Fanfare for Souls

There’s a stream of scientific news and theories based on experiment claiming to discover more about being human each day.  Lots of this seems to conflict with standard religion, old principles, and even common sense.  Eventually, there is talk of artificial people, the “Soul of New Machine”, pouring ourselves into eternal crystal to live as gods forever.

But isn’t it all irrelevant?  Examine yourself, what used to be called the soul, and which I shall call a soul for the sake of differentiation from the scientific nonsense.  You know you exist as a consciousness, a set of experiences, that is not exactly anything but you, and certainly not anything else.  We are marvels.  And part of being marvels is that we are not logic, but rather animals, with all the problems and glories that being live animals gives us.

Science has its uses, but our current culture is possibly too enamored of hard physical reality, and too little concerned with being human.  Or, rather, we tend to see a dichotomy between the two, which makes those who glorify the soul increasingly avoid science, and vice versa.  It should not be necessary to become ignorant to appreciate being us.  All we need do is accept contradictions that cannot be resolved in our capacity as humans, and celebrate our natures even as we try to mitigate our problems.
-

I am afflicted by an inability to recognize particular people very well, but I accept it as part of being unique.  Maybe in other times I could have been a useful scout or hunter, since I have almost a perfect ecologic/geographic internal map.  Put me down anywhere and if I have ever been there before I can get oriented almost instantly.  Tell me to find my wife in the crowd at Macy’s, and I need to look for her height, hair color, and top she is wearing today.
 

Even though people thus become ecological extensions like each other object in my universe, I treasure each one.  They are all like me, in more ways than not, even if much of what they do is sometimes incomprehensible.  Heck, some of what I do is incomprehensible.

The world is complex and wonderful.  So are people.  But _ drum roll, this is the key point _ the complexity and wonder is only there because I am fully human.  Not because I can connect everything logically.  Not because I can catalog facts infinitely.  Simply because I have a consciousness that exists to wonder and respect complexity.  Because, in short, I have a soul.

  -

In all eternal space and time

We hear that leptons float along
Quarks echo in peculiar strings
Forming atoms with their songs
Which unify most everything
Into some standards weak and strong
While you and I are built of slime
Which years congealed into sublime
Perspective making us the kings
Of all we think we know _ but wrong!
Outside of this our soul must bring,
Our conscious thoughts to dream, and rhyme.
-

 

Scientific texts stress your brain’s chemistry, psychology stresses your brain’s complex intuitive connections, biology reminds you how much you are like the animals.  All such viewpoints are true, including the ones that stress that everything important that you perceive is interpretation and pattern matching.

Yet you are too complex for that.  You are not simply pattern matching, but infinite pattern overlays of everything from your childhood on, abstract analysis of what to pay attention to, and what to ignore.  You are never simply intelligence, emotions, drives and social conflicts.

You could call this your soul.  It is eternal even this moment in that it exists outside of time.  It is infinite even now in not existing in three dimensional space.  It is too mysterious for any words or rituals to circumscribe and too powerful for any logic nor equations to encompass.

-

What constitutes a soul, an individual, a consciousness, a human existence _ all dancing around the same concept _ is an ancient question.  Every person asks it and requires some answer, although some accept simpler answers than others.

Any satisfactory response must address the fact that nobody is simply intelligence, nor emotions, nor drives, nor animal body, nor social position and conflicts.  And yet nobody is without intelligence, emotions, drives, animal body, social position and conflicts.  Anybody is driven by what they are and where they are placed and have no control over their lives.  Anybody sits above the maelstrom in some remote and calm other place and completely controls their essential core.

That question is more important now than it ever was.  Why we are.  What we are. What we should try to do and celebrate.  How different can we be from one another, how much respect should we have for one another and our place in the environment.

Somewhere, we hope to find agreement on how souls fit into civilization.  Somewhere find the balance between acceptance of what is and must be, and striving to be better.  Joy in the barbed gifts of hope and love.  That is a proper quest, even in these times of grand scientific triumph.

-

Many angels with little else to do have hobbies, one of the most popular of which is constructing souls for their adventures on mortal Earth.  Like any hobby, the practice can become involved and expensive, including all kinds of esoterica unknown to those not involved.

When the periodic soul festivals are held, a casual attendee might notice only the grandest feature of the potential individual on display _ intelligence, physical stamina, hormonal combinations.  But for cognoscenti and the artisans themselves it is the more subtle touches _ pain threshold, memory clarity, logical leaps _ that separate the common from the exquisite.  For it is not in simply piling on more and more of better and better attributes that a masterpiece is constructed, but in the delicate aesthetic balance obtained.

Bel’s Soul Shoppe is probably the premiere hobbyist’s paradise (pardon the expression.)  There you can find all kinds of uncommon glue, superficial coverings, deep flaws, and all the other necessities of construction and polishing.  The actual work, usually, is done at home in the clouds before a cheerful fire, and can be one of the more solitary pursuits for the cherubim.

Of course, the hope of all is to produce something that will win a prize at one of the grand festivals, and then can be set into the cauldron of Earth to see how it works out.  Following the adventures of such amateur-designed souls as they traverse the perils of life is the grandest spectator sport of all.  The real fun is in seeing how they stack up against the professionally-designed work. 

For those who have not watched any episodes, the big twist is that any soul is not put into a perfect environment which suits it _ the artisan has no say as to when and where and in what circumstances the soul will be incarnated.  So the greatest reward is to see some totally out of place, although fully functional, soul take on the challenges around it and emerge victorious.  The grandest spectacle, of course, is the culmination on Super Soul Sunday, when the current game is ended, souls are gathered back into heaven, and points are awarded all around.

 -

A human is more than an animal, more than logic, and each one is unique in a unique universe.  Each moment which any human experiences is eternal and infinite.  Questions about the boundaries of birth and death are almost meaningless.

The danger in this scientific definition-mad era is that humans will build constraints that make them less than human.  This could be cybernetic enhancement,  overcontrol or elimination of the animal core, too much focus on logic and pattern solving.  The solution, as many religions recognize, is to fit the external and internal universes into each human experience, and to enhance each human consciousness to recognize its primary place in its own world, while simultaneously responding with love to everything it encounters.