{Individuality}[27th May 1968]

[Redbook1:52-53][19680527:2200]{Individuality}[27th May 1968][Age 17]

Monday 27th May 1968

10.00p.m.

            The French strike talks are at stalemate, and demonstrations continue; talks on Vietnam in Paris (?) continue; Transport Bill is undemocratically treated through lack of time; Welsh Nationalists disown weekend explosions; Nigerian peace talks are saved.

I worked most of today also.  We had an essay in the morning which I did badly.  I have asked the housemaster if I can go to the Royal Tournament to watch the [school CCF] band; he is hopeful, but will ask the [head]Master.

One thing I notice about myself is the way I say "What?"  when someone asks me an awkward question; by the time he has said it a second time, I have usually got an answer, and I can make it look as though I am slightly deaf but very quick-thinking!  It is quite instinctive.

A question that used to trouble me until a short time ago was: what would have happened if I had been born as someone else?  Could I have been?  I recently realised the simple answer.  I could not have been born as someone else.  Let us analyse it.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that I have been born as someone else -- in other words, I have been born of different parents.  The question is, what is "I" here?  My body would be different, through inherited characteristics; it can be discounted, since I could think my own thoughts in another's body.  My mind, the characteristics that make me think in a particular way, could also be different; they are not important.  I could only be someone else, consciously, if I remembered my previous existence.  It is memory, therefore, that is important.  This is shown by the fact that if a newborn child is adopted by foster parents, he will grow up, essentially, as their child, and he will grieve if his real parents claim him back in later childhood.  I can picture myself in those circumstances: supposing I had been adopted immediately after birth, I would have grown up, effectively, as someone else, because my memory would be different from what it is.  My memory is the sum of my existence; if it is changed, my past life is changed, and my past environmental influences are changed, therefore I am changed.  But since it is memory that tells one whether one has been or would have been someone else, then, if memory of another or parallel life is wiped out or never created, that other life ceases to, or never, exist(s), from the point of view of one's individual memory; and since I am the sum of my existence -- my memory -- I cannot have been, or cannot be, born as someone else.

[PostedBlogger05102012]