The problem of self-identity (who am I? What is my true self? What remains of the enduring, stable ‘I’ or ‘me’ –the ‘real me’– when everything about me and my personality seems to change and eventually fade away with time?) is a perennial one that spans historical and cultural boundaries, even if they’ve often addressed it in vastly different ways. The modern western tradition on this topic (often thought of as beginning, in its contemporary form, with Enlightenment philosopher Descartes’ insight: “I think therefore I am”), and the psychological legacy that it engendered, has generally held that who and what we are (our true self) is introspectively obvious: It is the individual locus of consciousness, self-awareness, agency and cognition that houses the internal monologue, personal thoughts/feelings, and sense of “this is happening to me”-ness, that we experience every moment. It is the stable and enduring first-person center of who we are. This is also the experience of self-identity that Western civilization’s most cherished ideals and institutions have been founded upon: From our concept of “individual rights”, to moral responsibility and legal culpability, to the value of personal achievement and self-expression, and, of course, to the Christian ‘soul’ that persists through life’s trials, confronts itself through these trails, and ultimately either attains eternal salvation or damnation consonant with its response to them. The ego-centered, enduring self-identity that we carry through the meandering and changing course of our lives, is that “me” who persists throughout the course of infancy through old-age, life’s relationships and loves, career changes and personality development over a life-span.
However, this Western (and now, largely global) conception of self-identity has not been as self-evident in other cultures than it has been in the post-Enlightenment West. The Buddhist philosophical tradition –also stretching across continents and history– has engendered many versions of self-identity in its many diverse schools of thought. However, in all of them, the metaphysical principle of ‘dependent origination’(involving “emptiness” or “Sunya”–the observation that in our radically interdependent and ever changing reality, nothing is stable, independent of everything else, or persistent through time) undermines the Western idea of any stable, permanent self, persisting through time and independent of the world around it. The Buddhist doctrine of “no-self” (anatman) maintains that there simply is no enduring self-identity behind our stream of consciousness that fluctuates, changes, evolves continually, and eventually fades away. All the things and experiences with which we identify throughout life (our accomplishments, our failures, our strength or weaknesses of character, our roles, titles and possessions) are illusionary inventions through which we create a sense of personal identity or ego that never existed in the first place. We may convince ourselves that we are enduring independent ‘selves’ persisting through the course of life, and everyone around us –treating us as enduring selves through time—may confirm this, but we are actually changing constantly through life with every new experience we undergoing. Indeed, empirical evidence from a recent landmark study in the journal Psychology and Aging confirms this Buddhist insight. An enormous study of over 1000 subjects over the course of 63 years (the largest and longest of its kind) gathered personality surveys of them at various life stages from 14 years of age to 70 years and found that almost none of them at 70- years-old were, from a psycho-social perspective, anything like their ‘selves’ at 14. Because of changes that took place over the course of their lives they evolved, quite literally, into ‘different people’.
Similarly, the so called “bundle theory” of self-identity in western philosophy of mind from David Hume to Derik Parfit (very much inspired by Buddhist concepts of identity through time) draws similar conclusions from both phenomenological introspection and recent research in social/cognitive psychology. The ‘bundle theory’ states that, Contrary to what we’ve conditioned ourselves to believe about our ‘selves’, what we think of as our self (‘me’) enduring through changes and life experience is really just a succession of ever-changing thoughts, feelings, and even different personalities, that transform continuously with every new situation, environment and life-event that we undergo. Our ‘self’ (that is, the stream of Consciousness that we call our ‘self’) is nothing more than a ‘bundle’ of fleeting mental phenomena. The person we are now is literally a different person in every new situation in a year, or ten minutes, after this. Think, for instance, of how often the average person changes their demeanor, public persona, moods, and disposition as they move throughout the course of a normal day –from work, to home and family, to recreational activity and sports, to social media chats, to nights out with friends or romantic partners. In each of these situations, they literally ‘become a different person’ in many essential ways.
Unlike the ‘bundle theory’, which dissolves the stable, predictable self into passing events through time, the ‘extended consciousness theory’ in current psychology and philosophy of mind radically decenters the self in relational social space. ‘Extended consciousness’ theory claims that we have to include the variety of technologies we incorporate into our thinking, communication, and self-image, in our conception of our minds and selves. If we just think, for instance, about how deeply our self-image and self-expression is shaped via social media, or how much our cell-phones configure how we process information, the idea that our minds and selves are located beyond our brains and bodies becomes apparent. In fact, this suggests that we are not simply self-contained egos existing in isolation from one another and the world around us–“inside of our heads” so to speak. Rather it suggests that we are radically relational and interconnected with everything, and our ‘selves’ are part-and-parcel of all the interactions we have with the tools we use, the people we engage with, and the environment that we live in. Simple libertarian, ego-centered, individuality is just one small aspect of our deeper, wider, and more profound identity with the entirety of existence. Consider, for example, how much our families and friends, our social media identities, our professional roles– in other words: all the dimensions of experience through which we expand our sense of self-identity to things, people, and relationships beyond our personal bodies and minds– are essential aspects of who we are.
Insofar as these Buddhist and other relational extended theories of self-identity are correct, they have both positive and negative dimensions: the positive side is that our changing identity through time allows us to be better and freer beings: the person we are now can hope to be a better person in the future (whereas this would be impossible if our identities always remained the same) and by the same logic, since we are new people now, we can forgive ourselves for the people we were (and bad things these past selves have done) in the past. Indeed, the basis of forgiveness for past failings, or pride in present achievements is that in each case there is a significant difference between the person we were in the past and the person we’ve now become. The negative side however, is the fact that we can also distance ourselves from responsibility for the past people we were and future people we will be: If I’m no longer the person I was in the past, why should I feel connected to or take responsibility for anything that this person has done? And If I’m truly a different person now than I will be in five years or five hours, then why should I take responsibility for that person’s situation either?—This, according to recent research summarized in the Nautilus article “Why We Procrastinate: We Think of Our Future Selves as Strangers”, is the unconscious psychological origin of procrastination in our lives and perhaps for all the other improvident and thoughtless decisions we sometimes make and later regret. When I really don’t identify with the ‘me’ of the future, then sacrificing my present gratification for my future benefit makes little sense—so why work, save, or discipline myself for this stranger? Think, for instance, of how children (and especially teenagers) never seem to be convinced to refrain from imprudent behavior, or to delay gratification, by the cautionary advice that their actions will have terrible consequences for them when they get older. For them, this older person –their future ‘self’– is simply not them, and is therefore not a matter of concern to them.
So, while western ego-identity has inspired so many important character traits, values, and institutions that we prize (personal responsibility, ‘rugged individualism’, self-assertion and expression, personal-legal rights like free speech and privacy, etc.), more decentered, relational concepts of personhood, like the ones conceived in Buddhism, Bundle Theory and Extended Consciousness Theory, may offer a needed corrective to this view–supporting values/institutions that we also prize highly (like personal freedom, community spirit, and a willingness to accept positive change and forgiveness for oneself and others)—although it also may lead to attitudes and behaviors that undermine a sense of meaningful connection to our past and future selves. As contemporary life has highlighted in many ways, both of these perspectives on self-identity are problematic, but necessary to a functional society and healthy personality.
