Who are You?

Let's take a moment to reflect. Observe your surroundings. Breathe deeply. Can you feel your heartbeat? 

What makes it go? Leave the stress for a moment. Let's take a few seconds to consider the self.

Ask yourself the following: "who am I?"

You probably have some answers: you are a man. You're a woman. You're a boy or a girl. You're an American or Russian, Mexican, or Japanese. You're black or white, Hispanic or Jewish. You are Mickey, or Frankie, René, Boris, or Mary.

You're a doctor or a lawyer, you're a carpenter or a student. You're a football fan or a yogi or a musician. You're an artist or a Catholic, a worker or a poet.

You're a Republican or a Democrat or you follow the blue party.

But is that really who you are?

Right now you're probably in a big hurry: you have important things to do. You don't have time.

 

You need to get to work, be productive, reach your goals. After all, time is money. You don't have time. Maybe time has you.

But then again, who are you?

You can change your political affiliation, you can change languages and countries; now you can even change your sexual orientation. Are you really a man or a woman? Or are these identifications different forms of false ego?

With today's social media, you are a demographic, a product. If you are Latino, there's social media, food products and a TV channel just for you. 

If you're retired, middle aged, and white, there's a health program for you. 

If youre a woman there are plenty of products to keep you shopping.

In fact there's a product for every demographic.

Internet, TV, social media and magazines offer the products and services that match their customers demographic.. Every moment you spend on your mobile phone, tablet, or other electronic device defines you as a demographic.

 

The more you identify as a man, as a woman, as an American, or European, as Latino, or black, or white - the more you fall victim to the different ploys of marketing. But are all these demographic identities real? Or are only you deluding yourself?

The body changes. Your political party changes. Your language can change. You may even change your nationality. What is it that remains the same?

Changing bodies

Is there anything that withstands the changes? Are you the same you as you were before? If you are, then there must be more to us than demographics.

Scientists like to tell us that we are stardust. Our bodies are composed of the very same elements that were created millions of years ago at the time of the Big Bang. Decomposed stars falling to earth are mixed with our bones. And so we are stardust reflecting on the stars. From dust we came, and in the end there is nothing but dust. But this says nothing about the real mystery of life. It may be that in a long history of the universe different life forms evolved into other life forms. But evolutionary biology says nothing about consciousness itself. We know that life comes from life. We know that certain conditions must be met for life to flourish; but what is life? This is a mystery.

 

So who are you? Are you composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms, a mass of moleculres, stardust contemplating the universe? Our leaving aside the mystery of life, are you merely an assortment of demographics and stereotypes waiting to buy products perfectly suited for your false identify? Or is there a deeper truth?

 

Please don't be angry with me for asking these questions. That's what I do. I'm a truth seeker. I don't have the answers. But I think it's important to ask the questions. Let's ask the question together, shall we?

Who are we? Where we come from? What is the nature of consciousness?

 

Leaving aside from moment the problem of origins, we can take up the question of consciousness. Consciousness may be defined as self-awareness. Some cognitive scientists believe that consciousness is a function of the brain. If the brain is properly constructed within a living system it will provide self-awareness.

To the extent that the brain is limited, self-awareness and consciousness will also be limited. In the future, it has been argued, an electronic brain will be able to simulate consciousness, self-awareness, and even emotion and intuition. Of course, anything can happen in the future. Unfortunately, the promise of artificial intelligence, and self-aware computers with emotional feelings remains the speculative fiction of imaginative authors.

I remember as a child growing up in the 60s all the promises of travel to other planets, space rocket ships, antigravity boots, invisibility belts, and friendly robots. The books of Isaac Asimov such as I robot fueled my childish imagination. 50 years on, not much has really changed. Scientists still dream of mechanical men and emotional computers. But the question remains, is consciousness a function of the brain?

Are Jellyfish conscious?

Of course much of this depends on how we define terms. If by self-awareness, I mean that a living entity will attempt to survive in its environment, avoid physical danger, adapt to its surroundings, reproduce, and use strategies to find and consume food, we will find that even a common jellyfish has consciousness.

The jellyfish is transparent and has no brain, and yet jellyfish plagues have incapacitated Japanese nuclear plants. Jellyfish are invertebrates. If we are to believe the idea that primitive life forms evolved into more complex life forms why are there still jellyfish? Unless we consider that the jellyfish is a perfectly evolved life form, with excellent possibilities for survival and reproduction. And yet with all the advancements in artificial intelligence even the most well-equipped scientists armed with millions of man-hours of research, computers capable of defeating chess champions, and billions of Internet connections, find themselves completely unable to create a life form as primitive as a jellyfish.

Rube Goldberg Machine

If self-awareness depends on the creation of a brain, why can't we create a brain? If life is really a complex combination of chemicals, why can't chemists fabricate the ingredients of life? After the moment of death, doctors say, "we lost him." But the patient is still lying on the operating table. 

"She's gone."

What is it that was lost? If life is merely stardust, why isn't it possible to revive the patient at the time of death?

Why can't we bring people back?

"But this is absurd," you say. "Everyone knows this is impossible." I agree. But then why accept a post-dated check saying that you will solve the mystery of life sometime in the future?

My life is now. My experience of reality is now. I experience myself as a living conscious being in this very moment. I can feel my heartbeat, and my breath, coming and going. I know I've been on this planet for over 60 years.

 But what I once thought of as me is all gone now. The rosy cheeked babe of 1953 is long gone. The little boy who used to play in the snow in Connecticut is no longer with us. The bones I carry with me today as an old man are different from the boyish skeleton I once used in the 1960s. And yet I feel that I'm still here.

Gone is the rosy-cheeked boy of yesteryear

It's impossible to understand who we really are by argument and debate. Intelligence derives from negativity. I can tell you what something is not before I know what it is. Whatever arguments and debates I can create for the existence of consciousness can be defeated and refuted by others more clever than I.

And yet, beyond what I might be able to prove logically, beyond what we might fit into an academic or mathematical model, I have my own existential experience.

And as I draw breath and observe my surroundings and take in the miracle of life, my own conscious being is enough for me to understand that the eternal truths spoken of in all the wisdom traditions of the world are not fantasy. I may not be able to explain how life exists, but my reflection on consciousness and its reality brings me to my next question, which is how to live.

How to Live?

Questions about the nature of the self and how to live are not new. These questions have been contemplated by human beings for thousands of years.