Rationalist sonnets about being a person

[NancyLebovitz]

7 sonnets and some comments

A friend tells me that, if there is no soul,
There is no clash of body against mind.
I hate to be contentious, but I find
The case is rather different, on the whole.

For flesh and mind are clashing all the time;
The flesh says “eat!”, the mind says “lose some weight.”
The mind cries “run!”, the flesh drones “vegetate,”
The soul is no wise guilty of this crime.

Am I the athlete who desires to run,
Or else the slugabed who yearns for quiet?
Do I crave food, or would I rather diet?
The I that speaks is both, and neither one.

When flesh and mind contend with shouts obscene
I place the soul—the self—smack in between.

-----smallship1

The body and the mind are the two hands
that weave the self between them, interplay
a dialogue that may change day to day
creates consistency. Self understands

what neither flesh nor mind can apprehend
yet is a fiction and a referee
yet needs to be reined in. So fluently
its guesses become fantasies and end

in things we cannot know, that are not there
-God, Hell and Heaven—all ways to deny
the simple tasks life gives us. Mortify
the flesh, confuse the mind. Hope and despair.

The self’s a servant. Use it, never let
it rule, or you will die full of regret.

-----rozk

:

[Jack]

 These two make much of flesh and limb, but why?
 Switch brains, your bod is mine, my body yours.
 If my mind doth persist I do not die.
 Is not the mind the brain? But this ignores

 All sense. A soul of silicon or cell
 Is still a soul. Persistence, how? Ay, there's
 The rub. Share memories, beliefs as well.
 Chain them together right, that soul, it shares

 Identity with me. Do it again
 And you'll have another. But is the soul
 Unified like it seems? Divide the brain
 Lengthwise and you get two. Are we not whole?

 If not, which half is me, which half another?
 Both are you, fool! You are your brain brother!

[Pavitra]

Voted down without reading.

[NancyLebovitz]

Why?

[Pavitra]

Because the prior probability of something titled “rationalist sonnets about being a person” being any good is low, and the likely degree of badness so abysmal, that reading would be more likely to generate an incorrect judgment of high quality than a correct judgment of high quality. I should downvote even if I think I should upvote. Giving it a chance would just be exposing myself to risk.

[NancyLebovitz]

Were you just going by the title of the post? Should the facts that the post has 7 upvotes (and I think had 8 before you downvoted it) and I have over 5000 karma points affect your priors?

[Pavitra]

Were you just going by the title of the post?

Yes.

Should the facts that the post has 7 upvotes (and I think had 8 before you downvoted it) and I have over 5000 karma points affect your priors?

Not as much as you might think. Being able to get LW karma isn’t a very good predictor of poetic ability, I’ve seen fairly mediocre pro-secular-humanist poetry receive a generally positive reaction on LW before, and the evidence of the title mostly screens off that stuff anyway.