©2001 Jon Youngblood Unity Through Understanding A Guidebook for the Recently Alive

Chapter Ten: Alien Apparent

10.4.1 Who am I?

What makes we we?  Kidneys, heart, muscles, brains, and ???  First off lets take an inventory.  What can we know about ourselves from scientific observation and from the sacred vaults of inspired wisdom accumulated over centuries of time? 

When we consider the question of who we are we usually look to the popular culture for the answer. After all, the "culture" has been around much longer than we have and so should have acquired some knowledge of these matters.  What the majority of us find on initial inspection are essentially these two views:

1. That we are spiritual beings living temporarily in a symbiotic relationship with an animal body. And further, that although we have a definite beginning in space and time, we are eternal and will on forever in the Other World where we will rejoin all those souls whose body gave out before ours. It is not real clear what happens after that. There are not a lot of specifics on just what we will be doing for all eternity other than being perpetually joyful and probably do a lot of singing.

2. That we are a marvelous arabesque of films and tissues and cells following out a kind of algorithmic process that appears to be inherent in nature. And further, that our lives are played out by pre-programmed genetic behavioral cues as well as supplemental programming by parents and our immediate society. With perhaps just a smidgen of unique behaviors resulting by the mixing of the former two. When we die we cease to exist and all our materials that were once us are recycled.

We can imagine then how modern man (like from the turn of the last century to date) could reject both propositions and come to feel quite alien to our environment. Add on extraneous complications, like being a rejected minority, suffering from physical or emotional handicaps, and we have a pretty clear explanation of the high suicide rates in the developed world, particularly during the teen years.

Body:

We share a common element with all of our animal brothers and sisters:  we are able to directly sense, and to a large degree influence, the matter that we carry around with us as us. [DEV]

Brain

The first thing we need to determine is what we are going to consider, out of all our attributes as sentient beings, is US. The I. The essence of ME. Am I my memories? Of course, that’s a pretty easy one. Am I my emotions? Certainly. Both these seem pretty obvious. BUT the best way to see who you really are is to introduce a situation where you don’t have these qualities. What happens when you get either temporary or permanent amnesia? What happens to people who have sustained brain injuries that leave them with no emotive capacity at all? Or the congenital psychopaths who were born with no ability to emote. What then?

Remember our story of Phynnies Gage from part two? [DEV]

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Behavior is the manifestation of the action of brain.  Little pulses of energy running along biological wires resulting in screaming, laughing, weeping, nurturing, hating, wanting, and all the full gamut of human expression and behavior.  How do we come to be we with our unique set of behaviors, actions, and feelings.

a. Nature. Genetic Predispositions. Animal drives - weak or strong as determined by parents.

b. Nurture. Learned behaviors affecting choices. Influences from late fetal life to present “shade” the colors of life differently than others. In a complex image, with a high numbers of colors - to utilize a metaphor

c. Acquired traits. Unique combinations of a. and b. Got a “blend” of unique personality or like/dislike proportions than either parent. Acquired traits more indicative of a real you than a. or b. but are still based mainly on influences, combined in a unique way as it may be, is still dependant of external variables that are outside of your direct control. 

Genetic behavioral pre-dispositions influence our free will and the choices we make (unless the soul has in fact the ability to tap into some greater reservoir of experience with which to formulate some alternative and utterly unpredictable response to external events). The learned behaviors that we acquire from our parents to a large decree determine, consciously or subconsciously, how we respond to life’s situations and the choices that we make as well. Although recent studies has actually shown that learned behaviors are less influential on behavior than was formerly believed (SciAm).

Mind:

I recently became engaged in a discussion on the Internet about the influence of Santa Claus on the psyche of children. I’ll not get into all of the fascinating comments and issues that were raised, but suffice it to say that I, like many others, had my Faith seriously challenged by this simple and ‘harmless’ deception. As a child there was a lot of older boys saying it wasn’t true and all the parents telling me “of course there is a Santa Claus”. When it finally became apparent that I was being deceived for the amusement of adoring parents, I was devastated. Many in the discussion could simply not imagine this revelation as having any continuing significance. But for about half the rest of the participants felt that it was indeed a turning point and tweaked a sense of distrust that persisted throughout life.

Spirit

When we look at the Question of Who I Am, it probably inspires more discomfort than any of the RBQs with the exception of what happens after death. But the question can be broached with some extremely meaningful insights into The Meaning of Life. One of the best discussions on the subject was presented by Antonio Damasio in Descartes Error, where he meticulously examines what features of consciousness we can truly hold as being the essence of "I". Take away component of self-perception and ask whether without such a component I am still I. Memories for example. Emotions as another. By utilizing an extensive knowledge of brain injuries, where the memories are lost or the ability to feel is no longer present, we gain a very powerful insight to just what the I when we refer to ourselves is.

When we originally ask these RBQs we are (usually) children. For myself it came at about the age of 11. (not too surprisingly, my first suicide attempt followed 3 years later...) We are ill prepared at such a young age to deal with all of the intricacies of such a Big Question. It was not until much later in my life that a substantive discussion on the subject was presented to me. Although the conclusions were not quite what I was hoping for, it revealed some important aspects of the skill required in the act of asking a question as to get a meaningful answer.

    Altered States        Where did I come from?