What am I

When I was in elementary school, I was a kid living in my own world. Loneliness brought about some interesting feelings.

When there’s no one else around me, I had a special kind of feeling frequently - “What am I?”

1. I felt that “I’m controlling my body”.

   Does this mean that I’m not my body? Is my body an extension of “I”? If I keep cutting myself off, when do I reach the point where “I” is changed or destroyed? What is “I”?

2. I felt that “I can feel myself controlling my body.”

   Does this mean that “myself” is also an extension of “I”? What is “myself”? What is the core of “I”?

3. Why is “I” in this body but not another body?

   Is it possible for “I” to be in another body? If “I” is moved to another body, does it feel the same as it was before?

   Is it possible that everyone’s “I” is actually the same thing? Imagine a world where everyone is actually the same person but with different appearances and experiences. Imagine a world where everyone is actually YOU, but no one knows that, living their life loving, competing, and even killing each other. Everyone feels that they are special internally, but in fact they are the same person.

   Is it possible that “I” is an illusion? Imagine a world where everyone is actually a machine that has a fake feeling of “I”.

Looking back, that’s how I started reasoning about consciousness.

I tried to find the answer to this question throughout my life, like everyone else did. In the end I chose to believe this simple explanation:

1. “I can feel my body” doesn’t imply that my body is an extension of me. My body is me. My consciousness would change, if I lost any part of my body. The change can be subtle or dramatic, instant or over-time, depending on which part of my body is lost.

2. Consciousness is just something developed for animals to better survive in this world. Or even worse, consciousness is a side affect caused by 1) the ability to remember the past and predict the future, and 2) the ability to differentiate and classify objects and events, both of which are developed for animals to better survive the world. I.e., because we are so good at differentiating things, we are able to differentiate ourselves from other things.

Is this true? Is this too simple? It doesn’t answer “what is consciousness”, but only says that 1) consciousness cannot be divided, 2) consciousness might not be that important.

I don’t know. But it stopped me from further pursuing the answer.

There are a lot of theories that I cannot dispute. For example, there’s a period of time during which I was obsessed with the idea that consciousness is just an illusion. I still cannot argue against it though it feels sad. But it’s not that important anymore.