What is the importance of space exploration in our society?
This could be interpreted in two ways. If you are asking how much our society values it, i say very little, and I cant blame them. Living under capitalism kind of consumes everything unless you have hella money, and most people with hella money endeavor to get more instead of pushing humanity fwd.
We’ve basically finished developing as far as our current framework allows. Technology is stunted by capitalist aims, medicine is caged by capitalist aims. Some art fields are so strangled by academia they may as well be stem too.
All sciences should be of the highest priority! us knowing everything about everything about everything is the end goal of humanity! BUT, every field of everything is being choked to death for money. except space. Space isnt profitable. Researching subsurface mars cant possibly get anyone any money. So we don’t do it.
What defines consciousness? Do you think other animals can be considered conscious creatures?
I think the distinction between sapience and consciousness is an important one to make. Your dog can’t worry about existence but it can definitely miss you when you’re out of the house! I think consciousness probably just means having some degree of emotion. Flies don’t have feelings but primates can be diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Some great apes can converse in ASL, i would definitely call that sapience. have you seen the video of Koko the gorilla and Robin Williams? She’s just as smart as a human is she just lacks the verbal precision :P.
I think drawing a line between Humans and (Other) Animals is a little arrogant. Some animals are a little on the dumb side but they aren’t lesser than us. Most of them are just unable to speak human languages due to their anatomy. Maybe if german shepards had opposable thumbs we could teach them a bit of ASL too, y’know? I see it as there being a spectrum of intelligence that we just happen to be on the end of.
How do you create meaningful experience in your life?
Tbh, most meaningful experience to me is just talking. Like. There is so much to talk about, always. I’ve been talking almost nonstop for 19 years and I have more to talk about now than I ever did when I was 10 and yammered about banjo kazooie to my mom.
The other day I found myself underslept in a discord voip channel at 7am with four other musicians, most of whom I had only virtually met earlier morning day, and I was shooting the shit with this dude I’d never spoken to before about how music has no intrinsic emotion and how if the Korg M1 organ#2 never became a meme in the 90s no one would care about it now. Like I’m going to remember that night for a really long time and I barely left my room that day.
Even then you can say so much with so little, you know. Like my girlfriend, right. She doesn’t talk much. At all. Sometimes we hang out and barely say a word we just like, feel each other’s presence for an hour while I’m working on a track. It’s like a really enjoyable conversation without the words.
Music is the one other thing though. The only time I am happy when I’m alone and sober is when i’m writing music. That almost feels like a conversation too. It’s like between me and sound or me and my sensory desires? IDK it’s hard to word. Sometimes i open up a synth and it feels like a Ouija board. Like idk why, but I’m turning the detune up on that sine operator and fming a just fifth into it and suddenly I have an organ melody that sounds like going outside in a leather jacket when it’s winter coat weather and it’s a little uncomfortable but exhilarating in a weird way and plus you look good.
You know what I mean though. I like to converse with my own senses. I like to converse with humans. I love to converse with other animals, though I rarely get the chance.
tl;dr communication is magical
Is your existence as compared to your nonexistence something which can be justified?
I think so. Probably? I mean my main goal of being alive is to make as many people as happy as possible. altruism ftw. I definitely make a few people happy. like I have a few very mentally ill friends who rely on me specifically to help them out when they’re suicidal or just sad and I am glad I can be that for them.
I just want to help people, you know. The world is really really really shitty and I want to be able to help people cope with living in such a shitty place. The other day a friend of mine told me that they were in a really bad place but my Hotline Bling flip managed to keep them in good spirits bc that shit is so bubbly. That’s incredible to me. Another friend told me ‘Healing’ helped them come down from a panic attack.
When I started getting all this really nasty mental illness stuff in high school music helped me through it a lot. Some really nasty shit happened to me this year and without angry emo stuff i might not have lived through it. I want to be that for other people. as many people as I can, really.
