Is the “real Me” real?
Last week I came upon this quote from the English novelist John Fowles: “There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.”
This immediately brought to mind a key scene in Ibsen’s poetic drama Peer Gynt. At one point in the play, Peer is given the opportunity to become a troll and marry the troll king’s daughter. He balks at the final condition. He cannot quite bring himself to go along with what proves to be the essential difference between trolls and men. Among men the maxim is “to thine own self be true.” Among trolls, however, it is “to thine own self be …enough.”
What this has in common with what Fowles said is a peculiarly static understanding of self. My own sense of myself seems to have coalesced when I was about 15, but what coalesced is probably best thought of as a set of themes.
Those familiar with classical music will know that the opening movement of a symphony is usually in what is called sonata-allegro form. One part of this is the exposition, during which a set of themes in contrasting keys are laid out for development in the next section. I would suggest that by adolescence the fundamental characteristics of our personalities have been established. But, like musical themes, those characteristics are dynamic, not static. They are capable of endless development, especially in relation to the ever-changing flow of circumstance.
That is why one’s self so often seems to be less a single entity than a repertory company of characters. Remember Eliot’s line about preparing “a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
We all find ourselves having to play roles in life, but we all object to being identified with any one of them. That is because all of us have a sense of what another poet, Walt Whitman, called “the real Me.” This, presumably, is the self to which we are encouraged to remain true.
A couple of times in my life, I have made choices that were not at all to my advantage. I made them because I felt they were the right thing to do. I am not sure, however, if I made them in order to be true to myself or simply in order to maintain a certain view of myself. There are, after all, all sorts things many of us would not do because, if we did them, we would think less of ourselves.
Nevertheless, like everyone else, I tend to think that there is a “real Me.” The problem is that the nearer I come to an experience of it, the more my everyday me seems to dissolve.
We never feel more alive than when we are absorbed in a task. Upon finishing such a task we are often surprised to discover how much time has passed. During the task being and action had become one and time had disappeared, along with … our sense of self. We were what we were doing while we were doing it.
Something similar happens when we are in what I suppose is thought of as a meditative state. I don’t exactly do meditation myself, but often, in the morning, while I’m waiting for the coffee to brew, I’ll stare blankly out my kitchen window and, in a bit, I’ll be aware of the sparrows chirping, and the wind chimes, the flowers, the light, while I myself seem to have been reduced to just a point around which all these other things are happening. It is as if I had dissolved into a state or process of awareness. And yet, at such times, I feel intensely alive. Or maybe it is simply that life at such times seems more intensely real. Either way, my ordinary everyday me seems absent.
It is then that I wonder how real that ordinary me is. And I understand what Whitman was getting at when he wrote of his “real Me” standing “untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d, / Withdrawn far …”
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If we look at consciousness as developing through evolution, then it ought to have some function or functions. Otherwise, it would have come and gone whenever it first showed up on the earth scene, sort of like having two heads, where one is plenty. So what functions could consciousness have? One would be image management.
Have you just done something embarrassing, or shameful, or something that does not make you look as intelligent as you feel serves you best? If so, or if possibly so, consciousness is able to tap into the possible scenarios that other consciousnesses are seeing in you (not “you” Frank, but “you” each of us). In writing that last sentence, my consciousness just made the adjustment to be sure I was not singling you, Frank, out, as if what I was saying has something to do with how you wrote your column, or some social “faults” in you specifically that you would need image management for, or something about you personally that is worse than in other people. And I did not want to be perceived negatively through being misunderstood, turning on a friend, causing others too much grief, an image management function.
But when I am sleeping and not dreaming, there is no need for my conscious self to be active. When I am sleeping and dreaming, it might be because one of dreaming’s functions is to help with, for instance, image management and whatever other functions consciousness may have. Sort of like asking, “Now that the rest of the world is blocked out completely and we only have consciousness, how can or could have some certain situation have been handled or be handled in the future.”
We can liken this to the hybrid cars. Built into them is the shut off at intersections. When the car is stopped at a red light, the engine does not need to keep going, so no need wasting fuel–and certainly this is true if the hybrid has stopped because it has reached a destination. Same with consciousness, when there is no potential threat to the image–and the right image can help with our survival, getting food or pay and so forth, staying out of prison, keeping our marriage going–there is no need to be so conscious. So we lose ourselves in the moments, and these are moments when we are most ourselves. We and the world are in the same beautiful zone.
Interesting food for thought on this foggy morning. Which ‘me’ is the ‘real’ me? I’m not sure it’s a question with any sort of definitive answer. But I also think it’s one we keep trying to solve.
My own provisional conclusion is that consciousness is not product of matter, but rather than matter is a projection of consciousness. In The Nature of the Physical World, Arthur Eddington points out that a six-foot-tall man reduced to pure matter by the elimination of all the space between and within atoms would amount to speck barely visible with powerful magnifying glass. Apply this to the universe and it would amount to quite a bit less than meets the eye. Materially, in other words, there is little there there. Put that together with the extent to which perception affects reality at the subatomic level and I think you have at least some premise for regarding perception (consciousness) as primary.
Hi Frank,
I agree that the physical world is secondary to the mental, and therefore needs no existence as such unto itself. Above I simply used evolutionary theory to think through the operation of consciousness, for whatever it is worth. Consciousness and self would need to have a function, operate within the evolutionary scheme of things somehow, in order to be viable–assuming evolutionary theory can be viable itself as applied to the discussion.
