apart so that it can rebuild the type of savagery that we only accept because it's natural it's nature in my country of Australia there's a lot of beautiful wildlife and because I live pretty much on the edge of a forest I see

a lot of it particularly Birds one of the most prominent being cockus and from a young age I observed that they traveled in flocks or like a family honestly behaviorally they Mir us in a lot of different ways cockus made for their entire lives with just one partner they stay in tight-knit groups they are highly social they can dance and how long do katus live on average 60 years 60 years on average spent hunting Gathering nesting and dancing 60 years where a coatu and another coatu love each other till the end I was also told

not to feed the cockus as a child and of course I fed them look at them they're just so cute I liked cockos because I felt a unique relation to them in their life their emotive behaviors despite the lines between species there's a Harmony in how we both react to the everchanging world around us in similar ways often in language when describing emotion we act as if it's a uniquely human trait or at least treat it as is such within our descriptions as if dancing and laughing and crying and empathizing is something exclusive to us

but from my childhood I always saw my own emotions in animals and it's not just that we also exclude things when we look at cruelty we describe it as inhuman as if cruelty is not a part of our nature or we are somehow above it as if it's something outside of what it means to be human and by describing cruelty as inhuman we create a psychological separation between ourselves and the cruelty PC ladies and gentlemen the smoke and the slaves now and the fam cring to the ground not quite to the Ming mass of the

humanity all the more terrifying reality is of course that it's not inhuman it is as much a part of us as everything else and by describing it as this other this Defiance to accept it as a part of ourselves I think we get a psychological reading of how Humanity perceives itself or at least likes to perceive itself we'd like to think of ourselves as above our cruelty we'd like to think of ourselves as separate from the common nature as if we are different from it Cut From a Different Cloth it's not a refusal or like

when someone won't admit that they have bad breath I think it's something deeper than that it's the opposite of fear or shame I think it's ambition and a deeply seated unprecedentedly important and untouched motivation and drive it's this desire to be more than nature not just exclude the unattractive sides of it but to be no longer wrestling with it no longer compromising with it with adjustments to be better than it exceed it the Eternal conquest of man individually and at a wider species level to be more than the conditions and instincts that Forge him and

he is limited by to transcend mere adaptation and become in control of the environment we are adapting to to shape the environment rather than be shaped by it you see this in macro ways in history from the rise through the food chain to controlling agriculture urbanization dams and Water Management to micro things we don't even think about like controlling temperature or artificial lighting early humans didn't just adapt to cold or Darkness they learn to control fire instead of growing fur we killed and shaved animals for their fur we didn't just adapt we saw unities and

took it intellectually it is seeing reality for what it could be rather than what it is this I confess is the dividing gap between me and my feathery friends they will never in their current state of evolution Reach This level of critical thinking they can't make fire they just adapt they react they feel things but they don't know why they do great dancers though I'm not saying that man- making fire was a declaration of stubbornness against nature defining him he could have just been playing with sticks and happened upon something I'm not trying to make

a mythology about Mankind right now but a wider observation can be made that throughout history man has done everything but just play the cards he's been dealt with we are not a Content animal we haven't even stuck to the same playground we blasted off the [ __ ] to see what's out there we're always reaching for something optimizing something streamlining something exploring something an existentially Restless animal why are we Restless did we have too much coffee no it's related to what I was talking about before it's this need to be in control combined with dealing

with knowledge you wish you didn't have combined with something you can't control the assumed only fact the only thing that seems as far as we know uncontrollable the weight around everyone's heads all the time in the senses in our fears in our understanding in our knowledge the race we're always going to lose the preservation of the unpreserved a large majority of art is about it most instincts try and warn against it or prevent it there is a shadow over every achievement we make it's the certainty of ending it haunts man we can conquer everything around

us we can adapt to almost every environment but we can't change our own limited time it is the ultimate thing we have to come to terms with and it does not help that its time frame is so uncertain while recording this very voice line I could have a heart attack or it could be in 50 years or it could not be a heart attack at all I just have this vague certainty that it will happen at some point in some form and that will be that and there's nothing I can do about it because Humanity

finally met its match the one thing we can't conquer our own bodies Our Own selves except maybe we can it is not a new idea to try and prevent biting the bullet but it is hard to smize what is and is in a conscious attempt at doing so within a lifespan for example there are a million micro decisions we do mostly subconsciously that are preserving ourselves and technically a conscious decision to extend our lives for longer eating healthy or eating in the first place getting water obeying and fulfilling our bodily needs like sleep and rest

psychological needs like connection and complex ones like autonomy recognition and stress-free living and there are more subconscious macro ones like not walking in in front of a speeding car that is a form of preventing the inevitable that we usually don't even think about because our instincts are backseat driving us to not even really properly consider them prolonging life is a weird concept to write about because almost everything we do is prolonging life it's more obvious when it's a negative unhealthy lifestyle that's actively shortening in like a bad diet or smoking or excessively drinking alcohol living

in isolation not getting enough sleep suffering mentally and not trying to get help or improve your situation which will if not treated sometimes in a very minor way slowly kill us shaving off time we could have then there is the societal conscious effort to prolong life through infrastructure and Facilities medicine Water Systems housing human rights laws of safety and many ethical systems I really dislike doing summary sections I have to get through to lead to my actual point but making infrastructure to prolong life is getting closer to the real meat and potatoes of what I'm

