Philosophical Dialogues, Who Am I?, Hunter and Bain, Jake Jackson

Dialogues | Who Am I?

Hunter and Bain are slumped into a corner at the front of the Thought Café in Bleecker Street. They have grown to enjoy the anonymity of the large crowds in New Manhattan, where everyone is different, nobody looks at anyone else, and so the subtle judgements of smaller communities are left unsaid. In this Street, barely changed for hundreds of years a throng of humans, robots, aliens and ragged bi-pedal creatures throb past the translucent wall at the front of the cafe, allowing occasional flickers of light from the pale skies into the faces of the exhausted companions.

The time does not matter, nor the year.

Bain: I look at these crowds and wonder where they all come from, how many mothers and fathers, creators and inventors have conspired to gather this precise collection of life. It looks like a fair representation of every planet, every point in time we’ve ever visited.

Hunter grunted, his hand gesturing simply, causing a white cup of hot black coffee to appear: Not even close…

Bain, still finishing his first coffee restrains himself from copying his fellow traveller: I suppose not. But it makes me wonder. Who are they? Do they even know who they are?

Hunter, grumpily: Or, does it really matter?

Bain: Well, does everyone who passes by this café know who they are, beyond their name I mean?

Hunter sighed: At some level, they must do, otherwise they wouldn’t be here. The robots and the androids, even if they’re in an advanced state of self-programming they have some sense of who they are, driven by their purpose.

Bain: I suppose the various alien species will have made a specific effort to be here, so knowing who they are.

Hunter: Alien? Who’s the alien? It’s you humans who are alien here.

Bain laughs: Hah, that’s true, so far from old earth, we’re all aliens.

Hunter tips his head ruefully at his companion: Or some form of AI.

Bain looks at his titanium arm and grimaces. Opening his hand next to the white coffee cup he allows a metal flower to grow slowly from his metal palm, unfurling upwards in the image of the slow motion of the universe: So who am I?

Hunter watches as the delicate, foiled flower reaches maturity, its petals flickering and waving in unfelt breezes, then separate from Bain’s hand and drift up between them: You are what you want to be.

Bain: That can’t be right. I’m a product of my origin, and my life.

Hunter: Up to a point, but you’ve made choices.

Bain: But not always informed choices, sometimes we find ourselves in a situation with limited choices, so the consequence isn’t necessarily what I would have chosen with more options, or information.

Hunter: Yes, that’s true in the short term but surely the trend of choices over time creates the shape of who you are.

Bain: So are we only the sum total of the various decisions we’ve made over time?

Hunter: Well, you asked “Who am I?” not “Who could I have been?” Different circumstances might have led to different choices.

Bain: I suppose so, but beyond the limits of our circumstances are we only subject to our own choices? Presumably these limits are themselves subject to the choices of others, or other forces.

Hunter: Yes, that must be true too, the choices of others help define the limits of your circumstances, so to a certain extent who you are depends also on the actions of others.

Bain: Except there are key moments where, in retrospect a key choice, a decisive moment defines a new path, a new set of choices.

Hunter: When we met, you could have decided to stay where you were.

Bain: That wasn’t a choice. I was desperate to get off that moon. Its gravity was failing. I would have died soon enough. I didn’t know for certain that a supply ship would turn up.

Hunter: So that was a specific choice, and it has led to a dramatic change in your life, changed who you are.

Bain: Although my choice was consistent with a need for survival, surely that’s merely human, not specific to me.

Hunter: But fear of the alien, of the different, that’s human too, and you overcame those characteristics to make a choice. You didn’t know who or what I was, at that time.

Bain: So my essential human-ness, and a combination the choices I had made which led me to that god-forsaken moon, my limited options at that point, your choice in offering to take me along with you, and my decision to come, that’s what makes me who I am?

Hunter: Nothing unusual in that. Being human is a major factor though. No other species would have made the series of dumb human choices you made that led you to be on that moon.

Bain: Charming…

Hunter’s eyes follow the free-floating flower that had exfoliated from Bain’s arm, no longer controlled by its reluctant creator. It brushes against the translucent front wall, pausing momentarily before being sucked through the amber-like substance that separates the café from the outside world. Its fragile form shivers in the open air, almost disintegrating in the buffeting sway of creatures and people, before a child’s hand reaches up and gathers it, nodding to her android companion, waiting for the approval that secretly she knows is neither required nor can be given.

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