I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation last night and had a truly enlightening moment. Go figure. I know it sounds implausible, and most likely, I'm just crazy, but here me out. The character Lal, Data's android daughter has a scene where she experiences a human emotion, contrary to popular belief about the 'current capabilities' of an android. As she expresses her fear of being separated from her father, Data, to Diana Troi; she points to her chest and states "...I feel it...". When I first saw this scene, years ago, I thought that the director and the actress had chosen this movement to dramatize the fact that she is self-aware. Now, I believe that they were really making a post-modern proposition regarding the existence of feelings as a perceived reality. To put it simply, Lal was trying to reach into her chest and touch the 'feeling' that existed within her like any other 'real' object. In her purely logical mind, things that exist must have a presence, whether matter or energy. In our overly visual culture, abstract representations of feelings are common. Hearts for love, Smiles for humor etc. You rarely see an artistic expression of an emotion that attempts to manifest an object the would seem to illicit the physical feelings associated with said emotion. What would that object look like, or could it be better expressed as a system of events occurring in the body and the interaction of the different organs that participate in reacting to the emotional stimulus. Hmmm. The closest thing that I can think of to a physical expression of how emotions actually exist in the body is music. Music exists, because it's real energy moving real objects that affect the air; much like how real experiences impact our bodies perception and interpretation of those experiences to affect our minds. It's like a feedback loop. The mind experiences, the body reacts, the mind reinterprets and analyzes, the body expresses. Maybe it's that interaction itself the brings emotion into reality, that movement between otherwise mundane or even disconnected events.
Hmm.
Well, that's what I gleaned from the moment where Lal "feels" for the first time. I'm sure a more prudent observer would deduce that the motion was instinctual and the only way to express an event that occurs within an individual whether mental, physical or emotional. What do you think?
