The Parable of the Only Person Alive
Let’s say you were the only person alive in the universe, which means the sole human being on planet earth. You wake up each day, and there’s only you and there will always only be you. As the only person alive, you come to know yourself as the standard for human being. It feels pretty good to basically be perfect and complete as what you are. Right? It’s not like there’s another human being around to compare yourself to.
As outsiders looking in on this imagined reality, there are pros and cons. One con could possibly be loneliness. The universe is quite a fathomless place to be the only human person with no one to talk to about it or make the best of it. Even in the first Bible stories, two humans are created to endure the rigors of human existence together.
But on the other hand, a pro of being the sole person in the universe is that you are spared the friction and volatility of living with other human beings. Think of all the drama you’d be spared if you didn’t have to deal with difficult people. Especially for an introvert, temporarily removing oneself from other human beings is a matter of sustaining sanity. (Thank you for understanding.)
So let’s say you are bumping along as the only person alive, enjoying your connection to nature and your pet Morganucodon, and suddenly you shockingly spot something strange in the distance. It’s a thing that resembles you. As you draw closer you realize, it is another you! The existential tectonic plates have radically shifted - there’s no longer just you, there’s two! Uh oh. Before, you were the standard. Your entire sense of self was predicated upon being the perfect fulfillment of what you were. But all of that has changed. There is now another you to compare yourself to.
The importance of this parable is setting the stage for the idea that self-consciousness requires the existence of an “other”, which ultimately creates a an epic existential conflict.
A few weeks ago, I published an article titled, The Parable of the Only Person Alive: One Deconstruction to Rule Them All. It was a thought experiment I used to approach the topic of the deconstruction of language. I decided to return to this parable to continue fleshing out some of my latest thinking about religious deconstruction and the atheistic sentiments I find in the biblical narrative and the historical origins and evolution of the Christian religion.
I first began sharing these thoughts at my ORTCON24 presentation, which I detailed in the article, A-theist Theology? Inventing New Words and What I Learned at ORTCON 2024. I followed up this article with a second one titled, What if God disappeared? The Bond Between Christianity and Atheism. I’m going to continue with my parable of the only person alive to press forward in fleshing out my thoughts.
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