The Personal Philosophy of (i.e. for) Geoffrey Edwards

Goeff is a discourser on this here blog from way back, and has now contributed a great heap of cash, and has taken me up on my offer for a Personal Philosophy. You, too, can request such a thing, you who have already contributed within the past couple of months or who do so right now. Forget to buy that special someone a gift? Give the gift that says "You deserve something, though I'm not sure what!" Do it TODAY, before everyone hates you.

Merry Christmas, every monkey!

Geoffrey Edwards's Personal Philosophy*

Did you know sentience is actually a very late development? Animals look like they are sentient, but they are actually automatons. You can poke them all you want, and they don't care. They might whine, but that's just like the light going on when you flip the switch. They might do an interpretive dance to express their pain at your torturous actions, but that's just like that chess-playing computer. They might talk to you in your mind, but telepathy is not sufficient for sentience.

Some people aren't actually sentient either. It doesn't matter if they say so. They're just programmed to do that. You have to have the special sentience gene to be sentient. I have it. I know. You may have it, but I don't know that. Just to be safe, I won't poke you, but if I'm cranky that day, maybe I'll risk it.

I made a sentience detector once out of a FlowBee and a Bedazzler. It broke, though. So now I don't know who is sentient and who is not. Mostly I just stay in the house, because I don't want any of them zombies (that's what I call the insentient ones) getting their zombie germs on me, or I might lose my sentience. Maybe. I'm not sure it that's possible, but it's better to be safe.

Some people think that everything is sentient: that even the earth itself is a "mother" and loves us. I forgot to check this when my detector was working. I don't think it's likely, though: I poke the earth all I want, and it doesn't do shit back to me. Sometimes the bushes whisper to me, which is why I sometimes do those things to those zombies when I'm cranky. Sometimes they tell me to cleanse the earth of all zombies, which is why I burn stuff in my yard so often. It's confusing, because sometimes the trees tell me to do things that my toaster doesn't want me to do, and their orders sometimes conflict with the letters that my blood spells out when I drip it in the shower. Like I said, I mostly just stay inside sitting very very still.

Except when I don't. Maybe I'll come and see you tonight, you zombie.

*This personal philosophy should not in any way be taken to reflect the actual, current views or predilections of this person, though, given that it was crafted JUST for him or her, he or she should really feel obliged to adopt this philosophy out of politeness if not actual gratitude.

Read more Personal Philosophies.

-Mark Linsenmayer

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