23/02/13 06:24 [Saturday]
I have been thinking about the sense of being "I". Probably the origin of these thoughts this morning was a feeling - from the wear and tear involved in packing for our removal and most specifically from getting up and down into the loft - that I am growing old, and a realisation that I will not endure forever and also that I am not quite the same as I was as a child (and yet, by counterpoint, I am still "I" as I was in those days).
When I was going through puberty I used to have very strong feelings that it was very odd that I should be "I", that is this person born on that particular date and living through those particular life experiences. It seemed such a statistically rare thing, that I should be this person and no other.
I suspect the strength of those feelings I had related to the personality type I was (to put it like that). In other words I was half way to being autistic, because of the way dopamine operated in my brain (and autism, Asperger's and schizophrenia are surely all closely connected), and therefore felt very powerfully that I was an individual separate from all the rest. This feeling I had was obviously exaggerated too by my being an only child.
And it is still a question of interest to me, what is it that makes me "I" or, to put it another way, how to explain the mechanism in human beings which lets them know they are each an individual with bounds in time and in spatial extension.
Readers who follow much of what I write will not be surprised at my conclusion that what creates the sense of "I" in people is the fact of evolution. What "I" am is whatever is preserved by mechanisms of self-defence combined with whatever is passed to succeeding generations. What is passed to succeeding generations is the tendency not to die, and what "I" is is the ensemble that doesn't die. My skin dies fairly regularly, and (I suppose) every cell in my body dies in the course of my lifetime, but something - the tendency not to die, or more physically the structures implementing that tendency - does not die until the final catastrophe. And after the final catastrophe, if I have had children or otherwise transmitted the tendency not to die, some part of what is "I" lives on.
What I am saying, in more practical terms, is that when I fight to remain alive (or take steps less vigorous than fighting, although to say fighting brings it out more powerfully) what is "I" is the part - or in fact the structure - which nature gives me the innate feeling I must preserve. This is not any particular portion of my body, because I would feel willing to sacrifice a limb or other body part for the sake of "self"-preservation. It must be some complex structure - involving the continuing ability to think, unarguably - which even though it is complex I have innate understanding of (even though I cannot say what it is except approximately through writing an essay). But whatever it is evolution has led me to know that it exists and to understand it for the practical purpose of tending not to die.
It seems to me (to take the matter a little further) that people fall into two broad camps, that is those who are more physical in their attitude and those who are more mental (which latter is a bit of a pun, I admit). Those who are more physical will have it in their nature to perpetuate the tendency not to die by procreating children. In this case I am tempted to say what is "I" - for them - is their DNA, since this is what gets preserved from generation to generation: and the 'structure' it gives rise to is a particular body type plus a particular way of looking at the world deriving from the results on the brain of the DNA blueprint. Furthermore such people will not come close to being autistic because they need to interact with a member of the opposite gender in order to procreate. They are not selfish in that they accept that their children will not be identical copies of themselves but will share part of their partner's DNA. Of course the largest part of humanity leans to this end of the spectrum of people who are physical in their attitude. This follows from the fact that procreating children has been the readiest means of transmitting the tendency not to die, failing a very complex interwoven Society to preserve more abstract structures.
People who are more mental transmit the tendency not to die through ideas - abstract structures - which when implemented (in a Society capable of implementing them and saving them beyond the one generation, that is through libraries, universities and more recently developed informational networks) protect and preserve human beings.
What I gather from the internet leads me to suppose that mental people are likely to be more successful (counted as a proportion of 'Society') in future. People who do little but think and who in earlier times suffered feelings of isolation affecting them adversely now have a resource of emotional support, and moreover can get their ideas across without needing wealth or a specific position in academia. Society in Britain (and likely other jurisdictions too) through the ways of the Government machine is striving more to include ideas from all species of persons, including those who are mental to the degree of mental illness, in formulating policy for the way forward.
