Fri 3 Apr 2009
You’ve been given the ability to change shape into other living things. What would you do with this power? How do you think this would affect your sense of identity? After all, if you could be literally any living thing, then who are you?
Posted by BrandB5 answers so far!
A massively endowed wealthy weightlifter.
not that i’m not massively endowed. I’m just not a wealthy weightlifter, but I wanted to cover my bases in the event of one of those O. Henry style “I got everything I wanted but… oh no!” style bullshits.
or I suppose I wanted to cover my most important base.
Why settle for one shape? I think the first thing I’d do is get someone to take a picture of me, in case I forget what I originally looked like. Shape changing would be like changing your phone number- you know you’re still you, but nobody on the outside can tell. I’d want to be able to turn back into me to stay in touch with friends and family.
Maybe shape changing could be used for science- infilterate the giant pandas, for example, to try and solve extinction problems. That might be both fun and morally satisfying. I wonder if knowledge about the living thing you shape changed into would come with the change, or if you’d always be in the dark, pretending to be something you are ignorant about.
Hmm, well I’m sure I’d want to turn into a bird and fly around sometimes. Not to mention the savings on gas if I simply flew instead of drove!
The thing about changing shape is that part of your identity is shaped by how others see you, hence the question about self-identity. It would be interesting to see what affects it might have on young person vs an older person, to see how solid identity is at different stages in life.