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Dreams and thoughts.
Jul. 23rd, 2014 12:37 pmDreams the past few nights were of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
opalblack coming to visit me and Kirsten. Very nice visit. Dreamed of an argument in a library/city council chamber between myself and a woman who was arguing rights not just for non-human persons, not just for non-biological consciousnesses, but for all things. And it was a weird debate, because we agreed on end goals and some terminology, and I regarded her as a great ally and friend, but her use of the term "Thing" as a descriptor for a subject--that is, a seat of experience, a perspective--really rankled me. I found it "depersonalizing," "objectifying," etc., in senses more literal than they'd ever been before.
I spent most of yesterday thinking about those dreams. Thinking about what it means, to me, if a collection or a seat of consciousness wants to make the choice to self-identify as an object; about whether that can be an act of rebellion and subversion, in the same way that monster girls and the reclaimation of various terms in various communities have given the sharp edge and fire backk into those communities' hands. Will there one day be the machine consciousness equivalent of a Quentin Quire who demands that you call it... "It?" "Thing?" "Robot?" Because it make you uncomfortable? Because it wants you to at all times be mindful of the history of our words and interactions?
I still don't have a full answer for this.
Last night I dreamed that I was wandering DC, in a weirdly unknown quantity. My family was aware I was there, but no one was available. I ended up walking old streets, learning new things about how the city's changed. In one part, there was a new train/trolley/light rail system ('Snowpiercer' echoes; go see 'Snowpiercer'), and I spent a lot of time moving through it and using it, for reasons now escaping memory. Using new magnetic stripe systems, walking down up the escalators--but they were only up at the halfway point; until then they were just stairs--etc.
Something about all of my Atlanta friends being in the DC train stations, traveling in various directions to new and different places. Something about a corndog stand in the station, and people insisting that I needed to eat. I got something, some kind of comfort food. Jumbled bits followed:
An old man--former spymaster, magician, something; shades of 'Now You See Me'--selecting me and another woman to show the secret paths he had crafted underground, to teach us mysteries. Something about a foe of his he'd turned into a fruit fly and trapped in a bar of pressed fruit paste. We had to kill the foe for the deed to his empire. I don't think we ever definitively killed him. Something about a family in tears on the platform walkway, because their very young baby had died. I stopped to watch this, and I mentioned something to the man holding the child's head (still attached, just he was cradling the head), about where to put pressure. Shortly, the child came back to life.
Dense dreams.
opalblack coming to visit me and Kirsten. Very nice visit. Dreamed of an argument in a library/city council chamber between myself and a woman who was arguing rights not just for non-human persons, not just for non-biological consciousnesses, but for all things. And it was a weird debate, because we agreed on end goals and some terminology, and I regarded her as a great ally and friend, but her use of the term "Thing" as a descriptor for a subject--that is, a seat of experience, a perspective--really rankled me. I found it "depersonalizing," "objectifying," etc., in senses more literal than they'd ever been before.I spent most of yesterday thinking about those dreams. Thinking about what it means, to me, if a collection or a seat of consciousness wants to make the choice to self-identify as an object; about whether that can be an act of rebellion and subversion, in the same way that monster girls and the reclaimation of various terms in various communities have given the sharp edge and fire backk into those communities' hands. Will there one day be the machine consciousness equivalent of a Quentin Quire who demands that you call it... "It?" "Thing?" "Robot?" Because it make you uncomfortable? Because it wants you to at all times be mindful of the history of our words and interactions?
I still don't have a full answer for this.
Last night I dreamed that I was wandering DC, in a weirdly unknown quantity. My family was aware I was there, but no one was available. I ended up walking old streets, learning new things about how the city's changed. In one part, there was a new train/trolley/light rail system ('Snowpiercer' echoes; go see 'Snowpiercer'), and I spent a lot of time moving through it and using it, for reasons now escaping memory. Using new magnetic stripe systems, walking down up the escalators--but they were only up at the halfway point; until then they were just stairs--etc.
Something about all of my Atlanta friends being in the DC train stations, traveling in various directions to new and different places. Something about a corndog stand in the station, and people insisting that I needed to eat. I got something, some kind of comfort food. Jumbled bits followed:
An old man--former spymaster, magician, something; shades of 'Now You See Me'--selecting me and another woman to show the secret paths he had crafted underground, to teach us mysteries. Something about a foe of his he'd turned into a fruit fly and trapped in a bar of pressed fruit paste. We had to kill the foe for the deed to his empire. I don't think we ever definitively killed him. Something about a family in tears on the platform walkway, because their very young baby had died. I stopped to watch this, and I mentioned something to the man holding the child's head (still attached, just he was cradling the head), about where to put pressure. Shortly, the child came back to life.
Dense dreams.
