Really, it's all motivated by a cut towards unpredictability. Of all things in the world for those who spend their time outside the sphere of asceticism and world-flitting holiness, there's nothing worse than having your actions called out beforehand. I remember a laughable story from an old friend recollecting the actions of a previous mechanical girlfriend (nice, meek, pretty). He told me how at a movie theater he watched her from a distance as she performed her usual social moves, calling them out to a friend seconds before she made them: now a high pitched "hi!" and a beaming smile, now the unselfconscious push back of her hair before she taps the shoulder of a friend as a preemptive greeting, now the cute laugh after a pseudo joke, now the shift back to boyfriend home base after a clichéd goodbye -- before punching him in the ribs in gentle exasperation after being told about his proud little project. Needless to say, they broke up.
What's a better analogy for predictability than the machine? The machine is the antithesis to the human being, with its programmable movements and its formulaic stimulus responses. We want to be unique, original, our own self-created surprises, as the world stands in applause to our glamorous eccentricity. We have free will, damnit, no matter what Dan Dennett or the nasally neuroscientists say -- nevermind if we never actually use it towards the task of becoming who we are. And of course, there's tragic irony. The rage for self-titled randomness is popular for the most boring, predictable people, as if they use the term to clothe the nakedness of their pedestrian nature. The fun ones, the truly spontaneous collections of spirit and flesh, have better things to do than talk about themselves for any other reason than well-wished self-deprecation. A law to add: self consciousness and true spontaneity don't mix. If you think you're random, you're not, caught instead by the cultural meme of wanting to fit the ideal of randomness. Isn't that's what a fake is? A person who wants to do something for the sake of the label that follows it, be it random, intelligent, athletic, humble, sweet, and so on, the river quite dreadfully long and blandishly downhill.
Sartre defined genius as what a man creates when he is looking for a way out. Conformity is a form of spiritual asphyxiation, which predictability always attends. And how is conformity possible? Not through the chameleonlike imitation of actions made by another, but a secret inward decision to say "I will fit this image," much to the disposal of individuality that comes with it. To conform is to say yes to a plan for who you should be rather than the one which comes in multiple gifts the day hands to you. Put another way, I am my own persona when I do the things that organically come to me (read a book, comb my hair, learn French, shop for coffee). The instant an inclination to act a certain way presents itself to me in prepackaged form and the feeling of acting a role overtakes me, then I know that who I am is waiting by the wayside until the performance is over.
Who we are, who we should be, is a collection of atoms charged by an engine of creativity, with each track left in our wake laughed at in appreciation by God and perceptive men. The more generalizable the predictions about our behavior the better. I might have a vague sense that you'll either read a book or play a diddle on piano, but what will it be in either case? Better still if you were to break my preplanned dichotomy and commit that unheard of act of taking a walk on a fine Summer night. The hero in my mind is the one with such existential creativity -- such a self that can be itself by attending to its own possibilities, by living his own life without looking outside for admirers -- that I can only predict that he will wake in the morning, do things, and sleep, if even that.
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