going to talk about because it is building off our instincts rather than just listening to them accommodating them through complex systems to the point where they become fulfilled without the expectancy that they won't and many changes that we sort of take for granted like plumbing and accessibility to food and water took centuries of planning and trying different systems and sadly are still only developed in certain parts of the world and as another part we are constantly optimizing through these Collective efforts over time we slowly started pushing the expectancy of the average person's lifespan higher and

higher it varies country to Country year to year but for most of the general data in the 1700s it was close to 35 years give or take and now in most developed countries it's above 50 and with proper care the average a person could probably have a good 70 years of existence a lot of this data is skewed because infant mortality rates were so high in the past for example while the overall average life expectancy was around 35 years the high infant mortality rate greatly pulled the average down if you survive childhood you could typically

live much longer those who made it past Early Childhood often lived well beyond 35 child mortality rates really did not fluctuate much before the 19th and 20th Century from society to society so it can lead to this overall precedent that mortality was much higher than it actually was but it also does feel incomplete to just wave it away as a child mortality issue life expectancy has gotten better generally across every age group not just child mortality as our care has gotten better records are constantly being broken year to year and while yes all of the

achievements are wonderful and we're trying slowly to make life a more consistent and safe experience there is still that glass ceiling that vague understanding that no matter what we do we are ruled by our failing body and what we're really doing is really efficient ways to prolong what is inevitable we are slowly dying animals just trying to live a little longer wishing for ideals we intellectually know we probably can't reach there have been so many tales and characters and stories in history to do with immortality to overcome that ceiling and limitation Gilgamesh the Chinese a

Immortals the story of the elixir of Life a promise of an afterlife from various religions it Comforts some leaves others With Envy others don't try and bother themselves with it personally I don't think we will get to that mythical ideal of immortality at least not anywhere near this lifetime that is not what I'm going to talk about living indefinitely however that sounds much more more plausible you can still die at any point quite easily but there's no real limit on your lifespan as science gets better and more advanced and we start doing things like Gene

sequencing cell manipulation and synthetic biology nerve regeneration and a bunch of other terms that we can both pretend we understand fully the bottom line is previously limiting things about the human condition won't be limited anymore this may sound like science fiction but the process has already begun to very mixed and strange results quite literally making an organism younger by reversing the age of cells now these are incredibly uncharted waters to make a predic or an assertion that we know how this is going to play out would be kind of egregious we don't know the real

bottleneck on this the new limit or how it'll affects human biology this is very very early days but with that said we could be at the very beginning of a new type of Revolution and a new type of defiance against Nature's Playbook maybe we don't have to go maybe Humanity gets another trick up their sleeve to rebel against its conditions but is this actually something we would want now from a first glance that may seem like a silly question I just did this whole introduction talking about how human man's biggest enemy is mortality and life

expectancy and now I'm questioning it but this is different than just plumbing and eating healthy and quitting a bad diet even more complex forms of medicine like vaccines or organ transplants don't even come anything close to the amount of control we could be potentially about to tap into this could be a whole rewriting of how people view the end the way in which people consolidate and make peace with death has always fascinated me the primary way I've observed personally in the people around me is it's kind of like this AAS quote live a good life

if there are gods and they are just then they will not care how devout you have been but will welcome you based on the virtues you've lived by if there are Gods but unjust then you should not want to worship them if there are no Gods then you will be gone but you lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones why curse yourself with endless existential questions that don't solve anything and leads to an inherent dissatisfaction when there's no answer a lot of the big questions have driven some

of the most intelligent people mad you could let the curse of knowledge IM mortality and the cruelty of Nature and man weigh down on you or you can carry that weight and realize you're stronger than it you don't need to carry it just live the best life you possibly can so that when your time does come you can make peace with yourself with how you have lived but there's another one I have observed in mass as well it's this sort of quiet bitterness desperation and underlying frustration or dissatisfaction with the whole Grand narrative it's honestly

strangely similar to me to the sort of Bittersweet acceptance that a lot of people come to when they lose in a competitive game of sport and then they say good game when the match is over you say a good game but deep down you don't want to say a good game because you didn't win then it would be a good game it's acceptance it's Noble but it's not the preferred outcome you wanted to win you didn't now you have to make peace with the fact because what else is there to do but be courteous life

goes on but in this shitty analogy what happens when we win what comes after The Rush of achieving something as Monumental as overcoming the fixed inevitable will that sort of bitterness end or become exasperated how does one navigate an indefinite eternity with death still just one step away but not guaranteed in any near future if I was gasping my last breaths and knew deep down that they were my L the mundane life I've spent my entire life hating would suddenly seem so beautiful in a way I never noticed before I would kiss the traffic lights

