Humans or Dancers

6:44 AM me: Hey mike

  How are you?

6:45 AM berstff27: Fine

  And you?

 me: Tired. And my body hurts

  But, fine

6:46 AM berstff27: Why are you tired? Did you give plasma?

 me: No, there was a school dance yesterday, harvest

 berstff27: Ah. Did you go with someone?

6:47 AM me: Yes, Egg. It was a high school dance

6:48 AM I realized how much I miss dancing with people I love

6:52 AM berstff27: Yes. You're quite the dancer. But are we dancers or are we human?

6:53 AM me: Yesterday I was a dancer

6 minutes

6:59 AM me: I foresook my humanity, and became a part of the music

7:00 AM A natural extension of the art

 berstff27: But the music was human

 me: Naw, the music was art

  Made by humans

7:01 AM But separate

7:03 AM berstff27: But isn't it an expression of humanity?

  Music devoid of meaning is merely noise. But any meaning of our music must surely be human.

7:06 AM me: I think I would dance to rhythemical noise

  And call it art

  Idk

7:07 AM I guess that would imply I create music from sound

  But then I would just say that part of being a dancer is creating music from noise

  And therefore I can be entirely dancer while still foresaking humanity

 berstff27: But even rhythm is a just the human appreciation for order and predictability.

7:08 AM But whenever you create music from sound you do so through the lense of your humanity

7:11 AM me: I don't think so. I think it would be, when I'm human I create and evaluate music as a human; and as a dancer, I evaluate it as a dancer. That is to say, I may love songs as a human that I hate as a dancer

7:13 AM berstff27: How can a dancer evaluate anything devoid of being human? Our humanness is the substrate of our very thought.

7:16 AM me: That's not true. Certainly, we share many thoughts about survival, eating, drinking, where to locate ourselves with animals. Indeed, a dancer's very existence depends on his music

7:17 AM He would certainly evaluate various rhythms as far as they are able to keep him existing

7:18 AM That is to say, a monkey who would survive by dancing, or at least, by being in the presence of good music, would surround himself with good music

7:19 AM berstff27: But there is no such monkey. There is no such person.

7:20 AM And by substrate of our thought. I meant that a dancer is still a person and cannot even begin to view the world except through humans eyes and human ears.

 me: But there is such a dancer

  But with monkey eyes and monkey ears

7:21 AM It would be just as effective

 berstff27: No. That would lead to a monkey dancer. Because they might not recognize beat or harmony in any way similar to a human.

7:23 AM me: Ok, well I'm assuming it has the same human brain at that point

  Just because a dancer has the same body as humans doesn't make it human.

 berstff27: I think it would.

7:24 AM me: Then being human is a worthless group

  Based solely in the physical world

  Pfffft

7:30 AM berstff27: I think such a group would matter. Its important to remember that we have limitations by the very fact that we are trapped in these human forms.

7:31 AM me: Limits only if you care about the fact that we have human forms; the forms are practically self serving; you justify caring about them because of the limitations that only exist because we have them

6 minutes

7:38 AM berstff27: What does that even mean? You cannot smell or hear as a dog would. So you could not dance like one. To think you could would be foolish.

7:39 AM me: I meant it as, you think recognizing the value of our human body is important because of the limitations of the human body

7:42 AM berstff27: And why would that be wrong?

7:45 AM me: Because you can only justify valuing something if it would be missed if we didn't have it

7:46 AM berstff27: are you saying that's wrong?

7:47 AM I would say you can only value something by fully understanding what you have. Which may or may not involve the experience of missing it.

5 minutes

7:53 AM me: I would say that yes, you can only value something if you know it. But that's more of a prereq; valuing something is based on how much you , not necessarily enjoy it, but... want it? Or, recognize the need to it. But the limitations of being human is neither wanted or needed. I'm not disputing (I may dispute every value you give to it, but I'm not disputing the possibility of) the value of humanity

12 minutes

8:05 AM berstff27: By your own words then if you don't have an understanding of the limitations of humanity you can't even begin to value it or not. I'm not saying you should appreciate the limitations but you should recognize them.

8:06 AM me: Ah

  Ok, I misread your thing. When you said "I think such a group would matter. Its important to remember that we have limitations by the very fact that we are trapped in these human forms.", I read that as "I think such a grouping would be valuable because of the limitations of the group".