The Voice Who Is the One -- Delving Into the Selves
Updated: Feb 21
It is difficult to separate between the self and the "one" who is speaking inside our heads, though not impossible. The possible truth is that there is, in fact, a separation between who we are. The conscious one, and the constant chatter in our heads; that we may be conscious!
As I've written before, I'm kind of an "idiot". It is only when I philosophize that I get to be truly intellectual. The other times I feel as if my mind is in a constant state of malfunction, fighting my chronic fatigue (a symptom of a medical condition, and not CFS).
I don't always know what to think, if to think at all, and if you were to put me with someone who does not know me or this site, they might think that I'm actually dumb, and wouldn't be capable of such feats as writing philosophy en masse.
It was then that I realized, that the one who is writing this article, isn't "me", so to speak, but an external typist. I am just a constant chatter that is being recorded, and these recordings are then translated into articles, poems, and videos. It is only when I am being recorded by "me", that I get to actually hear myself, beyond the fog of chronic fatigue. Do you get the idea?
We are not necessarily our physical bodies, but, rather, prisoners of said bodies. We are prone to pain, hunger, and disease, but also to pleasure, satiation, and high-spirits. But in the end, these physical sensations are not us, but instead, something that we feel and experience.
It's just something that happens to the bodies of which we are prisoners. We cannot fully escape from our bodies unless its death we're speaking of. It's only when I write that I realize, that I, the conscious one, am merely a typist of the one whom I'm conscious of; the higher self.
Seems like what makes me a philosopher is my ability to metacogitate.
Have you realized how automatic most of our actions are? walking, eating, talking, sleeping, and so on. They became so natural that we didn't need to use any effort on our behalf, other than just thinking, in order for them to occur.
When my foot is on the ground and the other foot is carrying itself onward, I don't feel any of it, simply because of how natural it has become to me and to many others. The reasonable conclusion to this is that there is an automatic self. A self so spontaneous that for most of the time, if at all, we rarely get to just stay where we are and be aware of it.
Who is the automatic self? As writers, that kind of self is the typist, the one pressing the buttons on the computer as we get to think. And who gets to think? The true self. The one that transcends all the automatic actions that have become natural to it. They no longer require any conscious effort.
For comparison, that self knows for sure where each letter of the keyboard is, but if you ask me to consciously memorize each button on the keyboard, the chances of being fully correct are low! Why? Because my job is to be active, AKA conscious, while the job of the other "self" is to be automatic, to be experienced by the true "me".
Now I finally understand my own repressed loneliness. Loneliness of not being in communication with others, but the loneliness of being confined to my own body, my own mind. There is no escape from the mind that hosts me, because such an attempt is impossible.
You can never share a mind with someone else, unless you happen to share the same body through some physical horror, which has happened before (like two people actually being physically undivided and thus needing surgery just to separate them).
Other than that unfortunate exclusion, you, and I are all confined to our own thoughts. Our own inner chatter doesn't seem to ever stop. The only way to escape from our own company is by escaping to external sources of stimulation. We constantly do it and some of us may, then, question why we are not satisfied and/or happy in life.
That's what makes the entertainment and gaming industries so profitable. Facing ourselves alone with our own chatter is a very difficult task. Why? Because it reminds us of how lonely we are, as our higher selves. The conscious selves.
The conscious self is always in need of being conscious of something. That's a directive. It cannot be conscious of nothing if there is nothing to be conscious of (and I'm excluding "nothing" as a concept). What happens then? Then it turns inward instead of outward. That's how loneliness is created: by reminding ourselves that, beyond the many stimulations out there, we are ultimately on our own. Even if we are to be the most social of beings on the planet, perhaps no amount of love or family can solve existential isolation.
This realization isn't something that anyone would realize. That's because not everyone is as alone as that, to be conscious of their own thoughts; as existent beyond the "earthly" occupations of the world.
I didn't even know where the letter E was until I pressed it on the keyboard several times when I wrote this sentence. I may know where E, O, and P are simply because I get to press them, but if you gave me an exercise paper where I'd have to point all the other letters, without having a keyboard nearby, I'd have no idea where most of the buttons are. Even though I'm using them right now!
We can therefore conclude that there are two types of selves. The Master Self, which is the conscious, and The Minion Self, which is the automatic worker, the typist, and the walker. Once the Master self gets to be immersed in the world of its Minion self, it could forget how lonely it actually is. Lonely by being nothing more than a chatterbox inside a brain who is confined to speaking inside there until it dies.
The "Minion" isn't the only one doing all the manual labor. It's also the one that keeps the Master in check by immersing him/her in the latter's automation. Why do you think that the days pass so fast? It's because the "Master" self has been "Minionized". Became enslaved to the ever-so-occupying stimulations of external sources.
Our lives are passing quite "fast" when we are in automatic mode. However, if we confine our higher selves to themselves, and not to something external, then loneliness may break its cage.
Why? Because the stimulation outside is there to solace us. A comfort that tells us, "We're not necessarily lonely". Once we're in confinement, the Master Self awakens and reaches the following enlightenment. The one that tells us that it is more than the things in which it perceives and is conscious of, including its own associations.
And things that we may regard as important in our day-to-day lives, like anything involved with our routines, are mainly means to an end for our general survival.
Imagine being alone in a train cabin. You can't go out and see things and beings pass you by. Most people may believe that the things they see outside, are in fact themselves, which is not true. This is an analogy, and not a literal arguement. Many of what we are in our eyes are, in reality, layers. Just like hamburgers.
We are all, most likely, just voices inside highly complex organisms, which are our prisons. They know things that we do not, like the location of each keyboard button, how to operate a human heart, how to digest food, and so on.
The voice and the body are not one, even though they might exist peacefully. The voice itself may be physical as well as the body in which it is present, but that still doesn't mean that being a conscious self is the same as being the object in which one is conscious.
Read about Brain-Machine Interface, and you'll know what I mean, better.
