Some time ago I wrote about the evolution of thoughts and how it might have overtaken the evolution of genes. Here’s a brief recap in case your memory is just as bad as mine: Thoughts interact in ways that enable evolution to take place. Just like genes are expressed to form proteins, cells, organs and organisms, concepts form ideas, stories and legacies. Successful stories get retold and recorded while unsuccessful ones are forgotten. Stories evolve as they are being retold, new concepts appear and ideas spread like viruses. The parallels to biological evolution are striking.
Today, I want to build on this observation and ask the following question: within this evolution of thoughts, what are you? You might say that you are a human being, but that is the language of biological evolution. In the language of thoughts, which is language itself, “you” is first and foremost a personal pronoun. It’s a mere technicality that I have to refer to you as “you” while you can refer to yourself as “me”. In a story retold by someone else you might be a “he” or a “she” or just a “them”. The words themselves are not important, they are mere symbols. Their purpose is to invoke a concept, the same concept which is invoked by saying your name. That concept is you. And while this concept is strongly associated with your physical appearance, it transcends it. It exists not just in your own eidon, but also in those of everyone who knows you. It can be recorded in texts, it can be retold in stories and it evolves just like any other concept. It may be weird to identify yourself with a concept in other people’s minds but if you truly think about it, you already do.
We care a lot about what other people think about us and this might be the whole reason why. What other people think about us *is* us. It’s what the word “me” really means when you say it in your head. If you wear a suit and tie, it’s because you want the concept of “professionalism” to be associated with it. You shower regularly, because you don’t want the concept “smelly” to be associated with it. And you lie awake at night because you’re afraid that the concept “looser” might have become associated with it. You might be the one who has the most power over shaping it, but you’re not the only one who shapes it. Other people will continue to shape it after you’re dead. And how long this “you” survives after your death depends entirely on how good a story you were.
Unfortunately, how good a story you are is sometimes in direct conflict with your biological evolution. That biology is shared among all humans, so most of what it does is common and boring. The best stories are those of people who went beyond their limits, risked their own life or endured suffering at the edge of imagination. Of course these are not the only ways to become a good story, but it illustrates the conflict we might find ourselves in. What priority should our story have with respect to all the other drives we might have in life? Do we leave the party early to cater our biological evolutionary need for sleep and risk that our story might involve being “lame”? Do we risk our lives to protest an unjust regime, knowing we might become a martyr? Do we kill a bunch of hostages and then ourselves because that might finally cause people to tell our story? Sorry about going a bit dark here, but I hope it illustrates to what extremes it’s possible to take this.
As with many foundational philosophical questions, the only reasonable stance is that there is no right or wrong answer to it. As a nihilist, I’d be the last one to tell you that there’s anything fundamentally wrong about killing a bunch of hostages and then yourself, although I personally wish you wouldn’t. My problem is that I’m currently not sure how to make this decision for myself. I feel this deep desire to be “important”, yet advertising myself feels incredibly outlandish to me. Presenting myself as more than I am feels terribly wrong but I get the impression that this is what you need to do to get any attention. I hate it. I want my story to be true, but the best stories are those that aren’t.
I guess I’m a failure. I accepted to be a failure in the biological sense a while ago, but I guess I have to accept that my story is a failure as well. It revolves around concepts that nobody cares about, it’s lame and badly written. That’s just how evolution works. It constantly produces unsuccessful variants that will be lost to time. In both instances of evolution, that of genes and that of thoughts, I’m just an unsuccessful variant. Come to think of it, this is unsurprising because successful variants are exceptionally rare. I do realize that this whole paragraph might sound like I’m terribly depressed, but then you’d be misjudging my emotions. To fully understand this, you’d need to join my side of the abyss.
So, how important is your story to you? If you had to decide, would you rather have your genes live on or your thoughts? Or is neither of any importance to you and you value other things? Finding your own answers to those questions can be very helpful. It will have a profound impact on how you tell your story to yourself, and that’s the most important person to tell your story to.