I would usually curse at Those unskipable ads you get would suddenly be super captivating rather than annoying the scammer who's trying and completely failing to convince me that I've inherited a million dollars would suddenly be incredibly Charming the ache in my back the Pang of jealousy the stubbing of a toe would be a blessing because it reminds me I'm alive every bitterness every regret would be overwhelmed with this beautiful melancholic gratitude that I got to have that regret that I got to have that bitterness and that's not even mentioning the good parts to see really

beautiful art and have it cut through the cynicism and the awareness that boardrooms and rewrites and deadlines were done just to make you feel that way and it touches you so deeply it somehow feels more real than the life surrounding you to be truly understood by someone even if it's just for a second and feel an intimacy more deep than sex or love or passionate hatred because it is deeper than that it's the intimacy of being understood that morning you got up and did a workout and it felt awful would feel amazing every menial experience

that we pass off would be like a reminder a beautiful hangover an energetic sugar crash without the percussion of bombs accompanying the hillsides the hillsides can often seem like blank canvases we Overlook but amidst Hellfire they look like Nature's expansive masterpieces in Winter and storms the sun seems like a dreamlike aition that we all just collectively hallucinated in summer an obstruction that hurts the skin but to get sunburnt at all in this state would be the deepest honor bestowed upon you because you still have skin to get burnt the mundanity of day in day out

typical Suburban life seems like like the most cruel spiritual death but in closing the most joyful exhilarating and beautiful thing the utter privilege it is to have something or someone to lose in the first place to care enough to hate someone or something to love someone enough to feel grief God what a beautiful thing to love someone so much that it hurts to lose them so fragile so pure so real in their absence the small talk of ones we love that we do on almost autopilot becomes like the most gorgeous monologue ever written and I'd

remember them all every conversation we had and in those last moments I would get struck with thoughts that are so soulc crushingly depressing you're almost glad you never get to share them that last date where you didn't know it was going to be your last time together everything you didn't say when you wanted to all those things you started but never finished that you're just now remembering those really quiet days when nothing happened those really loud ones where everything happened all those people you haven't seen in so long that you won't ever see again people

fixate in culture about last words but it's so often individualistic and tied to my last words or the last sentence anyone will ever hear me say but really there's almost a thousand last words we have we just don't realize it we're not conscious that this is my last impact on a person every person I've ever met would have their own last words with me not to mention as a creative my work would outlive me maybe somebody from the future who's never met me before will stumble in a video or a song of mine and get

a brief understanding of who I am from the way I talk or write to them these little time captures that's my last words for those last seconds it's my private movie theater of every thought action moment and dream I've ever passed or had every introspection every perverted thought every sin and I'd forgive myself and hate myself and love myself endlessly like a tape recorder and repeat and for that single second it would be so spiritual and so personal that would override whatever emotion or neurochemical process happening in my synapses it wouldn't even feel real because

it would be that beautiful it would be a revelation not of the mind or ideas or belief but in spirit and for that last second I truly would be an idiot and narcissist for thinking I could ever describe it if I ever could if anyone ever could and then Oblivion when you jump in the cold water and your body reacts there's something more jolting and terrifying than the icy stion and that's emotionally feeling nothing from it you don't get the endorphin rush you don't get that feeling of I did it you get a stark feeling

of why did I do that and that's the killer numbness you get nothing out of numbness it's so unlike every other experience pain while agonizing still reminds you of a connection to the body to emotion to the self happiness while fleeting reminds us of why we're alive what we continue to go on for numbness gives nothing both in lesson and sensation it disconnects from the body it doesn't give the mercy of being it's just a vacuum or emot should be it strips away the very essence of feeling alive why am I talking about numbness because

I was just talking about longing for what we can't have and I think if we could have what we long for I think we would be numb I think the bitterness wouldn't have a Melancholy I think the scammer would just be annoying I think we would rip out the traffic lights we would usually curse at who cares there are birds who mate for life something Perpetual like indefinite life would make that which is not Perpetual the momentary seems small in comparison I think as time would go on we wouldn't be grateful how many pools can

you jump into before you become become desensitized to it before the jolt of ice becomes kind of predictable what happens when you've read most books or rather you understand them as you read them you've read so much that the ideas they present or the characters or the plot become stale intellectually and emotionally even Niche or esoteric knowledge once broken down it's all just remixes of the same common ideas what happens when you read Lovecraft and the Indescribable horror he wrote about becomes just the very opposite describable his dramatic effect becomes kind of mundane because you've

already thought about it the curse of knowledge has now become something not just achieved by a high level of intellect and not unfortunate circumstance of the time you were born in but a genetic Birthright to carry this weight it's an inevitability there's no sense of Merit to this or some sense of being more intelligent it's just a fact that through living indefinitely you will become more knowledgeable than any previous generation instead of you only live once it becomes you only die once you just live and live and live and live and live indefinitely instead of

existential Horrors that weigh on our minds like dying before your prime or dying alone or coping with the loss of loved ones it becomes about things like Legacy and finality and perception what the pH would look like you know how we cater every bit of Our Lives to make ourselves seem in control of it through things like profiles and resumes and banquets and small talk and selft talk and grinds sets and mindsets and astrology and philosophy and Math Science History and unraveling the mystery it all started with a big bang once Death Becomes something we

can control rather than an inevitability we accept you bet you're customizable to your preference ass that we're going to personalize it death parties loving someone so much that you want to die together at the same time that's already a thing actually you fall in love with so many different people you meet so many different people you truly feel like a different person in every few decades because you're constantly learning new things new year new me try new century new me that old quote you can't teach an old dog new tricks well what if you never

