I really had a nice weekend with bliss on Friday and actually getting a few things on the todo list done the rest of the weekend. Maybe I am actually starting to de-stress! Saturday we went to help Renee and Chris move. Luckily they had already been taking things over to their new house for a while so only the big items were left. Three of Chris' brothers were there, and at least three couples who were friends, including us, which made for many hands and light work. The entire thing only took a couple of hours and Renee fed us lunch. I did discover that it is a good thing our house is all on one floor though. They have a spiral staircase in there new house, which is something that I had wanted if we built our house (but since we found this one and didn't have to build I never got one.) Going up and down those stairs was really painful for my knees. It turns out that the arthritis in my knees really hates the height of each step. Who knew? I'm really glad that they rented a manual forklift to take the heavier items to the second floor directly rather than up the stairs. Of course, there were several items that never would have made it at all without it. Actually it is kind of a nifty little lifter that has hand pedals to raise the platform up to 18 feet.
I wonder if you put a platform on the fork part and sat down on it if it would be relatively safe to lift a person? We've been trying to find a way to get some aerial photos of our Dearinth but the barn is either not high enough or too far to the side and the tree has too many branches in the way to get a clear shot. I was up for trying helium balloons attached to a chair, the chair tied to safety lines so it wouldn't float away and a safety belt so an occupant couldn't fall out but I couldn't convince my partner of that one (grin).
It was nice to see everyone at Renee's and it turned out to be quite pleasant for a move. Afterward Tom and I rented Galaxy Quest and Bicentennial Man. I saw Galaxy Quest when it came out but Tom and Corey (my younger son) hadn't seen it yet. It was a kick to watch them enjoying it and nearly as much fun the second time around in any case. I also really liked Bicentennial Man but Corey thought that everyone, other than the robot, were portrayed as rather simplistic, not changing and growing as they grew older. Only Andrew seemed to learn and grow. I didn't think it was quite that drastic but he did have a point. We tried to point out that it was about the essential questions of what makes a human a human but he said the movie indicates that getting a body that mimics humans in how it works was apparently all that was necessary. We disagreed. However, I don't want to spoil the movie for any who haven't seen it yet and might.
It is an interesting question though and one that StarTrek often addresses. What makes a person a person? Is it being built like a human? Is it thinking like a human? Or is it some other combination of thinking and understanding that can be different from us and housed in a different body and still be a person? Can it be built like Asimov's androids/robots or like Data from StarTrek, the Next Generation or does it have to be organic and born alive in a way we can recognize as alive to be a person?
It seems to be so easy for humans to dehumanize someone. In war there are names like gook to make the enemy seem as if they are not human so that it is easier to pretend one is not really killing people. And for some just having a different color skin or a different religion is sufficient to be non-people. If we can let such superficial differences tell us that someone isn't human what would we do with true aliens? Or perhaps we would finally come to realize that race wasn't such a big issue. I would hate to think that it would take something like encountering an alien race before humans would finally get the message that we are all just one people, though.
Besides people really only come in one color anyway - we are all just shades of brown from very pale beiges to very dark almost- black and a variety of shades in between. The only white person I have ever seen is an albino who lacks melanin, which is the coloring agent in skin. And once I saw a man who was dark skinned enough to really be called black. He had the richest, darkest skin I have ever seen. Other than that we are all just variations on a theme as near as I can tell.
Copyright © 2000 Kyril Oakwind