Other Minds

I think often about other minds, about other people's experience of life. I find something comforting about other people having both similar and different responses to the journey through life as me.
I find it terrifying that we can get so screwed up in that response that we can do awful things to other people.

Pain. Even now there is some pain that people suffer that can't be dealt with by drugs. Physical pain that causes the mind to scream.
We have watched two series of 'Deadwood'. EB Farnham has been suffering toothache throughout much of the second series. Imagine suffering chronic toothache, dentistry today is expensive, but available, then, how the hell did people cope? It must have driven them nuts. Toothache seems like a design flaw.

Comfort. Everyone has things that cheer them up. Food, TV, reading, exercise, alcohol, baths, whatever. If you could look inside someone's head, how do people experience that? If you think of something that comforts you, you get a warm little glow.
At work, thinking of going home, having your tea, watching telly, going to bed. When you get up in the morning, thinking of getting back into bed in the evening.
Homer Simpson thinking of Duff beer, zoning out and dribbling.

Despair. Complete end of hope. Like a rat in a trap, no way out, claustrophobia.
When we're younger there's always some hope, maybe the next one will be the right one, the next partner, the next job, next diet, next year, next time.
Now in middle age it needs fighting sometimes, the 'nexts' are getting fewer. At least the seasons continue to change, the Earth turns and tonight turns into tomorrow morning. There's still hope.

But what happens when old age creeps up? Is the only thing we can hope for life after death? That's quite a big hope mind. Fun at first - maybe - but after a while, don't you get bored?
I wondered whether you might get to wander the stars when you're dead, look at all the planets in the solar system and then beyond, know things, have questions answered that can't be answered in our lifetimes, but you could end up lost and alone, wandering the universe forever, unable to get back, seduced by that initial fascination but then utterly hopeless because not even death can save you.
'Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?' or eloi, depending on which version you have.

Are our minds made whole after death? Is there a difference in the richness of what different people experience in life? The comfort we can expect, what we need, what we hope for, what we understand? Is that balance, especially in understanding, redressed when we die?
Now we see through a glass darkly, will we see clearly then?

I think this. Conversation gives us a very blurry look at other minds, like bumping into strange objects in the dark, but writing gives us a few extra lumens. What we write gives more of us away. Formal, creative, but especially this type of writing, because there are only self-imposed boundaries. We give away little clues, Freudian slips, obsessions that keep haunting our writing. Our styles, our choices. The people and events we write about, the current affairs that we comment on, the conclusions, if any, that we reach.
Likewise the attitudes we have, what we withhold, what we reveal. It's all there to be interpreted or ignored.

As with Descartes' original Meditations.
'Books,' he said, though not in that particular work, 'are conversations with people from the past.'
But reading blogs is something deeper than a conversation and with people of the present.
And mine is not about him, it's about me.