If you are thinking without knowing you are thinking, you are confused about who and what you are
Sam harris
Who am I?
This is a question some spend a whole lifetime trying to answer. For those that struggle with it, it may be illuminating to consider that the whole basis for such querying may well be an illusion.
We tend to think of ourselves as a single, coherent entity, the imagined object of our searching for personal identity. This results from a continuous identification with the contents of consciousness (COCs). 1 Contents of consciousness are any objects that enter the field of our awareness; this includes sensory perception (like color, smell, and texture), emotions (like anger or happiness), and, of course, thoughts (like language or visualization) Experientially, we move from one moment to the next from an epicenter of narration, as if there were a single subject behind our eyes to whom the world is happening to.
Really, this subject we feel ourselves to be is the downstream product of a diverse set of COCs that we habitually identify with. The feeling of being a self in any given moment is dependent on …
- what things there are available for us to be(i.e. which COCs our brain generates and presents to awareness)
- which of these available things we “choose” to be
A computer desktop is a useful analogy. If our awareness is a blank screen, then COCs are the downstream result of programs that produce content on it. Some process inputs and render them into images and sounds, others create a backdrop of brightness and resolution (here analogous to mood and disposition), and still others crunch numbers or produce language. As long as the system is powered on there are always some programs running in the background, though most are stored neatly as raw lines of code in the system’s hardware until some event initiates them and they start producing content. The contents of consciousness that make up our experience are, in this sense, like windows appearing, minimizing, maximizing and eventually disappearing again on a computer screen.
In the human system, there is an additional step: identification. Much or all of what appears in the realm of conscious experience is identified with; made to feel a part of a subject’s experience. A self may thus be thought of as contents of consciousness that have been initiated and subsequently pulled into a narrative center of gravity.
However, even in terms of common experience, this feeling of self is, upon closer inspection, quite evidently neither coherent nor continuous. For this reason, the perceived subject that results from identification may be better thought of as a Provisional Self (PS). While identification with contents of consciousness can change rapidly, for purposes of simplicity we may define a single Provisional Self as a combination of COCs that consistently achieve and persist in identification for non-negligible periods of time. 2It should be acknowledged that identification may be merely incidental to the execution of COCs; that the feeling of being a self is superfluous and, perhaps, generally suboptimal. This is not common experience, however. The permanent removal of identification from experience is notoriously difficult to achieve (although, interestingly, there do seem to be short-term chemical shortcuts). A dissolution of self is therefore considered here to be a worthwhile but longer-term objective. In the meantime, we stand to gain immediate benefit from even an intellectual understanding of non-self, for which purpose the Provisional Self serves as a useful concept.
“Your” self as is it typically understood is then just an average value of the many different Provisional Selves that take turns commanding the ship. These selves are the many selves of you, and you in this moment are simply the presiding one of them.
It follows that who we are and how we live our lives will be principally determined by which of our many selves are most often in control of our attention, behavior and decision-making.
The Provisional Self Spectrum
Not all Provisional Selves are created equally. In terms of both complexity and quality of decision making they fall along a spectrum of low to high order (which falls quite neatly into which part of the brain is generating them.3Complex thought is generated in the cerebral cortex, the more recently developed part of our brain. The cerebral cortex is much larger in humans than in other animals. Instincts, emotions and more simplistic thoughts stem from more primitive parts of the brain (such as the amygdala).)
High Order Provisional Selves (HOPs) are generated by the more recently developed parts of our brain. These selves operate by leveraging reason and higher-level perspective, which results in disciplined behavior and (generally) better outcomes. A PS all the way on the upper end of the spectrum makes decisions purely based on sound logic. 4 It may be observed that logic is also utilized by lower order selves to compete with the logic of the higher. The distinction, however, is that the logic of the lower order selves is fallacious. One consumed by hate may be able to rationalize his malice, but he is not able to do so soundly.
The analytical self is a good example of a HOP. The tasks that generally demand its emergence require big picture thinking, disciplined dismissal of tangents and careful synthesis of diverse sets of data inputs. In other words, the analytical self exists almost exclusively in the realm of complex thought.
