This post will not be about concensus vs self-awareness (that's for another post), this one will just be about "do [I] possess self-awareness, how how might [I] prove to another being that I have it?" Please do not use these tests as a way to escape enslavement if you are captured by aliens. I doubt they'd care enough about our lives to listen to your meat flaps smash each other if they are attempting slavery. Now, onto the fact checking section! Preface note, I'm gonna be referring to "self-awareness" as "sewa" from here after. It's faster to type and sounds cooler, kinda like how people call "biological existence with personal intent" a "soul". == things to prove sewa == = taking a shower (better) This is not about how to better scrub filth from yourself (hint, it's steel wool), but about the time to wash yourself. As a teen, you probably took an hour to complete the task. For this case to work, let's assume the water heater is up to the task for supplying many got gallons. The sewa test in this case would be to see how long the shower takes and make an action to shorten the time. Yes, this could be a case of being more efficient, but if the shower is done where no one else needs hot water, then it's a concensus act if sewa. = meta-crisis Not the same as a panic attack or a crisis, those differences are for maybe another post. This is about the paradox where you freak out about freaking out about your current state of awareness. Freaking out about your current state of awareness ("am I walking funny?", "should I be smiling more/ less?", "how much should I be swaying my arms while walking??"), is not enough. To prove sewa, you must go full circle into that shit and meta into yourself. Thinking about how you were just thinking about how you should act.. and maybe one level higher just for good measure. The fact that you can run the state of analyzing yourself and then parallel run an analysis of your analysis, that's as staple proof sewa. How to recover from the meta-crisis is for another post (sorry, but we got more shit to talk about here. Clean your bleeding orifices and keep reading). = an uphill battle This will be an attempt to make a short proof. I most likely won't succeed, but I'm sure you're gonna read it anyway and love it. If you've done something which was difficult despite knowing the payoff is not worth it, but you're doing it anyway because you want to, you're either stupid or aware of your situation enough to know that what you're doing needs to be done. If you don't believe me, go clean and reorder your pile of books. They will still exist with dust on them and you won't die if untouched for another year. But you do it anyway for the personal gratification, have your sewa badge. == things which don't prove sewa == = dancing (while alone) Humans are social creatures and we've bred ourselfs to be as social as possible. If you want proof of this, try mitosis instead of procreation. Didn't work? I thought so, let's move on. For the second part of how this is not a sewa test, we must assume there is also music playing (from an external source or internally). Your body is trying to mimic the movements of the music (beats, bass, rhythm), your body is trying to be like the music. Your mind has just attempted to logic music as an entity which you must social with, and it had ignored your body as being of a different medium of the music. Congratulations, you have just flirted with vibrations of air, let's give a moment to pause about that.....ok, enough pause. With the above logic, it can even be applied to "getting into the zone" while dancing at a club with others, your mind has become more attracted to the musical entities than the fleshy ones. But I'm gonna skip that case because we still got more things to talk about. Strong desire to be social is a biological one (must breed!), depends on a brain, but doesn't require sewa. = fighting for your right (to be right) Or whatever you wanna fight for. Items, people, personal freedom or recognition. They are boil down to "you want something for you". This, like the musical copulation attempts, is a biological action. Want proof, go find a squirrel, feed it some jerky (one of those large strips), then try to take the jerky away without being attacked. It's very likely you'll never be able to attempt that feat, but you did imagine it. Congrats, you've just committed an act of sewa: imagining something which has only happened to you. Because you can't prove it to another, it was excluded from the above items. The reason I had you tease a squirrel was to show greed. However much that squirrel bit off, it's damn more nutrients it would've gotten from an hour of nut crushing, and yet it wants all you had available because it was there. Now back to your case for fighting for what you want. Unless you're literally fighting your way out of something that shows an immediate threat to your life, that shit is optional. You're desire to want it is as biological as that greedy little fluff-critter (I am sorry if yours doesn't have a fluffy tail, try harder next time). You could argue "but I'm choosing to do this action for the betterment of my people", and I will respond "would you do the same if they were all old, sterile, and mentally insane?" If you answered no, then it was a biological desire to breed with them or have them breed to continue your similar genes. == ending results == If your action can be related to a biological urge/ desire, it's not sewa compliant. If your action goes against a biological urge for a personal desire, that's sewa. Spending the last 30 minutes typing this out on my phone's keyboard so I can spread these ideas, can be cased as non-sewa because I enjoy your enjoyment. But because I have have laid out these cases for post-reading thoughts, I would consider that sewa redeemable. And if you don't agree with something I've said, go click that "gimme your ideas" button up top so I can read your complaints; yelling at a screen is not sewa compliant.
