ftw!

¶ filters Posted 21 years, 5 months ago on July 13, 2004
Think of the thoughts that go through my mind as a continuous signal with numerous frequency components, with the spectrum being all the different feelings and emotions I could have. If you could read that signal directly, you'd know everything that I ever thought and felt. Every ounce of happiness, despair, impulse, and desire.

When I speak to different people, parts of this signal are transmitted to them. But the signal is filtered, with a different filter for every person. For people I don't know, it's a narrowband filter. I only show very select frequencies of the signal of my mind. If I don't know you, you don't get to know when I'm sad and depressed, or when I'm hungry or sleepy. As a person becomes closer and closer to me, the band widens, and more frequencies are passed through. Each individual frequency component is also filtered over time, usually with a lowpass filter to smooth it out. I'll tell good friends how I feel, but I won't tell them every time my mood changes. For my closest friends, even those lowpass filters aren't very selective, and any time they tune in, they see a lot of the variations and changes going through my mind.

But I don't think anyone will every be close enough to me to get that raw, unfiltered signal. Somehow, it's just not something I would do.

This blog pretty much gets the complete stranger filter.

Re: filters

Posted 21 years, 5 months ago by Sumi • • Reply

I don't know, Albot, about your blog getting the stranger filter. What you've written is rather introspective and revealing (or was that the whole point, and I'm stating the obvious? I'm a little slow, what can I say). You might have less control than you think over this narrowband filter, or any filter you think you're placing between You and People. ;-) As for anyone ever getting You, completely unfiltered -- well, our dear Luke might differ with me, but I don't think it's necessarily desirable to have someone have access to your every thought, your every emotion, your every molecule. It's wonderful to be an individual, and inherent in that is a state of solitude at your very core, born of your singularity -- and that, to me, is an essence to be embraced, not doubted or resented. I hope you're not doubting and resenting the thought of no one getting that raw, unfiltered signal. Crimminy, did I make sense? I'm half-delirious from a 10-hour multi-peak hike. Well, Luke, disagree with me already! What's taking you so long to hit "One Comment" and write?!

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