become the old dog mentally and physically every insecurity you've ever had about your body you can fix it rather than the body being a Templar becomes like a car or a computer constantly customizable as much as abstract things like identity all the quotes and phrases that tie to death and most of philosophy becomes kind of like a window to the Past a spectacle to look at for wandering eyes wondering how we coped living knowing day by day that it could just end from thoughts are interrupted because you've had them before 700 times your dreams are

just memories your memories feel like dreams because they're so long ago feels impossible to remember every day or Journal is like a new book to read every few decades because there's too much that happens you forget a lot of it you speak to some friends so much that you've repeated the same topics over and over again like an inside joke that's worn itself out when watching the endless commentary on the endless content we watch endlessly as our lives slowly end it wouldn't have that nagging what am I doing with my life feeling because you have

so much Life to Live every TV show in existence is on your binge list imagine feeling isolated in your own mortality in the same vein Millennials and genen Z have I should have figured out my life by now you have this weird feeling of you know I really should have died by now reaching the age your parents died and then doubling it I'm sure through doing this we've adjusted our neurochemistry somehow so that this Perpetual cycle isn't somehow Soul breaking the hedonistic treadmill has changed now it has some rocket boosters some refreshments as you jog

it also has no time limit now this allows you to reach pits of Despair that just weren't possible yet the really traumatic moments stand out like a sore thumb even more so than before you remember all your heartbreaks and you dream about them sometimes it's like you're living that part of your life again and you feel a sense of accomplishment and true inner peace that no one yet blissfully felt doing a backflip on your 100th birthday like you're in your 20s because from a physical standpoint you pretty much are 20 seeing your great great great

grandkids developing centrally lasting bonds with people you plant seeds and live long enough to see them grow old and be in their shade but you don't grow old with them it's not that you feel less human as I surmised on a different occasion it's that you feel differently human because the entire definition of what is human has changed fundamentally from this comes so many different questions a man should really never dare ask one is it really the point of life to indefinitely live is that what we've always really been driving for two if someone chose

to opt out at age 500 is that even considered taking yourself out anymore or is that just I don't know I had a good run bye guys three did I waste a large portion of my life making a video that essentially boils down to life isn't as fun on creative mode maybe we shall see and four could we as a species begin to feel envious of those who came before us not in an aesthetic way or an emo I was born in the wrong generation way but in a spiritual or intellectual way could we miss

primitiveness could we miss wandering without endless knowledge could we miss not knowing a spiritual Envy at the more authentic and seemingly more simple human life at an earlier time of creation similar to how a Marxist talks about the means of production we could talk about the spiritual means of One's Own perfected and automated body and how they feel robbed of true nature in all of its chaos and Beauty even right now I already mentioned I feel slightly envious of cockus their Simplicity in emotions and lifestyle and in a societal context I honestly feel envious of

explorers and ancient thinkers who got to actually discover things for the first time when dayart has an existential crisis and questions everything about the nature of reality he's called a genius the lucky [ __ ] but when I do it it's almost boring and cliche because everyone has already asked the big questions and explored all the major landmarks and you're just left in indefinite monologue as the middle child in history after we conquered nature and explored it but just before we fundamentally changed nature and went beyond it I'm aware this video may seem to flip-flop

between praising the natural in conjunction with the idea of progress and then demonizing it the next minute viewing future medicine as a fix for the inevitable or some form of postmodern salvation but in my defense I think that's exactly what the future of this conversation is going to look like recognizing how cruel how awful or to put it more plainly what the flying [ __ ] but also recognizing maybe perfecting the body and environment until everything is comfortable will ruin the utter Essence that drives in the first place this is a strange comparison but I

couldn't stop thinking about it while riding growing up I was the youngest in my pretty big family so I got all the hand-me-down stuff all the clothes all the technology and my favorite all the games which was great because I could bypass a lot of restrictions other kids would have with parental ratings and limited access to what they could watch or play I never had to actually beg my parents to get most games because chances were we already had it in our collection because my brothers had already begged my parents for them I could play

a lot of games I otherwise wouldn't I just rummaged around as a kid picking up random discs in our family's collection and seeing whatever the game was this varied in quality from Mario Kart to Lego Star Wars to titles I never would have tried had I not stumbled upon them like excom or Darwin which I'm very grateful for it was like a slot machine every time seeing what game I got and I loved it the most special moment was discovering Skyrim for the first time seven-year-old me playing Skyrim no internet barely any life experience probably

shouldn't be playing skym at that time but oh my God I have so many distinct memories of coming across different landmarks and Vistas and that beautiful soundtrack kicking in and truly feeling something Beyond myself I couldn't articulate it then but it just made me believe in something beyond the life I was living beyond my understanding of what life is for some it's nania or Lord of the Rings or Warhammer but it's that first taste of fantasy that makes you truly believe you're somewhere else or you're experiencing something else there's something out there waiting to be

discovered if only you went out searching for it and I genuinely think ever since that game came into my life at just the right moment I've been chasing that in so many games and pieces of art after it and it disappoints me almost every time it even slowly failed and Scar him the sort of magic wore away when I got older because I slowly saw cracks in the game story and gameplay Loop it became an immersive experience and more a roller coaster ride of predictable things I've seen it became an anomaly to be surprised rather

