We are all Ships of Theseus rebuilt at different rates. 6 trillion cells within me breathe and dance, with death and forgetting taking place at every moment inside my body. And I went through 4 billion years of evolution to become what I am today. I will always appreciate being alive.
Homo sapiens have about 6000 billion cells. Well, and 10,000 billion bacteria. “We” are much less than the bacteria living inside us. Much like a giant pool/ocean/forest of bacteria. E. coli is wearing us. Hence, if you ask me whether humans are kind by nature, I would say it’s prolly determined by the gut microbiome 🙂 Who knows who’s the parasite here.
I really need to thank the Shen Strong Swimming Club for helping me conquer my fear of grown women’s nudity. Also, one of the best things in life is getting to gorge yourself on 番茄炒蛋 (tomato and scrambled eggs), then riding your bike down a wide, empty road at midnight to go see a movie, with R&B playing through your headphones while you sing loudly along the way.
One of the things I really like about video games is that ppl get to live different forms of life and live multiple times. There can always be a different kind of reality outside REALITY, and among all those realities outside REALITY, one can always find a shelter for one’s imagination. There can always be a reality that allows us to escape. Video games are like lucid dreams. What a blessing it would be to travel and teleport between different kinds of lucid dreams, and thereby turn REALITY itself into a lucid dream, except for the fact that REALITY is a consistent one. There are so many ppl in this world who struggle to make a living, wearing themselves to the bone for nothing more than a few scraps of food to eat, a hot shower, and a warm bed. For the sake of becoming just another interchangeable cog in society’s machine, in this brutal and unjust REALITY, they are stripped of the richness of their inner lives. And if that’s the case, at least one can crack open this REALITY. Through this crack, and through the many sub REALITIES it creates, one can live countless different lives, create countless different narratives, become a warrior, become a hero, become whoever they ought to be and could be, become whoever they don’t want to be and couldn’t be, and write one’s own stories over and over again, using their hands and their controllers.
Perhaps then, when looking back, standing at the edge of a cliff and staring at the giant black hole that REALITY used to be, at the difficulties they used to face, they are no longer scared. They feel light again. They put a gracious smile on their face and gently brush the dust from their shoulders. They become playful. It is no longer unsafe to follow pure curiosity. They are courageous and calm, and capable of dealing with it with ease, like they did in other realities.
Why so serious, they think. After all, this is just one of countless REALITIES among others.
I’ve read a book on PTSD called The Body Keeps the Score. It talks about different ways of treating PTSD, such as yoga, forming connections with the body, meditation, theatre, and EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I often wonder whether immersive video games could also become a form of treatment. They may help ppl regain agency when past trauma resurfaces in their minds. They create a different universe in which ppl now have control over their fate, in which their decisions actually make a difference. Perhaps, after repeatedly experiencing that sense of agency elsewhere, one can bring some of it back into REALITY.
Games, books, and films are my sanctuary. I hope they may also become a sanctuary for others, a place spacious enough to shelter everyone left out in the cold.
Dark matter can be a form of representation collapse.
