Mindscaping Philosophy Journal Prompt: Imagine a world where experiences serve as currency that you can trade with others. Once traded, these experiences leave your memory completely. Which experiences would you hold onto as invaluable, which would you be willing to part with, and what new experiences would you seek to acquire on this experiences market? Also, what experiences do you think will fetch the most, be most popular?
You know how minimalists took to saying that they would rather spend money on experiences rather than things? Well, that got me thinking one day: what if you could buy other people’s experiences?
There kinda already is an app for that, called Instagram. Problem with Instagram is the experiences you can find on there are mostly fake-ass experiences. Don’t get me wrong, that is part of their charm, but what about genuine experiences?
For example, say I’d love to summit Mount Everest (I don’t ) but don’t want to bother with all the work that would entail. If I could purchase, at a small markup, the experience from someone who did do the work, and their memories could somehow be exported to my consciousness, would that be cool?
(I mean, once we are all living in the barren landscape of Mars, or some such, I imagine that our homesickness will kick in we are going to want to experience earth somehow.)
That then got me thinking about the person on the other end of the transaction, the seller of experiences, and I put myself in their shoes. I wondered what experiences I have that might prove valuable to others. And this is where the question (above) came from.
Starting with my most expensive experience, my Ph.D. in Philosophy, it was definitely not worth what I paid for it, and I’m not talking just the tuition. I don’t know how I did it, really I don’t, because for a couple years in there, I was paying my graduate program to teach their undergraduate courses. But I digress…
At the risk of opening myself up to controversy, I would sell my Ph.D. in Philosophy in a heartbeat, if I could. (And maybe that is what I am doing here on Substack.) It’s a nice to have, and I am who I am because of it, but I would still have been a perfectly fine human without it.
Would you sell your advanced degree? You would loose all the knowledge and memories associated with it….
If I would sell my Philosophy degree, what wouldn’t I sell? A couple things come to mind. I would not sell my traveling experiences. This is odd, given how popular travel influencers are on Instagram, so you know it’s a profitable gig. But there is something about those years where I traveled a lot. The first time, when I was just nineteen and took to Europe, spending the bulk of my time living in Edinburgh, Scotland. And the second time in my late forties, when I traveled through Latin America. Not only would I not be the same person without these experiences, I would be less human. In fact, I would like to remember them more.
There are some brief experiences I also wouldn’t sell — feeling the most thirsty I have ever felt after a Eurythmics concert at the Berkeley Bowl; the way pizza tastes in Italy; the warmth of the sea during a thunder storm; the softness of someone’s lips in a kiss.
What about you?
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