than an expectancy because everything about the game became an expectancy and yet I restart Skyrim like every 2 years knowing this deep down I don't actually want to play Skyrim again I want to have that feeling of playing Skyrim again I don't actually want to feel Nostalgia I want to feel the Wonder and the sinking feeling that produces Nostalgia is that I know I can't get that back I want to jump in the cold water and I want to feel that satisfaction of having pushed myself to do something uncomfortable afterwards I don't want to feel

the numbness of asking myself why I need to push myself this is going to sound for a lack of a better word hippie dippy but there's this psychological concept and state known as being institutionalized it's when prison inmates who for a long duration of being incarcerated feel bonded and attached to their prison they feel that life outside the prison can't provide a feeling of comfort like the prison does the prison itself could be abusive torturous or isolating but they will stick with it because after such a long time with it it's all they know if

you thought I made a bold assertion last time I'll wait till you hear this one could humanity and man have been institutionalized by reality itself or rather the reality and body you grew into we just accept Nature's cruelty because it's so innate to us if we actually looked around and processed without the idea of normaly all of its brutality we would be actively horrified this would not just be a gutter or reaction like when we see a dead bird on a walk or an animal eating another or seeing someone we care about slowly lose themselves

with cancer or dementia and get briefly reminded on how awful life can be and then just continuing on passively enduring it because this is how it is this is all it is is this is how it is always going to be always feeling intelligent enough to picture a better world but never intelligent enough to achieve it and left with this vague soup of worries and NeverEnding unresolved feelings of maybe this is it but this isn't how it should be What If instead of that or stoically accepting death or making peace with it we rebelled against

it we don't accept the natural we decide to be better than the Fate which binds us to do this we need to start writing philosophy that goes beyond the conception of what our limits are if we really are to do this we need to start viewing Humanity as a question mark rather than a definitive full stop so essentially going with this silly metaphor we've started to see the cracks in the game design of life and we've just discovered we can add in mods have you ever heard someone talk about something and they say something really

profound but they keep talking and eventually they lose the plot of what they were saying but what they were originally talking about was so good and intriguing they keep trying to Circle back but they keep failing to capture that same magic I feel like that emotionally sometimes similar to how we listen to romantic music to relate to the feeling of Love or sad sentimental music to feel comforted in the Blues intellectually and spiritually I try to find something that can relate to how I feel about this dawning era of Rapid change to humanity itself and

I am left much like everything in this time in complete disarray and Confused how we got here we're all aware of these feelings but we're looking for someone to accurately express it that combination of words that give that understanding and Clarity at least a crumb of it I think the most intelligent thing I've written about the modern era is the methods of adaptation we Implement are quickly being made obsolete by how fast the technology we are adapting to changes they become outdated almost as soon soon as they're established this Perpetual state of flux leads to

feelings of existential disorientation when we're kids we view teenagers as so much more mature and then we become teenagers and we view adults the same way then we become adults and realize oh [ __ ] everyone's just winging it I had a similar Revelation with a lot of the writers thinkers and speakers I grew up admiring when I tried looking for some sort of answer to transhumanism mortality and uncertain Futures no matter how much I read or studied they never really comforted me and this very particular dread never really got explained in words and I

love love philosophy the Thousand-Year dick measuring contest of who had the hardest bar but hearing centuries old dead people have similar existential crises to me except it's in a more intellectual way doesn't fulfill me like it used to it was much better learning about it in my early teenage years because I was coming to terms with who I am and how to deal with being and meeting the relatable day-to-day challenges it's not as good for future answers and dealing with things to do with an uncertain future and also much like my Skyrim analogy it felt

so much more fulfilling when I first started reading when I first was reading the discourses when I first traced back lines of thinkers history and saw how they all influenced each other when I first majorly read up on theology when it wasn't just repeated lines of thinking you've already thought or read about as a student I would read every philosophy book I could get my hands on and I had a slow burn realization that honestly hurt me more than the idea of dying that some people some incredibly intelligent genius people everyone I looked up to

never truly came to terms with it either and they're just like I am just a lot better at writing about it the fact that great think is also grappled with the same fears without resolving them went from being a comforting shared experience to an Indescribable source of disappointment I jumped from book to book philosophy to philosophy this subtle lie I didn't even realize I was telling myself that if I read enough studied enough if I threw myself into different lines of thinking it might provide a final answer or Solace and it never did and really

I just got a bunch of badass onliners I know now it's the dread I felt watching my dog get euthanized in front of me when I was 13 understanding that this is better than her continuing living in pain but the logic not in any way consolidating me I didn't want to hear the scientific explanation I didn't want to hear that she was in a better place I didn't want to hear that I might see her in the afterlife I just wanted to be with her again and I couldn't and nothing could could Soul me if

I was to be vulnerable for a second I think that's what I'm always driving for as a writer I want to write something so comforting that no matter what despair or grief someone's going through they feel comforted that's what I've always wanted my expression being so powerful it divides the context of its perception I'll never get there but without that goal in mind when I start to write I never get anywhere my instincts are primitive my environment is alien and my surrounding Landscapes are still so beautiful I feel like the middle child of history in

more ways than one I'm aware it may seem hypocritical to talk about Nostalgia and use products and especially media to talk about Nostalgia when I'm the guy who ranted for an hour about how media is alienating us from our own Humanity but it's often missed out on how culturally generations and even Empires and societies are widely remembered for their Aesthetics more than how they lived when people think of ancient Egypt they often imagined pyramids pharaohs and hieroglyphs the grand symbols of the civilization but few people consider the daily lives of ordinary Egyptians Farmers Craftsmen or

