By Pentadact

There are other weird things about the soul idea: labotomies, brain damage and hemisphere separation are all physical things that can happen to the brain, and which change the person in incredibly fundamental ways; hemisphere separation is this freaky thing that’s happened by accident where the link between the left and right parts of the brain has been severed, but both have gone on to function independently. The left hemisphere controls the right arm and the left eye, and similarly for the right hemisphere, and they got a person with this to do all kinds of crazy tests. In one, they showed the person a pencil on the right edge of their vision and asked them to write what they saw. The left part of the brain saw the pencil and made the right hand write ‘PENCIL’, but by the time it got to P and the vertical line of the E, the other half of the brain (which could see what was being written because it controlled that half of the vision) thought it was going to write ‘PIPE’ and – because it too was trying to answer the person’s question, but hadn’t seen anything – tried to draw a pipe (that half isn’t very good at writing). The other hand scribbled out its drawing and wrote ‘PENCIL’ beneath it.

Is there just one soul at work here? You and I are distinct, and on that basis I assume we can’t share a single soul; at least, if there’s only one soul between us, it cannot be what I am and what you are, because we’re two different things. So since the two hemispheres are now distinct from one another – one can know something the other doesn’t, one can think something without the other knowing it – they can’t still be one soul, because they’re two different thinking entities. And if there are two souls at work after hemisphere separation – if we’ve split the soul – then why call it a soul? Why not change the word to ‘brain’ or at least ‘mind’, if the soul is going to be dependent on what physically happens to the brain. And even if you want to keep calling it a soul, there still can’t be an afterlife or anything: if splitting the brain into two thinking entities turns your soul into two souls, destroying the brain completely would turn your soul into no souls at all.

The meaning of life has a lot to do with what you are: if you were a soul, the meaning of your life could have something to do with a non-physical realm, doing God’s work, that kind of thing. If you’re a body and brain, the meaning of your life is to have kids and make sure they do okay. A big part of making sure your kids do okay is making sure they’re strong and attractive. That’s harder to do after conception than before, so we (instinctively) go to some lengths to choose the mate with the best genes who’ll sleep with us. We feel almost as strongly about that stuff (love) as we do about protecting the kids when they grow up. Thus, if we’re an animal and not a soul, we should follow our heart’s desire, have kids and raise them well.

A lot of people think we are, essentially, animals. Say what you like about that view, it’s philosophically full-proof. I think they’re right, to a large extent, especially about themselves – it’s self-fulfilling, since your nature is defined by your purpose. And it’s no bad thing, really. Animals are okay. They sometimes get the things they want, and they seem to enjoy that. Other times they just eat rotten fruit or catnip until they pass out, and that’s fun too.

I’m not better than an animal. In fact, I’m not even half an animal. I’m not a body and a brain – I’m barely even a brain. When I experience strong emotions, particularly the more recognisably animal ones like hunger, lust, romance or passion, they feel like external things that I can evaluate and choose whether to follow.

I’m sitting in a theatre somewhere in my head, looking to be entertained. When biological imperatives provide entertainment, I’ll follow them, but they’re mostly optional.

Romanticism is wrong – it’s basically the inability to philosophise competently. It’s like anti-science, it doesn’t even claim to make sense. It says the fact that something is beautiful or evocative is important in itself. Beauty is a quarter social, a quarter lust, a quarter aesthetics, and a quarter arbitrary personal preference from subconscious memory associations. Nothing wrong with aesthetics, I can get very excited about aesthetics, but the fact that something’s pretty means only that it’s pretty. Hang it on your wall, show it to people; don’t marry it or base your worldview on it.

Passion – about people – screws me up. My zealous adoration of past girlfriends contorted my personality and views to the ones I imagined they’d like until I was basically just method-acting. It virtually eclipsed any happiness I might have got. Opposites may attract, but they seldom satisfactorily tesselate.

• Failing to consider someone because someone more immediately appealing is involved.
• Being physically violent.

Oddly, for someone so bitter about these two, neither has happened to me. Well, I remember someone slapping me in primary school, but that was more bizarre than violent, and he was terribly apologetic about it afterwards. Even more bizarre, he apparently died not many years later. Moral: don’t fuck with me. Regardless, no exceptions for surreality, apologia or subsequent demise.

Equally I’ve never been cheated on, which is the most extreme case of the first one. Cheating, though, like any significant breach, is unforgivable. Interesting side-note: if you’re cheating on someone, it’s a common mis-conception that the right thing to do is tell them. You think they want to hear that? The right thing to do is break up with them (maybe citing dispassion) and break off the new relationship as well for at least a month. There’s a science to this.