Sometimes words begin to drain themselves out of my mind, and I wonder if I'm about to lose it,
...my self-identityI haven't been around much; busy with the new school year. Readings, exams, assignments, applications...it's consuming so much of my existence. I felt I needed a little break from it all to reflect on my thoughts here, for the very IMPORTANT reason that I don't want my current self to vanish out of my memory(I'll get to that
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While our cells replace themself I think people get lost on this concept that somehow the new cell is different. For the most part it's almost exactly the same. There is natural encoding in the aging process that accounts for the changes we experience in aging. I don't see a problem with the concept of a continual set of consciousness. Our brains, on a day to day basis, remain essentially the same.
Although the role of memory is an interesting one. I briefly touched on it in one of my papers from last semester. We rely on our memories for our sense of personal identification. To be sure we are more than our memories. Much of who we are is dictated by our present physical bodies but it is also mitigated by our memories. Memory is an inherently fallible process, but to look at is as just a fallible process is to fail to understand the nature of it. For the most part our memory is reliable. If our memory becomes unreliable... as in say someone with Alzheimers... than our sense of self becomes distorted and lost.
Worrying only makes sense if there is something you can do about it. As such , short of a disease or something similiar, there is no reason to worry about losing our sense of personal identity. Even if we do contract a disease or some of problem that affects us, there is very little we can do about it. We could worry about many, many, things if we really wanted to, but it's just as pointless to worry about losing your sense of self as it is to worry that a plane will crash into you.
I've never had any desire to write a letter to myself, since that implies I saw some reason to it. I don't have a fear of losing my identity so it wouldn't make sense for me to do so. It does seem like you are caught up in some sense of an objective self. That there is some clear, distinct, and objective sense of self that is continuous. I don't see the self that way, nor do I see any reason to perceive the self that way, and thus such a line of reasoning seems misguided to me.
Class is starting for me so I'm off. Hopefully I made sense.
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