The Electric Moment of "I"
We’re going to do something a little weird.
For the next few minutes, I want you to imagine something.
Not decide whether it is true.
Not build a philosophy around it.
Just imagine it.
Imagine the physical matter of your brain.
All the tissue. Cells. Folds. Connections. The damp biological machinery currently doing an astonishing number of things without asking for your supervision.
Now imagine the electricity moving through it.
Signals firing. Activity traveling. One part of the machinery affecting another.
Now pick one exact moving moment of that electricity.
And, just for this exercise, imagine that this is where “I” is.
Move the Camera
Imagine that this electric moment of “I” can travel through your brain.
Not above it.
Not outside it.
Through it.
Like you have somehow become a tiny moving point of observation inside a creature you have spent your entire life operating from the first-person view.
The electric “I” reaches a memory.
It can open it.
Look around.
Close it again.
It reaches an emotion.
It can notice what the creature is feeling.
It reaches a logic path.
It can follow the path and see where it goes.
It might encounter a belief.
An impulse.
A fear.
Something funny.
Something embarrassing.
Something you want.
Something you wish you had never done.
For now, none of those things need to become the electric “I.”
They are things the electric “I” has encountered.
Look at the Creature
This is the part I want you to notice.
You are not trying to get rid of anything.
You are not trying to stop feeling.
You are not deleting memories, arguing with beliefs, fixing your personality, or floating serenely above all human concerns like some extremely irritating mountain monk.
You are just changing where the camera sits.
A memory can be opened without becoming the whole creature.
An emotion can be observed while it is happening.
A thought can pass through the machinery without immediately getting your entire name stamped across it.
A logic path can be followed.
And because you can follow it, you may eventually be able to influence where it goes next.
Not yet.
For now, just get used to the strange little idea:
There is the creature.
There are all the things happening inside the creature.
And for the next few minutes, the point called “I” gets to move around and look.