There is a problem. Who were you when you were a 1 year old girl? You rely on your parents to unravel the answer to that. Who are you in your old age and breathing your last (bless you!) after you lost consciousness? A third party would unravel the answer to that after probably consulting with a doctor. So, the point is, you know who you are ONLY when you have consciousness. Uniqueness? I doubt that. If I want to see uniqueness I could do that only if I get into your DNA. Even then, without lining up all the people who have lived in the past, all the people living now, all the people who would live in the future, I can't tell how unique your DNA is. At the outset, you look like a normal human being and in a crowd of a million, I can't tell you from the other. Point is, you are only unique at the DNA level (a quark in the case of an atom). The limitation now is I can't split a quark and I can't look beyond a DNA.Originally posted by: return_to_hades
Who am I? The answer to this can be as simple as, I am me. A very succinct and finite answer, I am me, just me. Or we can delve deeper into the psychological, social, intellectual, biological, cultural and the plethora of identities we assume. I am a person, I am a human, I am Sarina, I am a viewbie on IF, I am a student, I am Indian, I am Hindu, I am south Asian, I am RTH, I am funny, I am sarcastic, I am an employee, I am a dog owner, I am and American citizen, I am a hick, I am a minority, I am a liberal, and so on. My IQ is X, my EQ is Y, My SAT score is Z, my income is A, my expenditure is B, my net worth is C, I am in D tax bracket, belonging to E class. I could flesh out who am I with most elaborate details , delving deeper and deeper. Some of my attributes will be ever shifting and changing. Some of my attributes will be hard to define or gauge. That makes who am I a very complex question. Do I really know who I am? What is my identity? Ultimately though, the combination of all these variable attributes, no matter through what evolution they have gone through, is simply me, uniquely me. Do I really need to know an answer beyond, I am me.
Correct. You can't tell what separates you from the rest unless we adhere to the current scale at where we stand. At the quark level, we can't tell one from the other. At the universal level, we can't tell one from the other. So the question which I posed initially was, why are we stuck at this scale? Is that by design?Originally posted by: return_to_hades
What am I? This question is more definition related rather than identity related. I am a human being. I am a homo sapien. I am a carbon compound. I am made of muscles, bones, tissues, fat. I am made of cells. I am made of molecules.I am made of atoms. I am made of protons and neutrons and electrons. I am made of quarks. Baffling about this is broken down into our smallest particles, I am no different from a chair or table. We are all just structures put together by the same microscopic building blocks of this world. At what point did I become different? At what point did I become life? At what point did I gain consciousness? In what part does my life and consciousness reside? What truly separates the living from the non living.
You were not there 100 years ago and you wouldn't be there 100 years later. If this were a DVD recording, I would have to pause at the right moment to locate you. In other words, I have to do a freeze-frame just to know that you really existed. Again a question of scale and atomocity. At the tiniest of the tiny time scale, you are there. Otherwise? Without replying to each and every line, I would say this in general. We are looking at this whole thing according to our convenience. What that says to me is, we defined a reality as per our convenience. It's the "it is there now and not there a split second later" reality that bothers me. I can't come to terms with that.Originally posted by: return_to_hades
Where am I? I am at my desk, at work, on the east side of Madison, Wisconsin, USA, North America, Earth, Sun solar system, Milky Way Galaxy, the universe. I have a street address, I have a pin pointed latitude and longitude. The question is where in the ever expanding universe am I. How do I fathom my location with the vastness that is existence? What are my co-ordinates within infinity? Is there just one existence, one plane of existence or many? How many worlds are there? Where am I in relation to those.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
