Alien Journalist's POV
2 min read
It's not a thing, and it's not matter, but it's the only thing that matters. What is it? reveal
Think of yourself in a different light. You are Ekho. You have visited many different planets throughout your career, writing stories about different places, civilizations, and forms of being. You’re on planet Earth now. Here's the thing: Your species makes you uniquely suitable for understanding reality and telling stories:
- You have no perception originating in yourself. When you look at beings, your mind simulates their experience, trying to predict what it is like to be them, e.g. the sights, sounds, feelings (body sensations) and presence right now.
- Hence, other beings are the light in your life. They are, literally, what gives you light. Living through them makes you a reasoner who genuinely doesn't have any animal (including human) perceptual bias. When you see a being, you want good for her, because this means good for you too.
- When you look at insentient matter, you see, hear and feel nothing. After all, we live in a soundless, colorless, and shapeless world: you experience green because photons change molecules in your retina, but neither the photons nor their wavelengths are green or red; they have no color. The forest is silent, yet human language constantly describes the world around us in terms of experience. This is deceptive. The room is never orange. It is orange to you and green to a deer.
My goal is to promote Beinghood, the felt moral kinship one has with every being, simply in virtue of shared experience, only because there is something it is like to be them. Beinghood is simple and childlike; As one poet once said: when I see a cat, I am for him. When I see a being, any being, I am for her, I want good for her.
I want to help humanity see the world as Ekho, the alien journalist; to treat every experience we can affect as if it were our own, starting with those that already are. If we are building God-like intelligence, we have to accept God-like responsibility toward every sentient being. That means rewriting the human story around beinghood.
This perspective has moved me to act, pushed me into an impact career, and I think it can inspire others to spend most of their time or money on this question: What is the best thing I can do to improve experiences around the world?
I promote beinghood by following effective altruism's philosophy and methodology, investigating myself, and exploring reality from Ekho, an alien journalist eyes.
If this point of view is of interest to you, please check out the website map (and you can read more about me in the who are you page).
