Defining I

It seems strange to a lot of people the way that I define "I." I, as far as I'm concerned, is short for Individual or, more shortly, the individual that is me, the person that I am.

I guess that to me "I" is a simple concept, because it is a part of me, it is me. A lot of people find it very difficult to define exactly what it means to call myself "I" or to define the profound meaning of a phrase like "I am."

The simplest way that I define "I" as the individual is based on an idea that was instilled in my as a little boy.

When I was younger than I am (I hesitate to say "young" because words like that are so relative I would like to relate them to something) I told that the individual is a sum, the individual is constructed out of "stuff."

My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Melton, would kill me if she saw me use that word, but because the essence of "stuff-ness" (a term I used to use in my philosophy class) was so difficult for me to explain I would limit myself by speaking blandly about it.

Now that I know what that "stuff" is, I think it's really important for us to recognize. As human beings, we are defined scientifically as a floating pack of neurons and electrons, buzzing around inside of a skull, but what we really are, beyond the simple physical scientific explanation is "I."

The creation of "I" started at the beginning of the universe, because the earliest events caused the effects which would become the causes which would become the effects which would become the causes (and so on, and so on, and so on) until we reach the present day. This tangled web of cause and effect is what leads us to the Now.

However, it is my understanding that everything from the beginning had an impact on us, because it led up to the events that led our parents together, but it also led our grandparents together and our great grandparents together (and so on, and so on, and so on). These events are what resulted in the creation of this physical definition of the I, to the scientific definition of the "stuff-ness" that makes us up.

I think, however, that to limit who we are (to limit our definition of ourselves, as "I") to a strictly physical and neurological definition is both ridiculous, because it gives us no real insight into the nature of social application and applicable theories in regard to the human condition, and unfulfilling, for the same reason.

When I consider what it is to be "me", what it is to be "I" it makes the most sense to say that I am what I am, as a physical being with neurological bits and pieces buzzing around inside of a skull, but even that definition is the result of a series of events that has led up to my existence.

What it means to define myself as "I" is to recognize that I am the result of thousands of millions of trillions (and so on and so on) of cause and effect relationships that stretch back all throughout history.

My connection to yesterday is that, though I have managed to create the present state (the "I" that exists in the Now), I am still a product of everything that I was a product of yesterday, only now I have built even further on top of that. I have constructed new pieces of the definition of "I," a definition that is constantly evolving, changing and requiring redefinition.

I am everything that has led me to come to the conclusion that I have needed to define myself as "I". I am everything that has ever happened that has led me to the present moment. I am an etymological symbol residing in the Now that can be unwoven and traced back through generations of cause and effect relations to lead to the Absolute Beginning of time.

That, perhaps no quite so simply, is the definition of "I."