Low Order Provisional Selves (LOPs) tend to be generated by the more primitive parts of our brain. These selves operate by leveraging emotion, intuition and fallacious logic that results in impulsive behavior and (generally) worse outcomes. A PS that falls perfectly on the lower end of the spectrum makes decisions purely based on primitive emotions. 5This is not to say that emotion is necessarily bad. On the contrary, positive emotions can constitute some of the higher tiers of positive experience. They are crude tools, however, and, if too often given the reigns, will not consistently result in good decision making. Emotion should therefore be valued, but also calculatedly leveraged by the higher order selves in order to maximize its benefit.
The jealous self is a classic example of a particularly nasty LOP. When we are consumed by jealousy, our experience of the world becomes skewed by raw emotion and irrational thinking. In the worst cases, this can lead to acts of the most heinous nature (after which a newly emerged Provisional Self is often horrified to reflect on the preceding sequence of events).
For most of us, the Provisional Selves that intermittently control our behavior can be found on virtually every point of the spectrum. Further (and crucially), in the human system, these Provisional Selves will take control automatically if they are not actively coordinated. As a result, in the absence of system administration, systems whose default settings are to run programs generated predominantly in the more primitive parts of the brain will be tyrannized by LOPs (and vice versa). It should be clear that, so far as we are able, we should seek to avoid letting our default settings guide our behavior.
Provisional Self Development
When one grasps the concept of non-self, it becomes evident that self-development — commonly understood as the gradual evolution of a continuous entity — is better thought of as the deliberate facilitation of contents of consciousness that result in target behavior. If we are a system, our goal is to become both the strategist and operator of it.
This can be accomplished primarily in two ways:
- Maximizing the availability of “good” COCs that lead to HOPs and minimizing the availability of “bad” COCs that lead to LOPs.
- Executing the good COCs habitually (i.e. giving HOPs the edge in the battle for the joysticks)
The second method is necessary because it is unrealistic to expect that we will ever be able to completely eliminate bad COCs (which would automatically result in us being exactly the people that we want to be). Instead, after doing everything possible to facilitate the availability of good COCs 6This will be covered in detail in later posts, but, for context, exercise, diet, and loving kindness meditation are examples of activities that positively change the selection of COCs that we can interact with , one should get in the practice of executing what’s there and good while letting go of what’s there and bad.
Metacognition of this sort can be observed in practice in elite athletes who have turned themselves into productivity machines in pursuit of reaching the summit of their sport. Take this work out by the world class triathlete Lionel Sanders, for example.
Despite his years of training on an elite level, he still experiences the emergence of a would-be Provisional Self (call it the quitting self), which, in response to the duress that he is exposing himself to, attempts to change his behavior and provoke him into dialing down the intensity of his workout.
His long history of practice, however, has made another Provisional Self available – one that has been conditioned to go to the pain and actively combat the COCs that are stressing the opposite (call this the pain self). While we can’t look into the head of Lionel, we can imagine that finishing this work out for him is, experientially, the act of identifying with and “being” the COCs which tolerate the pain (while simultaneously refusing to be the ones which seeks to avoid it). In his own words:
“’It’s too hard, you’re gonna get hurt, it’s gonna hurt a lot, you might puke, you might have a heart attack even’. That’s just the mind playing games. It doesn’t want to evolve. It doesn’t want to get better…
Let’s find out if the mind is telling the truth, or if the body has more. Something tells me it’s a lot more. We’re going to find out.”
This provides insight into how we should seek to operate our own system. Lionel identifies with the COCs that precede this pain self constantly. Because he chose to “be” them over and over again, he is now able to become this self as a habit, which has resulted in it becoming a dominant force in his behavior. Additionally, the siren calls of COCs that attempt to stand in the way of his goals were weakened in the process, which prevents them becoming identified and graduating to the quitting self. The result is an almost perfectly disciplined athlete capable of a lifestyle that seems almost impossible to the rest of us. 7 When we look more closely, this gets even more interesting, then being a successful athlete is not as simple as just enduring as much pain as possible at every opportunity. Easy workouts are essential to promote recovery and overall progress, for which yet another PS has to temper the emergence of the pain self to avoid overtraining. In this sense, being a masterful athlete can be thought of as strategically executing COCs (i.e. strategically becoming different “selves”) that result in a disciplined execution of a training program.
Personal Plasticity
One of the major obstacles to our own personal growth is the belief in a relative inelasticity of personal characteristics (e.g. what we’re good at, what we habitually think about or how much we can change undesirable patterns of behavior).
