Am I a Ghost? Or just a Shell?
What is the definition of life? What is the meaning of life? With built-in conscious, a life form has the ability to create creative thoughts and communicate with other lives. However, if "conscious" can be man-made, can it be considered to be a "life form"? If these man-made conscious do have emotions, feelings and even pains, do they represent a new form "life"? If so, what does life mean? How much does it take to become a life?
These were the question I ask myself after watching the animation movie Ghost In the Shell (1995). The movie not only beautifully depicted a massive robotic world ruled by various kinds of life forms, but also combined philosophies from multiple cultures and religions. What surprised me the most was that Ghost In the Shell was, in fact, the film that inspired the director of The Matrix, which was also considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time. Both of them established an enormous virtual worlds that demonstrated how creative human minds could be.
That leads to another question: Can "conscious" be programed and put together? At present, many scientists and engineers are managing to create artificial intelligent machines which have the abilities to think and learn. They design these machines for the purpose of inputing emotions and senses in them, so that these machines would look more like "humans". Some would say these programmers are crossing the line - the differences between human and robot -, saying these robots will ultimately possess the power to destroy man kinds. Others believe these creations may set a new milestone in human history, saying they will establish a new era for humans.
After I watched the film, I thought about putting my conscious into a healthier, stronger and powerful body and starting a completely new life. If my conscious can be programmed, I would like to have all my depressed emotions and memories to be erased. As for my "old" body, I would keep it in the storage to remind me not to make same mistakes that I had made before. If these movie plots is real, I would be a "ghost" who can live in any "shell". Because, after all, we are nothing but created forms of lives.
We all like to get our defects fixed in whatever way, removed, self-healed or medically treated. We are all imperfect, though some problems may be more disturbing than others. I am not sure if I like to have my negative emotions to be packaged and erased, emotions sure to make it hard to sleep at night and make us unstable and uncomfortable at all times. However, this "imperfection" makes us a unique human being. When it may be possible to live in any shell, I am thinking if I can be brave enough to embrace all my problems, face them, or even live peacefully with them, like we do with the cancer cells. Just some other food for thought.
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