Loki Tries to Explain
What do I owe to you?
If you’re a realist, the answer is nothing. I owe you nothing. I am a singular consciousness, trapped in this body and this head, and my prime directive is survival and procreation. I want to continue breathing, for this consciousness to continue operating, hopefully until the machinery breaks down from natural causes, and I want to pass my genes along to another generation, to continue the survival of my genes.
I’m not interested in your genes.
We’re all in the same boat, provided with the same set of evolutionary directions, and while it is helpful if we cooperate around certain things, my main goal is me.
At least, if I’m honest, this is how it feels.
My conscious experience is the only thing that is really real, substantive, present and verifiable, to me. Yours can be explained to me, and because I have an innate sense of empathy, I can try to relate, to listen and understand and express care and concern, but the truth is, your experience is entirely alien to me.
And, the truth is, you could be lying to me, creating an entire fiction and facade, just for me, and it seems, this is what a lot of people do, they just try to please me, show me what they think I want to see, tell me the sorts of things they imagine will be pleasing to me, because they are…
