No one really knows whether other people are really alive and have feelings. The only reason we think so is because we have empathy, we see other people and feel for them. So feeling for an inanimate object really is not much different from an individuals experience.
What gets me is how much "inanimate" objects are so imbued with purpose. It really hit me after doing a meditation/visualization exercise. I guess no one will get it unless they've had the same feeling... but buttons want to be pressed! Scissors want to cut things! Shoes want to be on feet. If it weren't for their purpose, these things would not even exist. What is a rocks purpose though? A tree? Well those were created by intelligence that is not human, so perhaps we cannot understand.
Thinking something is a person or alive is just an illusion, a model we have in our minds to make sense of the world. We call things "alive" or "people" just because we can relate to them. A rock could have feelings for all we know, there is no way to prove or disprove it.
01 Jun 2011, 11:35 am
