Reconstruction

It seems prudent, at least in an earthly sense, to abandon my own personality as flawed, and construct a new one from the remains. Since the material is second-hand seconds anyway, I can't expect even earthly perfection from the new one; and also since it is the old that is constructing the new, the best I can do is to avoid the abvious worst flaws--a lot of double negatives will be involved and not much positives.

Unreactivity seems to be the thing to aim for. My old personality had a lot of deep feelings, desires, likes, dislikes and reactions, all of which led to a lot of grief both to the patient himself and all those around him. It is unrealistic to attempt, or even consider, building a complete automaton from such volatile and dangerous material--it would be inhenrently unstable--and it seems that the best way to acheive something reasonably standardized must avoid all needs, desiers, longings and reactions. With these features no longer built in, the subject will not be totally characterless, but will neither misreact in society nor be racked by permanent pathological grief. This approach also avoids violating the original religious and moral principles that the subject has requested be kept along with the original body--indeed they will usually be fulfilled much better than was ever realistic to expect from his original personality, thus making the effect of the whole operation quite pleasing in all.

[Thoughts] John C. G. Sturdy

Last modified: Sun Jun 10 18:17:20 GMT Daylight Time 2007