{"id":15851,"date":"2012-04-11T09:26:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T16:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=15851"},"modified":"2012-04-11T09:27:16","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T16:27:16","slug":"from-man-alive-the-greatest-invention-in-the-history-of-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15851\/from-man-alive-the-greatest-invention-in-the-history-of-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"From Man Alive! – “The greatest invention in the history of humanity.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.<\/em><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Extract from Chapter 4. The greatest invention in the history of humanity.<\/a><\/h3>\n

In the last chapter, I raised the idea of your being stranded on a desert island. That’s a hugely unlikely scenario, but it’s interesting to think about because everything that is true of you, as a type of entity, is true of you in isolation. You’re in this all alone, recall, and there is no factual statement that we can make about your nature as a human being that is not true of you even – especially! – when you are isolated from all other people.<\/p>\n

In later chapters, we will take up the implications of your fundamental ontological solitude. For now I want to focus on the existential solitude of being stranded. Is there anyone for you to talk to? To cuddle up to? To fight against or to make love with? No. You possess everything you were able to recover from your plane crash or your shipwreck, but there is no one else with you, and anything else you might want you will have to provide for yourself – if you can – or else do without.<\/p>\n

But cheer up, Bunkie! You don’t have a knife, but you know that knives exist, and you can apply yourself to making one. It may turn out to be a crude thing compared to the knives you can buy in a store, but close enough is good enough. You don’t have a calendar to keep track of time, but you can easily make one with stones or sticks. With but a few exceptions, you don’t have any<\/em> of the artifacts we take for granted in Western Civilization, but you have owned a great many of those tools and toys in your time, and you can recreate some of them as you wait to be rescued. You are poor in practical technology, but you are infinitely rich in technological knowledge.<\/p>\n

Why is that so? Because of Fathertongue. We stand on the shoulders of giants. To say the truth, mostly we lounge<\/em> on the shoulders of giants, Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 4. The greatest invention in the history of humanity. In the last chapter, I raised the idea of your being stranded on a desert island. That’s a hugely unlikely scenario, but it’s interesting to think about because everything that is true of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,212,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-egoism-in-action","7":"category-flourishing","8":"category-group-therapy","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11470,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11470\/splendorquest-should-we-celebrate-john-galt-day-on-june-1st\/","url_meta":{"origin":15851,"position":0},"title":"SplendorQuest: Should we celebrate John Galt Day on June 1st?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote this coming on four years ago, one of my last posts to PresenceOfMind.net, my philosophical\/political\/literary home on the web. The planned strike of our undocumented friends has come and gone, but the underlying idea -- a strike against the looters on June 1st -- still resonates with me.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15845,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15845\/from-man-alive-speaking-in-tongues\/","url_meta":{"origin":15851,"position":1},"title":"From Man Alive! – “Speaking in tongues.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 3. Speaking in tongues. One of the things that protects humanity from all of the philosophers and academics who insist that we are nothing special is the power of speech. Not speech deployed to argue against them;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15869,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15869\/from-man-alive-evaluating-values\/","url_meta":{"origin":15851,"position":2},"title":"From Man Alive! – “Evaluating values.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 6. Evaluating values. We like to think of human history as a clash of great men, their hair flowing in the breeze, their muscles rippling, their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon. In reality, virtually all of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12521,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/12521\/reasons-to-be-cheerful-part-3-1-the-song-of-the-self\/","url_meta":{"origin":15851,"position":3},"title":"Reasons to be cheerful, Part 3.1: The song of the self.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a dumb thing to say, but at the same time, I think it's the essence of everything, the one thing that most needs to be said: I love life. I love living. I love being alive as a human being -- a genetic homo sapiens within whom has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15854,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15854\/from-man-alive-the-greatest-love-of-all\/","url_meta":{"origin":15851,"position":4},"title":"From Man Alive! – “The greatest love of all.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 5. The greatest love of all. What\u2019s the purpose of life? Scruffy, bearded teenagers of all ages have been asking that question for thousands of years, and each one of them has come up with an answer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11133,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11133\/i-went-rummaging-around-the-vook-and-came-home-with-an-education\/","url_meta":{"origin":15851,"position":5},"title":"iPad observation #9: I went digging through the heap of festering garbage that is the Vook and came home with an education.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Vain though it may be, tonight I looked in on my own past posts on the Vook. The writing was better than I remembered it, just exactly my kind of fun with words, but I do think I have been overly... forgiving... of this sleazy little... not vampire, even writ\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15851"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15853,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15851\/revisions\/15853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}