Envy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
exeggutorhead) wrote2013-08-28 01:04 pm
exeggutorhead) wrote2013-08-28 01:04 pm
47th Transformation [ANONYMOUS text | action for Mahogany]
[There's an anonymous message popping up on the network this afternoon. And I do mean anonymous; Envy has made as sure as he possibly can that nobody would be able to trace this question back to his Gear ID.]
What does it mean for someone to have a soul? In your world or in your religion or whatever you think. What does having one give you, or not having one keep you from doing?
how can you even tell if you have one?
[It'll be a little while before Envy actually responds to any answers, because two seconds after he hits 'send' and realizes what he's done, he chucks the 'Gear clear across his hotel room. Miraculously, it doesn't break the machine entirely, even if the screen gets cracked all to hell. He can't believe he even thought to ask something like that, much less actually went through with it. Since when did he start turning into Lust and asking ridiculous philosophical questions about the nature of existence? That's something he's always just rolled his eyes at and halfway tolerated, why does he feel the need to ask things like this now?]
[But this is a question that's bothered him for more than a year now, ever since he took that brief trip back to Amestris. Does he have a soul after all? And what the hell is he supposed to do with the thing if he does? Mostly he ignores it, leaves it alone as a doubt in the very back of his mind. But then during the last crazy weekend, Heather had been sure he had one, had brought that question back to the forefront. It's been months since then, and he still can't shake it off. And if he has to ask stupid questions to the network in his weakness, then...maybe the answers will let him push this back down into something he can manage.]
What does it mean for someone to have a soul? In your world or in your religion or whatever you think. What does having one give you, or not having one keep you from doing?
how can you even tell if you have one?
[It'll be a little while before Envy actually responds to any answers, because two seconds after he hits 'send' and realizes what he's done, he chucks the 'Gear clear across his hotel room. Miraculously, it doesn't break the machine entirely, even if the screen gets cracked all to hell. He can't believe he even thought to ask something like that, much less actually went through with it. Since when did he start turning into Lust and asking ridiculous philosophical questions about the nature of existence? That's something he's always just rolled his eyes at and halfway tolerated, why does he feel the need to ask things like this now?]
[But this is a question that's bothered him for more than a year now, ever since he took that brief trip back to Amestris. Does he have a soul after all? And what the hell is he supposed to do with the thing if he does? Mostly he ignores it, leaves it alone as a doubt in the very back of his mind. But then during the last crazy weekend, Heather had been sure he had one, had brought that question back to the forefront. It's been months since then, and he still can't shake it off. And if he has to ask stupid questions to the network in his weakness, then...maybe the answers will let him push this back down into something he can manage.]
[text]
Where I'm from, there are technically soulless beings, but they aren't alive in any sense of the word; they remain "dead" or suspended until there's some sort of soul put into them. However, the soul that's put into them wouldn't technically be theirs, I think - I may be wrong on this so don't quote me, but I think that it would just be shoving someone else's consciousness into a different body or container. The container, then, couldn't really be said to have a soul of its own; the soul would still belong to...well, whomever it belonged to before they were put into this new container of theirs.
I think that the best way to judge whether you have one or not would probably be determining whether you have both 1) your own consciousness and sense of self-awareness, and 2) your own personality, distinct from those around you.
[text | anon]
[Yeah, he knows that already, but he'd really rather not hold up a neon sign saying HELLO I AM ALSO FROM AMESTRIS by acting unsurprised about it.]
And would the soul transplanted into the soulless body take over that body with its own individual personality, leaving the original body in that kind of suspended animation? Or dead, I guess is more likely.
Pull that off right, and someone could live forever.
[text]
Though I don't know that it's terribly practical to live forever that way; I suppose that one could, but the problem with it is that the new body might begin to cannibalize the soul to sustain itself, at least theoretically speaking, which would inevitably kill the person in question.
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Not much of a surprise, though. I wouldn't think that putting a soul in anything that isn't its original body would turn out well in any world.
no subject
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But then again, this world seems to be the exception to a lot of rules.
no subject
At the same time, it's also the situation that's most relevant to us right now, isn't it? Exception or not, it's what we have to work with.