The nature of Insect consciousness
quote:
Originally posted by LexxLurker:
First off Daleks the expert on the Insect essence so hopefully he’ll jump in here. But remember that the final HDS was not HDS. It was a human with the insect conciousness and his own conciousness.
I’m flattered you consider me the authority on the subject. I was waiting for Valdron to say something. [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] Well, I think, in order for a host to become His Divine Shadow, the essence has to be bonded to them. Then bonding is more than what happened to Rock Hound or Yottskry or Kai, so they were never really Divine Shadows. The Insect essence is unable to completely extract itself from the brain of host it has been bonded to, so there is a remanent essence. That is why the Divine Predecessors still think like Divine Shadows, and why Kai doesn’t.
The Divine Predecessors may have small vestiges of their human origins left (cleansing may be a selective destruction of brain centers; eliminate memories, personality, and free will without damaging the parts necessary to operate the body; so maybe it’s impossible to completely destroy the humanity). That may be part of the reason why they have different personalities. Alternately, that may be because they have been shaped by different experiences, and memories are not all carried over to the next host brain.
Insects, and thus His Divine Shadow, seem to have emotions, but not in the same way typical humans do. They are highly intellectualized and not as strong. They may have been something like Kai in mentality, but with motivations and probably stronger feelings. At any rate, they were logical, if not entirely fair in their judgements.
This changed when the Insect essence was bonded to an uncleansed human host. The new Divine Shadow acted human in ways. He was more emotional, and thus more erratic and impulsive. He had passions. The host may very well have been an unstable individual. He was described as “a truly viscious human being” and looked like a crazy Nazi skinhead, so I think it’s safe to assume he was a sociopath of some sort. He decided to act swiftly and severely, destroying 20,000 planets rather than investigating them for Heresy. The cleansing of human flesh was probably part of the Insect’s original plan, but the new Divine Shadow carried it out ahead of schedule, so it was over six months after he had become Divine Shadow, and probably wasn’t carried out properly (if he had intended to destroy all human life int he League of 20,000 Planets, he failed; look at all the people and societies left in the second season). His Divine Shadow said himself that the Giga Shadow was prematurely reborn.
I think the personality of an uncleansed brain thet the essence is bonded to becomes inextricably interwoven with the Insect essence. That is why, even in the insect body, His Shadow did unreasonable things like chase one little bug to its doom, and still spoke with the voice of its last host.
A semi-relevant note: The Divine Predecessors apparently believed that time passed in cycles (though this was not made part of Divine canon). The last Divine Shadow, however, did not hold such a belief. This may be because of the religious beliefs of the culture the human host came from. Due to preconceptions of the human half, the conclusion that time only moves in a straight line and prophecies are not possible was drawn, and he was willing to waiger his life on that faith by letting Kai loose.