Know Yourself Is the Self an Illusion

Is the self an illusion? If your existence as a sentient being is a direct consequence of all the multifaceted experiences you endure, if the stimulation of the external world molds your temperament, behavior and disposition...then are you fundamentally, at the core… an empty vessel? An empty capsule with no spirit, no individual thoughts, no morals or ethics, an empty bucket simply awaiting to be filled with sentience and meaning? Is the existence of the self – an illusion, a fiction of the mind? David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher suggested we have no experience of a simple, individual impression that we can call the self – see the ‘self’ is merely the totality of a person’s conscious life. Whether your life is filled with horror, love, good fortune, disaster, loneliness, ambition, pain, pleasure or a combination of all these things and more, it will transform your inner self. This may seem like intuitive knowledge that is not esoteric or unknown, it appears this is something that most people already understand, but the implications and the deeper meaning of this idea can be quite sad, if interpreted incorrectly.

The self may not exist in reality, but only exist in the abstract. This is not the upsetting part, the part that is slightly dismal, is that the self’s manifestation in reality, as in the way someone projects their inner self outwards may also only be an abstraction even though we are experiencing and interacting with that exact individual’s “self” in the physical, REAL WORLD. In his book “consciousness explained” Daniel Dennett denotes to the idea that the self is constructed and abstracted out of narratives, it is permeable and flexible - meaning that whenever you meet someone, you try to understand them, you try to decipher who they are…but the truth may be, that they are ultimately going to be indecipherable. Why? Because the self is something like a subatomic particle in a quantum state, where the initial perception of another person's self may exhibit certain characteristics, while another look at the self at another point in time will convey different characteristics.

You may understand a person in that exact moment, but with the gradual progression of time, that person that you thought you knew will ultimately cease to exist, for if he is the pure manifestation of his self, and the self is an abstractual phenomenon, constructed only by the narrative of one’s life, and it is permeable and continually changes… then you will never know or understand someone in totality. This phenomenon in its purest manifestation exhibits itself in children. For instance, when a mother raises a loud, enthusiastic, joyful child may notice something strange as time elapses. The child’s inner “self” continues to incessantly undergo little variations, ultimately leading to a large scale metamorphosis over the years, transforming that young child - into a more cynical, depressed, apathetic young man; or maybe a far more extroverted, optimistic and impressionable young man - regardless, the self of the child in either of these hypothetical transformations (which are only 2 examples, out of a seemingly endless amount of behavioral amalgamations that an individual could possess) - has deteriorated and remolded - the self is no longer distinguishable from its initial state - the mother ultimately has forever lost her child’s earlier self - forever losing who her child used to be...maybe for the better, and sometimes maybe for the worse. You will never understand someone else’s self, for it will never remain stationary, nor is it rigid...but most importantly… you will never understand your true inner-self either.

That is why we continue to thrive, endure, seek new meaning and evolve - because our thirst to understand ourselves will never be quenched and we will always be venturing along, always trekking a new path amid a new journey. The permeability and fluidity of the self is why the self always eludes scientific scrutiny. In the words of philosopher John Perry. “If science aims to come up with generalisable explanations and predictions of human behaviour, how can it empirically track a self that appears to be intrinsically flexible, private, subjective and accessible only to the subject whose self is in question?”

Karl Popper an Austrian-British professor and philosopher was probably the first to argue the self resembles a parasite. “The autonomous, creative self appears as a host in the biological machine” he says, and uses the brain as an instrument of survival. This dualism suggest that there are virtually two different species within one bodily vessel. The self may use the organism for its higher purposes even at expense of one’s health.

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