From the “self is real” article (the second one),
However, there’s a dark side to this denial of the self, and it’s extremely troubling to those who think about this stuff deeply. If we have no self and no control over our thoughts and actions, then we are slaves to a billiard ball universe, trapped in a nihilistic nightmare in which we cannot change our fate or the fate of humanity. For those who take the hardline reductionist stance seriously, this can lead to cognitive dissonance, and in rarer cases, crippling depression or psychosis.
That’s you. It took me a few months to understand what you were saying, and since I don’t know you and can’t verify what you say, there are issues of trusting your information about yourself, but, at least, this paragraph describes what you have been saying. This is that point in a person’s journey that they sometimes realize they are not alone. I hope you take that as comforting. What you have been describing here is valid.
I know you don’t like the labels, but that’s how the rest of us deal with it. Instead of taking on the label, focus on the next sentence, “Thankfully, as with many ostensibly unresolvable philosophical quandaries, a synthesis emerges…” You see a quandary, and it bugs you.
I read Hofstadter’s work when it came out. I don’t know how much that helped me understand any of this, I remember it being pretty difficult to work through. I also took psychedelics (mentioned in the article), without the supervision of medical personnel at that time, also not sure how that helped or hurt me.
I can’t help with what cortical midline structures are or the rest of the science. Under the major heading “The self is real”, they say the self is an everyday experience, in other words, what you feel is not a lie. It’s something. It also says, “A robust sense of self is crucial for ideal human experience, as it can have significant effects on mental health and moral reasoning. It allows individuals to make sense of the world, take responsibility, make value-based decisions, and connect meaningfully with others.” It’s not a “pointless game” to ask the questions you ask.
Unfortunately, they don’t provide much help for getting yourself out of the quandary. There isn’t a simple answer to that, and the internet provides too much contradictory information, misinformation, and deliberately bad advice for it to be used as a tool. But the good news here is, the mental anguish caused by this difficult scientific topic is recognized. There are people who understand it.
