From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Jun 03 2001 - 14:11:37 MDT
John Clark wrote:
>
> Harvey Newstrom <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com> Wrote:
>
> >It seems to be that your definition of self is too rigid if it does not
> >allow you to change.
>
> I don't have a definition of self, I don't have a definition for any or the really
> important things in life, I just have examples. In looking back on the two
> year old John K Clark I feel no sense of loss, even though I have almost
> nothing in common with that stupid screaming brat. The transition didn't bother
> me, so I don't see why the transition to Transhuman would bother me either.
> If you want to interpret that to mean that the two year John K Clark is dead then
> that's fine with me, it would just mean that death is not all it's cracked up to be.
>
All that separates me from my two year old self is time. Time
is not that inflexible. The adult me contains the 2 year old me
and the 2 year old me contained the adult me in at least
un-unfolded form. There is a picture of me when I was 1 1/2
sitting on a blanket in my grandmother's yard. I have my hand
in the air and am talking up a blue streak trying to explain
something to, apparently, the empty air. When I saw that
picture I felt a lot of me-ness present there and a lot of
wholeness across time. When I was 5 or 6 I would have hideous
nightmares like many children do. At the end of many of these
nightmares when I was so terrified I thought I would burst into
a million fragments of terror, there was this adult person who
would come and take me to this very quiet peaceful room and talk
to me. This person would calm me down and ease my fears. I
could never remember ver face, only the voice. Somewhere in my
late teens I recognized that voice. It was the voice I spoke in
inside my own mind.
All in all, I find the example of my young self as if it were a
self that had ceased to exist and is not me very problematic.
It is the same being, extended across time.
- samantha
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