Problems that are out of my wheelhouse

[degringolade]

 

Art Nouveau / Frank Johnston/ Moose Pond

Monday Morning, I have two cups of coffee on board and I just read the news.  I am watching my eldest cook himself breakfast and we are chatting about life, the universe , and everything.  Things in the mundane appear to be proceeding downhill at the usual glacial pace, so I don’t really see any need to get all a-twitter about anything, I think that I will just carry on.

For some reason, the idea of the self and the “hard problem” have been coming up a lot in my reading sources of late.  It seems that this is becoming a bit of a trendy problem to address among the cognoscenti. 

For the record, I keep abreast of what folks say about this problem, but I am afraid that I just don’t get the kerfuffle.  I realize that I probably can’t understand it, even if someone were to explain it to me carefully.  I just don’t think that my mind works that way.  I suppose that I should feel bad about this, but I have always kinda thought that “me” is a just a lashed-together construct of poorly-remembered pasts that I have gotten into the habit of throwing on every morning.

The current Dreamwidth setup doesn’t appear to allow you a “reading list” that stays on the front page of your blog here.  If it did, I would have Aurelian near the top of the list.  He wrote a nice post about the nature of the self.  

I find it amusing that folks get so “het up” about this little piece of trivia.  I also have to respect the idea that they have thought so hard and long about a subject.  I have tried to understand what they are all het up about, but to be truthful, I can’t see just what the deal is.  I have a self.  It is kind of annoying and it changes.  I try to figure out what it is, but the best that I can come up with is to just ignore it. 

I think that people think that if they figure out the mechanism, they can control it.  In truth, this kind of thinking is what brought us the joys of organized religion.  The idea that if there is a concrete set of laws, one can create a better society where all agree on the rules.  My experience in the world is that this sort of thinking never quite pans out.  

But, I hope that folks keep trying.  I will putter around a couple of levels up from this point of psychology/sociology/ethics/philosophy.  I think that I am just not up to the task of understanding it.