About me
Merely one of the billions of crudely assembled piles of meat that inhabit this rock, the only thing setting me apart from the masses is my ability to think.
There are others who also see things this way. For instance, there is the feminist writer who believes that men and women are not so different as:
We are all human beings. We are all similar lumps of fleshy matter that moves and grunts and goes around its daily business.
It is, I suppose, a strictly materialist approach to describing existence (although I wonder if nominalism also doesn't play a role - if there are only particulars then perhaps you end up with the kind of reductionism quoted above.)
It's not a view, though, which fits how we experience life. Just this afternoon I went for a walk after work in one of the more rustic parts of the outer suburb of Melbourne I live in.
In late winter there's a bit of moisture in the soil and the wattles are in bloom - so the air is heavily scented. I walked through the country-style lanes to the river and felt richly, luxuriantly connected to nature. You would have to strip off whole layers of the mind, at such a time, to reduce the earth to a mere "rock" and myself to "a crudely assembled pile of meat".
(I just read out the blogger's view of himself to my wife. Her laughing reply: "So poetic, isn't it!")
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