Merchants who lived beside the Nile the focus is often on the Monumental and the mystical rather than the mundane does anybody aside from history Buffs remember the daily life of an average Roman no do people remember the Spartans yes how many people remember the Battle of thop is 300 because of the movie 300 the iconography begins mattering a lot more than the actual reality what do I remember about being seven sure as [ __ ] not all of the random events I was forced to attend to because nobody could babysit me it was sky room

and playing with Legos and having my first crush what I remember about school everything that wasn't the daily ritual I remember when a teacher accidentally threw a clock at a student's head I remember wondering whether I was going to remember remembering this I remember thinking a lot of this was outdated and needed to rework what do I remember about making these videos it's definitely not the sleepless nights of trying to come up with one sentence those little edits that probably no one will see wondering what the hell I'm doing whether this line Works whether this

part is going on too long it all blurs together but what I do remember is that single satisfying feeling at the end when I can look at my work and say I'm finished it's that one little compliment saying that I in one small way made them think or look at something differently or I made them feel something that's what I remember I can demonize it all I want Humanity in this age will be remembered for our media and Technology The Human Experience has become transhuman and we're just the very beginning of that personally I feel

isolated and out of time I feel promised a life I'll never live it's strange my entire childhood is built on a system that's about to change my biology itself is likely going to change at a rapid rate with no way to slow down or no goal or guide post inside with have you ever heard of the ship of thesias it's a thought experiment which questions authenticity and categorization essentially it asks if a ship is running away and the pots are replaced over time to keep up appearances and hold shape is it still the ship of

Theus if every single part of the original ship is slowly replaced until none are left is it really the ship of Theus or an entirely new ship that's just identical to the previous one it has a paradoxical nature about it if you agree that it's entirely new ship well when did it become that and stopping the shipus when the First new wooden plank was placed or when the last original was replaced or is it more of a general idea that okay at a certain point it's no longer the ship athus if you wanted to be

incredibly decisive and frankly nerdy about it you could even surmise that there is a constant change happening in every object second to Second through environmental effects an Ever constant hard to notice but everpresent butterfly effect the constant erosion and change of everything is microscopic and slow to observe the effect of but it is still there is the wear and tear through weather not fundamentally changing the ship of Theus sure it's not as noticeable as replacing the planks but it is changing it my point is the ship of thesis when it was first constructed is different

to the end of its first voyage not to mention its last regardless of the potential replacement the little scratches the harsh Wings the sea pushing and pulling against the boat endlessly on Loop over time the boat forms a new identity through scars and damages it's not a different boat it's just a different ship with thesis if you wanted to be more loose with it which is the typical response of the thought experiment you could say that it's the ship and res res Lance that makes the ship of thesis the ship of thesis as long as

it has the same material is called the ship of thesis and captures its shape by all intent and purposes it's the ship of thesias again the iconography begins mattering a lot more than the actual reality I think this Paradox is a good Gander into the future conversations of transhumanism does the actual shape we take matter if the memory and Consciousness is still there if I'm just a brain in a box Am I Still Human if someone bit by bit replaces my body with the physical qualities that resemble my shape is is it still me I

don't think anyone would make the argument that a burn victim is less human because their skin has no fingerprints or a replacement heart or a prosthetic leg but similarly to the ship of Theus at what point do you stop being human at what point do you stop being human at what point does the ship of Theus stopping the ship athus is Being Human just an aesthetic is being me just an aesthetic am I just an outline that can be copied or broken down if the theory of evolution is correct then I don't think definitions in

the way I've been presenting them are really accurate at all we are ever changing ever undefined beings there are commonalities within us and a shared net of traits DNA instincts and genetics but humanity is a question mark rather than a definitive full stop there is a constant change happening to us similar to the scratches and scars of a ship at Sea except now we're making it more apparent by replacing the ship not just polishing the woodwork with Fitness schedules diets and skincare routines we're going to manipulate Gene Expressions enhance neurochemical Effects by controlling them through

a brain computer interface fully replace limbs prolong the inevitable end not just seeing doctors as we would see a ship R but actively becoming ever presently aware of what's going on in our bodies with real-time statistics how much sleep did I get last night what's my blood pressure how many steps did I take today what's my heart rate like if my voice speaking presently was a reenactment Dum by an AI would it even matter after a point if it resembles my shape just like the ship of thesis hits all the right notes and carries my