While it is true that some things are not easily altered, the extent to which this is true is, due to a commitment to the idea of a single self, chronically overestimated. An analogy can be drawn between our minds and bodies. Our body has a skeleton, which is fixed, and muscles, which have tremendous potential for growth. When it comes to the self, we tend to confuse most of the aspects of who we are as being a skeleton instead of a muscle.
Consider the example of another triathlete, Rob Cummins, who went from smoking 60 cigarettes a day to qualifying for one of the most brutal and competitive endurance races in the world. In doing so, he changed both the nature of the COCs available to him and his habits of identification with them so thoroughly that he became a totally different “person” than he was before. This should be understood not as not the miraculous transformation of a fixed self, but rather the gradual usurping of numerous unproductive Provisional Selves by other, extremely productive ones. In this context, his description of the process is telling:
“One of the things that they talk about for ironman is that you have this epiphany… [running the race] is [supposed to be] a real life-changing thing to do. So, I crossed the finish line and sort of stood there … and remember thinking, where is this epiphany? … I was laying in the medical tent for an hour waiting for the epiphany and it didn’t arrive… they all said you’re going to be a different person and I wasn’t.
About a week later, I was getting an itch to start training again, and I realized… that’s what it is. That’s what changed. I am not the person I was before I started training. The change didn’t happen on the day, it happened in the six months leading up to the race. I became an athlete.”
One might imagine the project of personal development as setting out to create a complex, detailed metal sculpture out of raw material. He who is convinced he must do so by bending a single piece of iron will be less effective, creative and susceptible to quitting (assuming he ever even attempts what might seem like an impossible task in the first place). In contrast, she who understands that her raw material is actually very many diverse pieces of metal discovers a much more viable path forward. The task is still not easy, but it suddenly seems much more feasible.
The many selves of you means that your self is much more plastic than you probably let yourself believe.
The “You” that clicked on this Post
There might be a sense here that the idea of non-self in a self-development context is rooted in a paradox. If there is no controlling self – no essentially constant manager of your mind –then what could “choose” to click on this post or, even more perplexingly, observe the appearance of COCs (and subsequently coordinate them according to greater objectives)?
Who is playing the game of self if there really isn’t a self at all?
This question (while a notoriously tricky one) may be answered with some reflection.
Do you experience a constant urge towards personal evolution? In other words, presented with the opportunity to click on this kind of content under different circumstances, would you have always made the same decision?
It should be quite easy to think of times where you would have not done so. This reveals that the impulse towards personal development is no more essentially you than the occasional spurning of it; both actions are the result of Provisional Selves that emerge from identification with contents of consciousness.
The evidence for this lies in the fact that the COCs responsible for clicking on this post (call them the personal development self), for example, are neither durably there nor wholly dominant when they are present. Otherwise, how could the absence of productivity inclined COCs ever exist? Further, even when present, how could they sometimes be subverted by other COCs that enter awareness and compete for identification?8Have you ever wanted to work out, and, after a period being conflicted, eventually given up and done something unproductive instead
In this context, the process of turning information into action is better understood as an autonomous one. In searching for relevant content, the personal development self is seeking means of self-reinforcement. As it gains logical artillery, it can more easily win the battle for identification (and become a more consistent feature of your person).
As for “choosing” which COCs to interact with – as described above in the examples of triathletes – this is the domain of contents of consciousness that have the ability of metacognition (call them the meta self). Although the meta self is certainly mysterious in nature, that it is still not an essential “you” is also demonstrated by the fact of its impermanence. Being inebriated is a good example of a circumstance that typically results in an absence of any COC capable of metacognition — when we are drunk, we are often helpless to be anything but what occurs to us to be in the moment.
The process of personal evolution is an intricate interaction between many different Provisional Selves. The two described here work synergistically: the personal development self emerges to acquire knowledge and the meta self is called on to apply it. One discovers what he needs to be by consuming relevant content and then chooses to be it after finding himself in situations that demand it.
In any case, that even our most consistent Provisional Selves are not constantly in control indicates that they are simply appearances on the screen as opposed to the screen itself. With this reasoning we can circumvent the paradox that the existence of some sort of essential self is necessary for leveraging its own general absence.