Assimilation

Hopefully I don't have too many Trekkers that read my blog and are going to debate my metaphor, but with that possibility in mind, I'm going to boldly - I can't even finish it.

So those of you familiar with Star Trek will know about the Borg.  A cyborg race that injects you with nanotechnology and turns you into one of them.  It is called assimilating.

Now imagine yourself seeing someone you don't know (or maybe someone you do) and making up a story of what they are doing.  I don't mean that you are imagining them doing something.  You are really seeing them do something, but you are imagining why they are doing it.  You create their back story almost instantly and from there determine why they are making all the decisions they are making.  If you are still having trouble with this concept, maybe think of a baby crying on a plane and how the mother decides to deal with that.  Where did your mind go?  An experience from your past?  An imagined experience?  How old was the mother?  Did you react to her in your imagination?  Well all of this is happening in real life to, moment to moment.  You create a story. 

To you, that story is the truth.  You believe your own story, not bothering to question it until something drastic happens and you are forced to re-think it.  I'm sure some of you are more open to changing your story then others, but you're still creating a story.

So then what do you do with your story?  You share it.  I mean it is the truth for you, so why isn't it just the truth?  You complain to your friend about the crying baby, maybe even hours after you've gotten off the plane.  Maybe you actually talk to the mother.  You try to include everyone you can, not just in this story, but all of your stories.  The more you include people, the more they are the truth.  You are assimilating people.  You are putting your nano-probes into people in the hopes they will join you.


When I was 2 and a half years old, my parents flew with me from San Diego to Albany.  The story I was given was that I was very sick and all the flight attendants loved me and felt bad for me.  I imagine the story of at least some of the people on the plane were something along the lines of "shut that damn baby up, why isn't his mom doing anything?".  Do you know what my story was?  I didn't have a story.  I don't even remember it.  Pain; react.  Not a story.  Just a body doing what it does.


So I ask you, do we want to be a bunch of Borg, endlessly trying to assimilate each others stories or do we want to be more?