Cadence with the authenticity of the voice carry any weight it would be the greatest ego death they can be a better you than you the fact you're not the original ceases to matter in the ears who hear it because as the thought experiment proves authenticity doesn't matter when the presentation is done authentically the gutal reaction I was talking about being grateful in the face of losing everything being indifferent at the Mony over time of losing nothing would extend to this newfound fruit of inconclusive endings prolonged everything's and previously thought impossibly good technology art infrastructure and

routine the intellectual but emotional gutteral reaction to constant Perfection is a deep deep deep longing for imperfection for the handwriting and half-baked ideas and condescending and pointless tribalism over nothing the pretentiousness of my writing right now the red flags of humanity would become the mystified green flags in an age of near perfect infrastructure one that feels so different from our original design of socializing hunter gatherers traits and behaviors that are so often seen as detrimental might be romanticized or desired in a world that lacks their chaotic and unpredictable Vitality in the same way everyone in

my generation seems to have a deep undisclosed vague longing for more authentic connections and experiences coming from their language imposition and strange new political fantasies I think we will reach an existential longing of nostalgia for base emotions base environment base bodies and basic lifespan we will become the lonely creatures at the top of creation not Gods no but creative and decisive manipulators of our own genes the creatures at the Pinnacle of evolution not forged by environment or predetermined makeup the Apes who saw the shackles of their own design and decided to break free of them

we spit in the mouth of creation's rule book to create our own we didn't go gently into that good night we started playing punk rock music and chugging energy drinks we said [ __ ] you I'm going to live I am aware what I'm saying appears to be conjecture to put it lightly which it absolutely is but I also think it's supported by most of History's technological Ascension and most of my generation's sociological developments what are dating apps really controlled ways to meet people by the user what is social media really controllable advertising your life

and everything in it is a streamlined advertisement controlling emotions through the brain neurochemically is an inevitable step I don't think we're ready to do but we'll probably see by the end of my lifetime we're already doing it through anti-depressants and antis psychotics too interesting effects and we more broadly have been toy around with it with Nature's natural drugs since the beginning of man just like the ship athus trying to talk about what is natural when it comes to emotions is an imprecise gamble of people arguing different time frames that doesn't come down to the Crux

of the issue yet again man's entire history has been forging environments to create more comfortable feelings were we not purposely changing our environment when we made fire to comfort Us in the cold dark nights are we not manipulating our emotions when we watch a sad film when we laugh at a comedy show when we scroll through highly edited videos made to cause engagement on our phones when we drink tea for its calming positive effect in decoration when we have little plants and muted colors to provide a sense of ease for guests and yet despite knowing

and saying all of that there is still this vague feeling the blocking and amplifying emotional regulators and neurochemicals is going over a line just like replacing the ship itself in the ship ofth thesia thought experiment and it doesn't feel reactionary or propagandized or related to a general fear of change it feels genuinely pervasive and invasive in a uniquely intimate and grandiose way this isn't the first time we've played God but this is the first time we've played God within the toolkit of Our Own Makeup I know I'm repeating myself but this internal manipulation is more

than just a continuation of our inventive manipulation of nature it is a redefinition of our Essence and that Essence being changed causes a longing for the comfort of the past we're probably just an eternal nostalgic creature as an 18-year-old writing this I miss when my biggest worry in life was whether I should join the Imperials or the Stormcloaks now my worries are what industry I want to go into and whether or not by the end of my lifetime I'll still be human but also as an 80-year-old man I'll probably miss recording this script having my

life ahead of me having that choice to make and thinking about this everything that's daunting right now is everything that's exciting looking back similarly and once again more broadly Modern Man in certain aspects may feel envious of primitive man's Simplicity even though primitive men definitely had warries that potentially were greater individually than modern men's whether they'll have enough food building adequate shelter to protect themselves from the elements with that being said they never had to question their own Humanity they never felt alienated from it they never had to be as introspective I don't think primitive

man was thinking about earlier versions of itself with a subconscious Nostalgia the primordial soup those were the days bro they were longing but in reality they were longing for what we are and have now for a general surrounding stability for better rates of of survival and for Comfort amidst a hostile World our worries and perceptions have evolved alongside our societies and environments and as we've made our surroundings more comfortable we've grown more uncomfortable with ourselves in response to this we're going to change ourselves instead of the environment this time as we've done in the past

it's hard to imagine our perception of reality differently because the only lens we can view the world through is our own trying to imagine life without anxiety or fear is almost impossible and while we can have periods free from it the subconscious impact it has on how we interact and experience reality even when we aren't experiencing the emotion can't be understated let's say I have a phobia of dogs I don't have a phobia of dogs but let's just say I did I know the area I'm walking in well and I feel comfortable and active and

I'm enjoying the scenery but I also know that up ahead is a dog park I still feel comfortable but knowing there are dogs up ahead is making me choose a different path the fear of feeling fear is subconsciously impacting my decisions in the moment despite not actually feeling fear I didn't experience anxiety but I mapped in my head how to avoid potential anxiety if these Technologies and new drugs come through to put a leash on anxiety itself it's like an avalanche of recontextualizing everything around us you're not avoiding anxiety anymore you're turning it off you

can hug the dogs now dance with the dogs steal them from their owners because they look too cute your instinctive feeling of anxiety is no longer preventing you from experiencing something what does that kind of Freedom do to the human spirit and a human psyche pl's cave becomes Plato's Rave crazy [ __ ] happens and it's not even just perception it can be other things as as well it's the repetitious patterns images and qualities that are seemingly always there in life as funny as it sounds Brands like McDonald's and apple are so ingrained into me

throughout advertisements and daily life growing up that it's almost like an expectancy in life that they'll be there my world won't collapse if they're gone or anything silly like that but what was a seemingly stable and fixed part of my era of Being Human if it was to just one day be gone out of the blue if the option of purchasing a Big Mac on a road trip was taken from me life would feel in a way different again as silly as it sounds there would be a before and after McDonald's time frame in my

mind it would feel like a seismic change so what happens when we remove instincts from the human psyche that have been with us since creation tethering bonds between human to human in all shapes and sizes and States well we don't get an answer to my analogy or my analogy's question we get another question are we just our longing and our anxieties and our instinctual emotions is that what makes Humanity Humanity if I remove that Am I Still Human I think this is a much more daunting and important question than this physicality of humanity changing and

