Me and Them

There's me, and there's my thoughts. And they are kind of different things. I generate thoughts. Sometimes there are many of them, sometimes just a few. Sometimes it's impossible to deal with them, they spawn and spawn like a virus. So, I guess I generate and manage them, I "think thoughts", but never have complete control.

But what is the "I" in that sentence? A thing separate from thoughts. A personality, a soul? A set of experiences and memories? If I lose my memory due to an accident, if I forget everything including the language I speak, then do I disappear and another person takes my place?

Or maybe the binding to the body defines me. In that case, what if I lose all of my limbs, and doctors transplant everything that could be transplanted, only my original brain is left. Oh, but the brain is damaged due to amnesia... Am I still me?

If you think about it, and study the peculiarities of neuroscience, you find yourself alone with the strange conclusion: the feeling of "I" a thought, like any other. I wake up in the morning and I consider certain sensations, experiences, memories as "myself". The process takes place by the same means in the same place, and is stored with the same questionable reliability. That is, the "I" that seems to me as an object in the universe to which events occur and which generates thoughts, in reality is just another event — a neurochemical process.

Simple thoughts come and go, they are forgotten and remembered. The feeling of "I" seems to be constant - that is why it's so different from the rest. It is an excellent evolutionary survival tool: to consider the bearer of the body as a separate object and try to isolate and protect it. But sometimes the feeling of the self is lost. Drugs, dangerous situations, orgasms: there are moments when there's seemingly nothing but the beautiful void, and the illusion of individual existence disappears. Many strive to have this kind of experience throughout their lives with the help of religion, substance abuse, extreme sports. In the end, everyone will experience it. In the end, you go into it forever.