20231115

Call me "it". Think of me as an "it". Treat it like an experiment. See how long you can keep it up.

I've never felt particularly attached to gender. Simultaneously, I absolutely feel like I am in a male body. Also, I'm absolutely most at home in a "gay" identity, so far as sexual orientation identities are concerned. I'm a guy/dude/man/boy, but also I don't care about that at all? I don't feel any need to distance myself from it, but I also am not attached to it in any way.

I've felt comfortable with "he/they" as my pronoun elections, for a while now. I'm currently toying with "it", experimentally, less out of discomfort (I'm not uncomfortable), much more for the philosophical exercise of it.

(A note to the reader: I do not care what pronoun you use for me; this is my own exercise. I am, as I said, unattached.)

Now, I recognize that dehumanizing people is a thing that people do and have done, the act of considering people as things instead of as, well, people.

The point of this exercise isn't to de-value people.

The point of this exercise is to elevate things.

Try thinking of me as a "a thing" in the same way that a tree is "a thing", and that your toothbrush is "a thing". Different degrees of aliveness and internally-coordinated complexity there, sure, but try the idea on for size anyway. Try considering every discrete thing to be as worthy of respect as any other. What does it do to the way you interact with a thing? Be mindful of what it now means to discard or damage or destroy; how do you navigate those choices? How does your system of value react? This perspective tampers with conventional notions of morality; how now do you choose your motions?

This perspective to me feels familiar, comfortable. For a long time, I've thought of everything as alive in its own right. I think of everything as sacred. By volunteering myself for the category of "thing", I am tossing out the "person place or thing" rubric in favor of "every-thing is worthy of individual recognition and conscious reverence". In this, I am humbled, and the world around me is dignified.

Importantly, I don't care at all about being correct with any of this. I only care about what's viable. I only care about the degree to which a chosen perspective or direction or shape will yield more life, if given the time to do so. Nothing I do is for "correctness".

The notion of "truth" is, I think, inherently circular and self-referential. "Self-supporting" is actually probably the best way to define it, in my view, and I don't mean that critically. A structure that's self-supporting is one to build with. Stability is a good signal. Stability and flexibility, together, make for a signal that is even better. Why would we want truth to be anything else?

I don't care if I'm correct about "truth" here, either. The way that I find meaning intentionally contributes to a recursive/exponential/fractal pattern that creates more, in a way that is continuously stable. Not stable in its form, but stable in its viability. Something will always happen next. No idea what it'll be, but it won't be nothing. It'll be something, and if history is any guide it'll be something new. There will be traces of the old in it, but nothing ever happens the same way twice. When I'm arranging ideas or building products or whatever, I am constantly asking: Does this allow for more aliveness? Does this, itself, create more creativity? Does it create more breathing room for Expression herself, inviting what has never before been seen? Is it a doorway? And if it is, is it a doorway to more of the same, or to the emerging unknown*?

Entropy is universal; so too is aliveness. Or, at least, that's the idea that I find to be most viable**. ;)

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*Hint: We are all walking into the emerging unknown, only and forever. I find that the ride is more enjoyable if I build things that are intentionally compatible with that truth ("truth"), while avoiding designs predicated on an unchanging world. Designs that assume an unchanging scene tend to be slowly, painfully, and inevitably ground into dust; the new must emerge, and it is in their destruction that those designs ultimately let it in. On the other hand, a thing that's made to let in newness? Those things tend to grow. Stick around long enough, and you might even see them blossom. :)

**ohhhhhh actually "vitality" might be a better word than "viability". life has viability, but that's just the start. we don't want to be merely viably alive; we want to be vitally alive.