It occurred to me that the thoughts in my mind are too complicated for me to comprehend, or at least too intricate to grasp completely, holistically, at any given moment. What that seems to suggest is pretty damn fascinating.
Consider an analogy: a story written down on a piece of paper by an author. The story exists, but it cannot comprehend itself. The analogy may be somewhat faulty since the paper is actually inanimate and cannot “comprehend” anything, but I think it’s still telling. No one would ever claim that the paper itself, the story itself, represents the whole picture. It’s the story in context, the fact that the story emerged from the author’s thoughts, that makes it a joy to read. Words on paper are meaningless and orderless and cold. The words cannot fathom the act of writing, of creation. That’s the author’s job.
The author is, in the case of consciousness or awareness, I suppose, natural selection, but that isn’t really my point. I’m more interested in the sticking point of how much of “I” really is “me”. As in, I consider myself to be all of me, my body, my mind, and everything in both.
But if what I consider to be “I” cannot even fully understand or quantify the contents of “my” mind, then that seems to me to suggest that what I consider to be “me” emerged from something that encompasses “me”. And “I” am really just a single component of that which “I” emerged from. This also must apply to everyone else.
As far as day-to-day functioning goes, this doesn’t have to matter too much. Obviously it doesn’t, because all of the world’s seven-plus billion human residents, and its uncountably-huge population of other animals many of which probably have at least some comparable idea of an “I” within themselves, function in some capacity on a day-to-day basis without worrying about the fact that they cannot consciously quantify even a sliver of what is going on in their minds or bodies at any given moment.
I just find it funny that the idea of “I” has become so dominant in the way humans think. It seems to suggest some kind of encompassing of the entire body and the entire mind, as if any particular “I” is all of the matter and all of the incomprehensibly complex processes occurring in a particular body. Isn’t “I”, more accurately, the comparably tiny percentage of mental and bodily processes which can actually be untangled in the first place?
Consider an analogy: a story written down on a piece of paper by an author. The story exists, but it cannot comprehend itself. The analogy may be somewhat faulty since the paper is actually inanimate and cannot “comprehend” anything, but I think it’s still telling. No one would ever claim that the paper itself, the story itself, represents the whole picture. It’s the story in context, the fact that the story emerged from the author’s thoughts, that makes it a joy to read. Words on paper are meaningless and orderless and cold. The words cannot fathom the act of writing, of creation. That’s the author’s job.
The author is, in the case of consciousness or awareness, I suppose, natural selection, but that isn’t really my point. I’m more interested in the sticking point of how much of “I” really is “me”. As in, I consider myself to be all of me, my body, my mind, and everything in both.
But if what I consider to be “I” cannot even fully understand or quantify the contents of “my” mind, then that seems to me to suggest that what I consider to be “me” emerged from something that encompasses “me”. And “I” am really just a single component of that which “I” emerged from. This also must apply to everyone else.
As far as day-to-day functioning goes, this doesn’t have to matter too much. Obviously it doesn’t, because all of the world’s seven-plus billion human residents, and its uncountably-huge population of other animals many of which probably have at least some comparable idea of an “I” within themselves, function in some capacity on a day-to-day basis without worrying about the fact that they cannot consciously quantify even a sliver of what is going on in their minds or bodies at any given moment.
I just find it funny that the idea of “I” has become so dominant in the way humans think. It seems to suggest some kind of encompassing of the entire body and the entire mind, as if any particular “I” is all of the matter and all of the incomprehensibly complex processes occurring in a particular body. Isn’t “I”, more accurately, the comparably tiny percentage of mental and bodily processes which can actually be untangled in the first place?
Comments
Post a Comment