I think it is the question I'd like to boldly say that the ship of thesis's material is irrelevant in regards to its identity it is the perception of the ship of thesis that makes itself the ship of Theus it is our perception of ourselves that makes ourselves child me and adult me and elderly me are very different but all are fundamentally me I am the ship of thesis I'm just as replaced as it if not more my body cells are constantly replicating creating their own Replacements me today is different to me tomorrow because by tomorrow

330 billion cells will have been changed and replaced within me the only constant is the change change is the only thing that doesn't change the only thing that has really changed is my perception of myself as myself changes was baby me a more definitive version of myself because it's the supposed original is elderly me a lesser version of myself because it's the most far removed from the original in reality I've been replaced over time with myself over and over and over and over again no matter what state I'm in despair happiness psychosis sadness Euphoria Panic

even numbness what physically I look like underweight overweight sleep deprived of normal weight it is still me and after thinking about this for a few years I would say the same thing about post-humanism transhumanism the potential of prolonging and an end to longing there's something I like to listen to sometimes when I feel lost in myself and I've thought about it a lot while writing this it's a series of clips of documentary style interviews with dementia patients analyzing and showcasing their reactions to music from their eror a lot of them are essentially mute and can't

communicate the ones that can don't understand who they are or have a real understanding of themselves or their own condition despite this when played music like Perry Como or Frank Sinatra or instrumentals popular to their time growing up they as the researchers put it come alive then he is given an iPod containing we know his favorite music [Music] and immediately he he lights up his face assumes expression his eyes open wide he uh he starts to um to sing and to rock and to move his arms and he's being animated by the music and he

used to always sit on the unit with his head like this he didn't really talk to much people and then when I introduce the music to him this is his his reaction ever since [Laughter] [Music] the philosopher C once called music the quickening art and Henry has been quickened he's being brought to life the effect of this doesn't stop which when the uh the headphones are taken off uh Henry normally mute and virtually unable to answer the simplest yes or no questions is quite valuable what was your favorite music when you were young well well

I guess uh well C Callaway was my number one band guy I like what's your fa favorite Cab Callaway song Oh I be Christmas You Can Count PL on me with plenty of snow M present re three out so in some sense Henry is restored to himself he is uh uh remembered uh who he is and uh he's he's reacquired his his identity for a while through the power of music it's something so profound and intimate to me that I have trouble WR about it they don't know who they are but they are remembering while

Consciousness and awareness May fade the core of who we are our emotional responses and longings can remain intact at a subconscious level a comment under one of the video reads my mother was in a care home and dementia had really taken a hold of her one day I walked in and Moonlight Serenade started playing in the main living room where all these other Souls were around and I reached out and took my mother's hands and got her on her feet and I held her tight and we rocked slowly back and forth to the song she

didn't know who I was but she remembered the [Music] music I've probably milked the ship of thesis more than any writer in history but I'm going to do it once again hopefully for the last time identity is not anchored to a single point in time but evolves as an organism does human identity is constantly evolving our outline is changing all the time a modern day human isn't a definitive version of humanity and a more primitive version isn't e either it may seem more dramatic when we start doing Gene editing and millions of people are all

engineering themselves but it is still our outline a problem with philosophy and big questions like these is you can begin to analyze life more than experience it it's the same with an over analysis of psychology people become patterns and explainable causes predictive behaviors rather than a living breathing conscious person with individual freedom and free will our ideas of ourselves begin to overtake the reality of who we are if my theory is right and we're closing in on genetic modification I can't imagine what this is going to be like stretched or extended beyond our typical lifespan

I have a shadow of a muse of an idea of what that feels like through my lifespan but there's always a vague understanding of an end in my subconscious mind it is completely unrelatable to me to live knowing there is no definite end it's unrelatable to imagine a world free of cancer and dementia and failing organs and limited time even though I think at one point it could be unrelatable to imagine living with them sometimes I imagine what our ancient ancestors must have thought about where this is all going obviously they thought short term for

the future of their tribe and survival but did they have an inkling of a vision of where we would end up of their species own potential of the potential we are living out regardless they raised the Next Generation who raised the next one who raised the next one they set up foundations that were built for them higher and higher and higher in a cycle as repetitious as my word choice right now they were the architects of humanity at that time they inherited the ship of thesis and they kept rebuilding it over and over again and

to the generation in the not too distant future we are The Architects of the future that they stand in we are building the ship of thesis we are building Humanity could you imagine future Generations looking back wondering what it was like for us this is the Eternal Nostalgia the idea I have that humans might always long for the past regardless of advancements this eternal Nostalgia for the past is a balancing Force against the Relentless March of progress feeling time Envy looking at how many generations came after us how many came before us looking at how

far we've come looking even more at How Far We've yet to go comparing and contrasting different version of ourselves constantly wondering what if we're the lucky ones [Music]