After six years of chewing on it, I’m looking forward to putting my big “Who Am I?” project to bed and moving on to another project. It’s been edifying and humbling, and yeah, disappointing. I guess I was simply raised with greater expectations of people. I took those expectations seriously and beat the poop out of myself striving to live up to them. Because that was the hero’s journey I was inspired into undertaking. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no hero, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t take the path and take my lickings as they came. Survive and be surprised. Although come to think of it, I am a bona fide hero to a few of the people that matter most to me, so guess that provides another source of deep inner solidity, and foundation under myself.
For now this is pretty much the last chapter to the saga (sort of), a letter I sent to a neuroscientist, and his response.
…
… Your insights were an intellectual, and spiritual, life preserver in that they put a factual foundation under my homegrown musing around the question of “Who Am I?”. Now I’m feeling that the project I started in the summer of 2018 is reaching a completion point, and I’d like to check in with you.I don’t claim to see anything “new” - since all I know comes via scientific storytelling, learning from real scientists and serious science journalists, striving to make sense of it, while also learning from my own mistakes. I have distilled the following framing that can best be categorized as an Earth Centrist, bottom-up, evolution appreciating perspective. And I beg for your opinion:
Who Am I?
I am an evolved biological sensing creature, a filament in the pageant Earth’s evolution.
I am the product of nearly half a billion years of Earth’s uninterrupted generations of research and development and reproduction.
My Body/Brain is the cumulative product of Earth’s evolutionary processes;
My Mind is the cumulative product of my Body/Brain interacting with my world (interior & exterior);
My God(s) along with all of my other thoughts are the product of my Mind.I appreciate and respect the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide (with its many cascading implications) and believe it’s about the most fundamental observation we can make regarding our human condition and it is worth ruminating on since all else proceeds from there.
I respect and appreciate science as our best chance to understand ourselves and the Earth that sustains us. I also believe that the science of our Earth/biology/evolution and deep time offer opportunities for spiritual revelations, challenges and resolutions well beyond what our self-created ego-driven religions can offer.
A couple local college philosophy professors that I tried engaging told me that what I wrote is nothing new; and that in any event what I’ve written is irrelevant; uninteresting; and not worth any discussion.
I can’t buy that, since it grows from scientific understanding, even as it touches on spiritual undercurrents. Besides I think many philosophers never escaped religion’s long shadow and have been slow to recognize evolution’s profound relevance in understanding who we are. I long for a serious scientist’s appraisal.
My framing doesn’t offer any woo or super powers, what it does offer is a benchmark, a grounding of sorts, for me it has resolved as a feeling of having arrived, an appreciation that I am a filament in Earth’s evolution and that it is good.
I know it’s asking a lot, still I’d be very grateful if you can find a moment for me in your crowded schedule, to share your opinion of that piece of evopoetry. I’m not looking for strokes, I need serious constructive hardball. { That invitation is open to anyone }
Thank you.
I was bracing to be ignored and pleasantly surprised to get a response in two days.
Dear Peter
Thanks for your email.
Although your two academic commentators may be right that the conclusions you reached are not unique, at least you have reached conclusions!
Most people do not even begin to reflect on such things.
To sift through the morass and find your own truth can be very valuable.Kind regards
Indeed.
In other words, I’m not deluding myself about being on a solid scientific and intellectual foundation. Meaning perhaps this formulation is worth becoming more familiar with, rather than having intellectual doors slammed on it. Though it does take some real effort to gather sufficient building blocks of knowledge to reach the critical-mass that leads to clarity and this framing of our human condition.
I’ve done what I could, hoped for more dialogue, but it is what it is, I’m not bonkers, but I’ll admit, I am a stranger in a strange land that I don’t recognize anymore.
Peace be with you.