There is much more to discuss about the self, but we left something hanging at the end of the second Justice post – whether or not the concept of justice as outlined tended toward a utilitarian justification of anything “for the common good,” or the perceived advantage of the many. I said then that we first had to look into what love means, and I think it is better to do this sooner rather than later. Continue reading
Picking up the thread from We, myself and I, we are exploring an alternative understanding of who we are. We (I’d vote to include any life form capable of self-consciousness, but I’ll leave that for another time) are life becoming aware of itself. This happens through individual life forms, which exist for relatively short periods of time. But a conscious mind trying to make sense of the world while learning to function through a particular body and brain could easily confuse this individualized manifestation of life with individual existence. Continue reading
If there is a unity to life, then consciousness might not be the solitary affair we tend to think it is. After all, we already noted that the mind is hard at work before the self appears. Another way of putting this is that consciousness precedes self-consciousness. We are aware before we are self-aware.
So who is driving before we take the wheel? Are we simply born with pre-installed software — thankfully not made by a certain large corporation — that runs the show at a very basic level until we start writing some more advanced programs? Continue reading
The self appears to be something we create or, better yet, assemble. But I said at the outset that we are going to proceed logically. So if I am going to maintain that I and me are not the same, and that me is a later development, then it is only fair to say something about I.
Of course, there is no logical answer to the question of who/what we are. The best I can hope to do is to outline something you won’t simply reject as unreasonable, something you can accept as enough of a possibility to make it worth reading on. Continue reading
So I want to maintain a kind of serious focus without sending you screaming off the page. Well, here goes.
Like I say in the intro and the About page, compassion (love in its widest sense) makes perfect sense in a straightforward way, without any need to appeal to God or any other supernatural force for help. But there is a catch, or else we’d be living in a rose-colored world and I wouldn’t be writing this. Continue reading