Another view is Biblical. It’s not that consciousness, or that in-and-out flux of the self applied to the universe, derives from evolution, boinking up at some certain time to remain viable in the evolutionary scheme of things, but that instead this state of affairs where we get into image management (for instance, judgment of others, knowledge of good and evil, and so forth) is better looked at under the umbrella of the Tree of Knowledge metaphor. It follows that our goal as human beings here on earth is to get to the other side of all the social grief, to where heaven or Eden is once again–this time having transcended the knowledge that we have, as opposed to being slaves to the original sin of it, which causes us to be cast out into a world of grief. This is another way of looking at the function of the consciousness of self in the world, as a factor of the maturity needed to bring about our return to Eden.
“My own provisional conclusion is that consciousness is not product of matter, but rather than matter is a projection of consciousness.”
“Hi Frank,
I agree that the physical world is secondary to the mental, and therefore needs no existence as such unto itself.”
These two assertions sound nice if not for the simple fact that “consciousness” or “the mental” would not exist without “matter” or “the physical world”.
This is elementary.
The only thing elementary about it, Gracchus, is that it has been a point at issue in philosophy forever. Think of something called idealism. That a subatomic particle may be effected by the perception of it is just one example of the problem. No one has yet fully explained consciousness in strictly materialist terms. That issue is still open. We’re not even sure what “matter” is.
Hi Gracchus,
The physical world we experience in dreams is not real. The question gets trite with these sorts of elemental answers, and is covered in Sci-Fi from Tales of Pirx the Pilot to The Matrix. That which we call the “real” world can at all times be assumed contrived. There is no need for it other than what we make of it.
Hi Frank and Russ,
Sorry I think I might have come across a bit snide in my response. I appreciate very much what both of you are saying. And I would agree that the questions here have, “been a point at issue in philosophy forever.” But I’d like to make another point that maybe it’s that old chestnut about whether or not we’re asking the appropriate questions. I don’t know what it means to ask for a materialist explanation of consciousness and whatever that might imply. For the purposes of what I think are the questions at hand, does it matter what matter is?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that the physicists and cosmologists are doing whatever is they are doing up/down there getting closer to answers to some of these sorts of questions. Look at this whole thing they’re doing in Switzerland or wherever, simulating the Big Bang. But whatever the implications of all that is, I can’t really understand how that would shed any new light on questions about what is consciousness and whether or not I’m the real me.
Although, I have to say I really enjoy reading what you wrote about in the original post and especially the part about how you stare blankly, but mindfully out the kitchen window ( Very “eastern” of you, Frank). And I also like what somebody said about there not being a definitve answer and that it’s all an ongoing process. But I’m wondering if these aren’t philosophical questions unrelated to matters of matter (sorry) as put forth in the replies. We might not yet know what the origin of life is but at least we get it now: that we are a physically existing species that has a fairly decent understanding of our pedigree; the present result of which is that we are able to be aware and ponder this stuff. We don’t know what consciousness “is”. No. But again, whatever that means to even ask such a question and what would an answer explain?
But anyway, isn’t a more important question, what do we do (or not do) with it? And , however real a dream may feel at the time aren’t we able to agree that we all share ability to wake up recall whatever experiences and recognise that they were the product of our minds sifting through, manifesting in certain ways and reflecting on our conscious , waking experience.
And I love that my dreams seem real at the time. But come on. That doesn’t change the fact that it was me dreaming. I can’t prove that I’m not someone else’s dream or that I’m not the proverbial butterfly in the teacup. But, that I can ponder it all and that others have a similar or at least a comparable experience and that we all can articulate. Isn’t that testament enough to the fact that life is real and that I’m the real me perceiving myself and the world around me?
“ I think, therefore I am” and all that jazz.
And Russ I like when you said,” There is no need for (the real world) other than what we make of it.”
That there isn’t a “ need”
Stuart Hameroff at the University of Arizona wrote a book with Roger Penrose positing that the consciousness is an attribute of space-time. Or that a “proto consciousness” is embedded in the fabric of space time. And in the book they theorize how the brain accesses this consciousness at the subatomic level.
Hameroff is an anesthesiologist and was drawn to the question because in his opinion, no one knows how anesthesia actually works. It’s worth checking out their theories if you haven’t already.
Hi Gracchus,
I think we are a lot closer in outlook than initially seemed the case. It is certainly true that whatever matter and consciousness may turn out to be, we must in the meantime get on with the business of living. By the way, what I meant by a “materialist explanation of consciousness” was the attempts to reduce consciousness to brain function. I suppose my point is that I think we get closer to what is going on by starting from our immediate experience, which is personal. Also, I’m not sure that dreams are quite as unreal as they may seem upon waking. I’ve always been fascinated by the Australian aborigines notion of dream time as the fundamental reality (if I correctly understand it).
Hi Steve,
I remember being surprised to learn years ago, when I was a medical editor, that scientists didn’t really understand how general anesthesia works. But I must day I like the idea Penrose and Hameroff have advanced.
Hi Steve,
I haven;t read the book. But if we look for a pool or source of consciousness in the physical universe, we are getting very close to looking for a god there, some great source of our conscious being. If it turns out that there is a pattern or “fabric” that consciousness derives from, that could be construed as a fingerprint of God. If it turns out that consciousness can have an effect on what is otherwise physical as we know, that would go a ways toward demonstrating the power of will, or mind over matter.
William James early on explored this philosophy of ‘The Self’
THE SELF
William James
from The Principles of Psychology (Chapter 3)
“Whatever I may be thinking of, I am always at the same time more or less aware of myself, of
my personal existence. At the same time it is I who am aware; so that the total self of me, being
as it were duplex, partly known and partly knower, partly object and partly subject, must have
two aspects discriminated in it, of which for shortness we may call one the Me and the other the
I. I call these ‘discriminated aspects.’ and not separate things, because the identity of I with me,
even in the very act of their discrimination, is perhaps the most ineradicable dictum of common-
sense, and must not be undermined by our terminology here at the outset, whatever we may
come to think of its validity at our inquiry’s end.”