I first read this short essay from Hillman in a Pacifica course; then recently read it again in the Ecopsychology anthology by Roszak, Kanner, and Gomes. Hillman introduces the book and I find thoughts especially prolific on this topic.

"There is only one core issue for all of psychology. Where is the "me"? Where does the "me" begin?," writes Hillman.

"Where does the "me" stop? Where does the "other" begin? For most of its history, psychology took for granted an intentional subject: the biographical "me" that was the agent and sufferer of all "doings". For most of its history, psychology located this "me" within human persons defined by their physical skin and their immediate behaviour. The subject was simply "me in my body and in my relations with other subjects". The familiar term that covered this entire philosophical system was "ego", and what the ego registered were called "experiences".

You can read the rest of the essay here

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  • You're not going off on a tangent at all -- but I'm about to ( as I always do):

    "As Alan Watts said it (and better than I can), we can't see the eye with which we see with. "

    What if we encountered a mirror? Would we recognize it as such? Would we see ourselves in it? With conventional mirrors, some species, including ours, recognize the reflections. Others can't. I look in a mirror: that's me. My lizards look in a mirror: that's another lizard. Suppose "the eye with which we see with" sees a mirror: a twin or an animal or a piece of art or a machine or a friend or something else in nature or the Universe. Would we recognize the reflection as us? Would we say "that's me?"
  • Is this what makes people uneasy about the idea of clones, or in some cultures, identical twins? A friend once asked me "Suppose someone cloned you and then copied all of your memories and experiences and transferred them to the clone. Would the clone be you? If not, why not?" I didn't have an answer. I remember reading about a study that tested whether identical twins could communicate telepathically with each other. Each twin was seated in a separate room with a pad of paper and a pencil, and then one twin was asked to draw specific picture (e.,g., a bike) and send the image telepathically to the other twin. The other twin was instructed to draw the image he or she received. This test failed consistently. However, when the twins were asked to "Draw the first thing that comes to mind," often the twins drew the same thing. Even identical twins that were separated at birth did this. It raises all sorts of questions about identity: not only where "me" ends, but where "me" begins, or if there's even such a thing.
    • "Would the clone be you?" It wouldn't. They WERE the same thing, but AREN'T anymore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_Hands Relations and processes are equally important as things and structures. We shape the context around us just as we are shaped by it.

  • It's likely that I'll be talking to myself here, but what can I do.

    I apologize for being morbid, but I'm not the one who is involved in violence or "supports the troops". Speaking of beginnings, endings, and limits - there are also limits to freedom. Potential readers of this comment have very similar sets of values. It's up to other people to decide whether this opinion makes me deep or shallow, but here it goes. I think that people should be free to live however they want as long as it doesn't interfere with other people's freedom. In my opinion, that means that no one should be allowed (those who dare should even be punished with the highest penalty) to force those Indians http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/isolatedperu to change their lifestyle in order to allow rich sociopaths to get richer, to take oil from Iraqi people (and kill their intellectuals in the process), or to force the people of Ukraine to live in a single unstable country if they don't want to (Regardless whether Ukrainians and Russians are two or one nation, those who can elect the president are NOT a minority, especially if those on the other side greet each other with "kill the enemies" (so the enemies wouldn't be able to win the next democratic elections)). It looks to me like the same set of values applied to different situations.

    I heard today something like: "If 99 percent of people disagree with you, you are wrong." In aforementioned examples, human beings are killing each other (In the 21st century!) because they disagree. Even if I was wrong, I would like to know why. Is this lifestyle (People have been maiming each other for millennia, so they should keep on doing that.) worth preserving?

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