Profile Post

The philosophy blog with the highest Alexa rank, according to blogmetrics.org, is an interesting political commentary blog called Sanjeev Sabhlok’s revolutionary blog. Sabhlok is a man from India who writes passionate political opinion pieces promoting good government policy in India. According to his autobiography on his page, he served in an elite branch of the Indian Government before resigning in 2001. Since then, he has spent his time “managing public policy projects and large organizations on behalf of governments in India, and by providing public policy advice and managing rather smallish public policy projects in Australia.” Now he is a political philosopher and Indian politician. 

His most recent post, from March 16^th, discusses the issues of censorship and free speech in India. The post advocates the Swarna Bharat Party, which according to him is “India’s only liberal party, committed to defending liberty and promoting prosperity.” This is an interesting post that highlights how different Indian culture is from the West. Mr. Sabhlok, having spent a lot of time working and living in Australia, and being a highly educated person, is aware of the differences and writes many blog posts to spread awareness. This particular posts starts out with a dark joke (“Please share widely IF YOU CARE FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY. (If you are committed to your own slavery and poverty, please do nothing.)”) which, in addition to catching the attention of the reader, shows the passion that Sabhlok has for these issues and the weight that these issues carry. Sabhlok asserts that the Indian Censor Board, the government organization responsible for censoring movies and literature deemed too violent or obscene, is oppressive of the free will of the Indian people, and that it is an insult which supposes that the Indian people cannot think for themselves. 

Other posts by Mr. Sabhlok cover issues of unnecessary police violence and corruption. On March 12^th he wrote a blog about the death of a woman in who he claims was in police custody at the time of her death. She had been arrested under suspicion of terrorism, and, according to Sabhlok, after “eight hours of research and analysis” he determined that she must have been in police custody at the time of her death and that police staged the incident that was reported as a cover up. The post is very long, detailing the research that Sabhlok had done to reach his conclusion. Aside from the specifics of this particular incident, the message of this post is that police have no right to kill anyone that they have detained regardless of what that person in charged for, and that it is a terrible crime to deny a person his right to prove his own innocence. This post shows the amount that Sabhlok values fairness, honesty, and equality under the law. 

Mr. Sabhlok posts a few times a week on all sorts of social/political topics from defending GMOs to attacking socialism. His blog is called sabhlokcity.com. WARNING: graphic images of deceased bodies on the March 16^th post.

The Gift of Youth

You are sitting on the operating table, shaking with nervousness. You tell yourself that once this procedure is over, everything will be better. A doctor walks in, and noticing your discomfort, offers a reassuring smile. “I remember how nervous I was my first time. In fact, I’ve had it done twice now.”

Twice! This doctor must be over two hundred years old! You stare into the small mirror you brought along with you. You analyze the wrinkled, sagging skin lining your face and the grey, wiry hair on your head with disgust. Seventy six, a feeble shadow of your former glory. You look back to the doctor and swear he doesn’t look older than thirty. “Well,” he chuckles, “now it’s your turn. You ready?” You close your eyes.  

You feel yourself sinking. A bright light, a loud whirring, what is happening? A loud snap, and everything is warm. You are underwater, panicking. You cannot breathe. You hear the sound of bubbles, splashing, and a muffled yelling. With your legs, you push yourself to the surface and gasp for air. You open your eyes and can finally see the smiling face of the doctor. He is holding you by your shoulders asking how you feel. You begin to speak and startle yourself. A completely unfamiliar voice. A young, powerful voice. It worked.

You leap from the pool in such an excitement that the doctor doesn’t even have a chance to remove the wires from your body. Your body! Thick, flowing hair, tight skin, and muscles that you haven’t had in decades. You can see clearly now, clearer than you can ever remember being able to see. You can jump again! You can dance again! The gift of youth has made you euphoric.

Then you stop. You notice a very familiar face staring back at yours from the operating table. Sagging skin, wiry hair, and piercing eyes on a face that appeared to be in pain. The eyes are unsettling, and before you can ask the doctor to close them, the mouth opens, and lets out a cough. Startled, the doctor moves quickly to the operating table, seemingly confused. You ask him what’s happening but he doesn’t answer.

You hear a quiet, weak, but familiar voice from the operating table. “Doc… I don’t think it worked… what’s going on?” The doctor is backing slowly away from the table. He is muttering something to himself and shaking his head. “You’re sorry? What are you talking about?” you hear the weak voice ask. You approach the doctor cautiously. He is still muttering to himself, rocking himself back and forth on the floor of the operating room.

“What have we done? What have I done? It was supposed to be a transfer, not a copy…” The doctor is laying on the floor, hyperventilating and hysterical. “I am not a copy! I am not a copy!”

You lock eyes with the person whose life was once yours, then look back in the mirror. What am I?

***This story was inspired by the thought experiment known as “The Brain in the Vat” by Hilary Putnam. The brain in the vat believes it is living a real life when in reality, the life it knows is just a computer simulation. Similarly, the new, young person in the story believes themselves to be the transferred mind of the old person in a younger body, when in reality they are just an exact clone. If there were an exact clone of your mind in another body, is it any less you than you are? Is consciousness something physical that actually lies in the brain, is it the sum total of all of your conscious and unconscious thoughts, emotions and memories, or both?