From "web" to "soul"

Well, herewith, my fourth and last post on the "web" that connects us, for now. Meanwhile, back over at my local ideas and issues salon, the posts to that thread have veered recklessly back into the realm of fantastical and phantasmagorical hypotheses, mostly way right-brained stories of Gaia and reincarnation and extra sensory kinds of things.

Only a few of us stick our necks out for (even as a left hander myself) some rigorously left-brained thinking on the matter. I say the "web" and even, yes, our "souls" are sentiments, albeit very human and humanizing sentiments - but alas, nothing more. At least nothing more we can observe.

Mark, of the salon, said he didn't have 'a metaphysical bone in his body,' so he felt he was at a loss to converse on such ethereal matters. But I say us un- or a-metaphysical types can get it about as right as it can be gotten.

We can name lots of things that exist only in our fantasies, dreams and wishes, but that doesn't mean that they exist, that we can make them exist, will them into existence.

I don't mean to completely squash the romantic notions of humans' being "heartfelt" and "soulful," but let's not forget that our brains are doing all this work, both observing rather objectively and, very subjectively making some things up - right out of thin air, so to speak. Our brain is not detached from our body or from our surroundings, but the heart does not really "feel" the way, with poetic license, we say it does. And no one has yet proven anything like a soul to exist.

So what is the web?

Sentiment.

And what is the soul?

An utterly human consciousness or self-awareness, mixing sentiment and a longing to be special and wonderful and (even) immortal.

That is what we call the "soul."