What is a Zombie?
In philosophy, a zombie is a thought experiment. Imagine a being programmed to react exactly like a human in every situation but lacking any awareness of what it is doing.
The zombie experiment was designed to address the problem of consciousness, and this is also one of the reasons I chose the title Zombies of Marx for my book – available on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/j5S8LeL
A zombie, if stung by a bee, reacts like a human but does not feel pain. If it eats a cake, it can simulate pleasure or disgust, but it has no awareness of whether it likes it or not.
It has no perception of being here and now, yet it behaves as if it were. It does not know what it feels but mimics a human reaction.
If this seems hard to imagine, think of a narcissist: an unhappy being who has sacrificed all passion in the pursuit of recognition and is no longer capable of experiencing genuine pleasure or emotions. A zombie is, ultimately, a narcissist without delusions of grandeur.
The zombies of ideas, mostly heirs of Marxism, have no awareness of the present, of how the world has changed, of the winding paths history has taken, or of the failures of their prophets.
They continue to preach a world that no longer exists, hoping to be right, to be acknowledged. But they do nothing to realize what they believe in because they see existence as a mechanism that offers no real choices.
I, on the other hand, believe that the future is wide open and depends on us. Humans have this extraordinary ability to be unpredictable, to change their destiny. It is a wonderful gift and at the same time a curse, but it is what makes them truly self-aware.
Nothing is set in stone. And those who believe they can control everything, who think they always know the present and the future, are, in the end, just zombies. And like all zombies, they are destined to lose.
The zombie experiment was designed to address the problem of consciousness, and this is also one of the reasons I chose the title Zombies of Marx for my book – available on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/j5S8LeL
A zombie, if stung by a bee, reacts like a human but does not feel pain. If it eats a cake, it can simulate pleasure or disgust, but it has no awareness of whether it likes it or not.
It has no perception of being here and now, yet it behaves as if it were. It does not know what it feels but mimics a human reaction.
If this seems hard to imagine, think of a narcissist: an unhappy being who has sacrificed all passion in the pursuit of recognition and is no longer capable of experiencing genuine pleasure or emotions. A zombie is, ultimately, a narcissist without delusions of grandeur.
The zombies of ideas, mostly heirs of Marxism, have no awareness of the present, of how the world has changed, of the winding paths history has taken, or of the failures of their prophets.
They continue to preach a world that no longer exists, hoping to be right, to be acknowledged. But they do nothing to realize what they believe in because they see existence as a mechanism that offers no real choices.
I, on the other hand, believe that the future is wide open and depends on us. Humans have this extraordinary ability to be unpredictable, to change their destiny. It is a wonderful gift and at the same time a curse, but it is what makes them truly self-aware.
Nothing is set in stone. And those who believe they can control everything, who think they always know the present and the future, are, in the end, just zombies. And like all zombies, they are destined to lose.
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