...So they started thinking about it, the humans. They weren't

>>9990174
What were the *others* here for? Linneus was a bit daft in his own way, but his application of Aristotelian principles of order and logic to the screaming meat-sacks that inhabit this queer little rock does provide a handy framework for some basic grouping and sorting type things, so we can talk about "wildebeests" or "kangaroos" and we all know what the fuck we're talking about, and it carries with it a certain understanding of behavior that accompanies such categories. That's why humans are so tricky. They don't "human." That is, there's nothing definitively human enough to distinguish them from any other species except that of certain behavioral and organizational patterns. They talk with complex language, but we really don't know how detailed dolphin-speak is through whatever special dolphin-senses they may have to register it through which we don't, but we can safely assume that human spoken language isn't so vastly much more complex that it would be considered as a fundamentally different behavior. It's still speaking and listening. Written language, too - while arguably more distinctively human than anything - can be understood as semiotic markings with physical objects, and thus must be disincluded as unique to the species, because others do that (otters, maybe? Some insects? Beavers?). It's troubling to the collective self-awareness of the human species, because it knows it can't really define itself outside of tautological terms. Wut do?

>>9990199
Well, it seems that the key is in recognizing that the one thing those other "species" *never* did is get all fucked up about why they were here.

Self-awareness is great. It's necessary to being capable of understanding the necessary abstractions which have allowed us to manipulate the world around us and create the marvels of technology that have contributed to the comfort and sustenance of generations. The greatest works of human philosophy revolve around the consequences of self-awareness. It cuts to the core of everything.

But it's also a trap. Self-awareness can allow you to understand yourself... but never completely. There are limits to knowledge, and awareness is not the same thing as knowledge. Once a human believes that they have the ability to gain control over the forces that move their lives and the lives of others - to literally direct their fate, so to speak - they have fallen for the meme.

You are still a meat-sack. We are all a meat-sack. We are the collective meat-sack of humanity, and we either accept the limits of our individuality, or we suffer. Usually both, and most often the former is the product of a generous application of the latter.

But the abstraction is still very useful. For what we humans have, what defines us in ways that no other biogenetic corporeal manifestation of energy as categorized/able by the Linnean taxonomy has managed to demonstrate, is frustratingly simple: our imagination. Both collectively and individually, the imagination of the human meat-sack is absolutely universal in its sphere and breadth of complexity. It *is* the universe.

We will understand soon how strongly this bears upon our lives, we who know the calling of the void, the incessant pang of sheer epistemic aporia, the need and the want for knowing, for gnosis. It's on the way.

So stay alive, humans. It's something all life has in common - it exists in this dimension (within a reasonable degree of demonstrable proof, albeit surely with a non-zero probability of being false). So exist, and know that for all we know, it's all you need to be doing.

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>>9990174
HAHAHA LOOK MARK FISHER I TURNED MYSELF INTO AN AI ENHANCED PICKLE!!!