How far can the sense of "self" expand?
Asked by
phaedryx (
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October 21st, 2010
I was talking to my wife today about how when use a fork, it seems like your mind expands your body to include the fork as part of your hand, e.g. what your mind perceives as part of the body is expandable. When you get into a car and start to drive around, it is like the car around you is an extension of your “self” and your mind almost thinks of it as a part of your body. For example, when people are in an accident it is “he hit me” more often than “his car hit my car”. Does this make sense?
So I’m wondering, what are the limitations? Does an airplane pilot think of the plane as an extension of himself in the same way I do about my car? How big would a vehicle need to get before the mind couldn’t keep up?
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12 Answers
we are all one self… so it is limitless… like saying you destroyed a part off my universe… ahh and i see you didn’t add NSFW in your question for your topics….
the material extension to self has it’s limitations.
All is one, until there’s blame to be dealt.
That explains a lot about men and guns….
First of all; fantastic question.
I do think of my vehicle as myself when I am driving. I think of other vehicles as identities . “Doesn’t that asshole Hummer realize I have to slow down here? oh, did some asshole Hummer have to pull off to change his pants? Told you it was not a “choice” to stop! ” I personify the other vehicles as if they were people. (I treat them worse than I would face-to-face)
For where it stops? I don’t know. I live in a very friendly town but get them behind a cart in Costco and all bets are off.
i imagine the maximum is the Commander of an Aircraft carrier, his sense of self must be colossal.
Aristotle actually had something to say about this. He talked about place as being an extension of self, and place is the smallest unit that your body occupies. So your car is quite easily seen as an extension of self, because it is the smallest unit around you. The pilot of an airliner is only surrounded by the cockpit. The importance is that the maneuvers he performs in that place have a direct impact on the well-being of hundreds of others whose place is attached to his.
That’s nice @hawaii_jake . So are patriots and nationalists really egotists who see their country as their cockpit?
That’s funny, @Blueroses. I don’t want to derail the thread of a general section question, but I will add that when a person is standing in the great outdoors, he’s just himself, a little human being in a great big world. That person’s ego may inflate his sense of self to include all around him, but he’d be wrong.
Hmm. I wonder how that would work in the case of a farmer standing in the middle of one of his own fields surveying his growing crop. I really don’t know.
Perhaps,
We put ourselves into things. We invest ourselves in the world around us and the objects which are a part of it. Whether this be a family heirloom, a sentimental trinket, or a religious symbol, they hold value for us that goes beyond the rest of ‘this quintessence of dust’. While there is no limit to the number of these items, the more we have, the less we are able to put in and likewise draw out of them.
It is natural to be materialistic: we are a species driven by our perceptions of the world around us, but we must be careful not to drown ourselves in oceans of gold turned to dust.
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