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11:05:2005 Entry: "Ann : Losing Your Mind"

Losing Your Mind

Several months ago I watched a program on a science/medical channel about organ recipients, and how after surgery said recipients got a desire for a certain food, or a desire to play a certain sport, that they never had pre-organ donation. Then, when the organ recipients met the families of the organ donors, they find out that the organ donor used to like these things. A lot. The theory was that the mind isn't just isolated in the brain, but rather is in the entire body, sort of like insects. When a female praying mantis bites the head off her mate, he doesn't die. If he did, he wouldn't be able to keep breeding with her.

I believe it is also a fact that as the cells in our body die and are replaced with new cells, we are no longer essentially the same person that we were years ago, literally speaking. Some cells are fast to grow and replace, others are slow. Therefore, if our "mind" is distributed throughout our body, and those body parts are constantly "dying" and being "reborn", wouldn't it then be that we really are not the same person we were, oh, say, 20 years ago, not just from a literal standpoint, but also a mental standpoint? We become completely different people. And the only thing that ties us to our past is our memory. But whose memory is it?

Just thinking about how much I am really starting to hate Halloween, and it was just seven years ago it was my favorite holiday. I don't dislike Halloween for the reasons most people dislike it, i.e., "It's Satanic!" Bullshit. It's corporate. Halloween used to be sort of an underground holiday that only kids and more adventurous adults enjoyed. It's not that it costs money to feed trick or treaters. So few come to our house ('cause it's on a hill and kids are lazy to climb the steps) that the bite into our budget isn't anything at all. And we'll eat the leftover candy anyway. It can't just be that we got sick of going to the silly bars we'd go to with Tim and friends on Halloween night, but I'm sure that's part of it. I think a big part is that we've just become different people, Stan and I. What's weird, is that we've become different people together, like two different vines growing along the ground, we've become entangled in eachother, putting out new roots along our path as we grow, meanwhile, our original root system from where we started is long dead.

13 Comments

I find the passage in the middle very fascinating. You certainly bring up an interesting metaphysic question there!

Posted by Nicolas @ 10:28:2005:12:31 PM CST

Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Am I really the same person I was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, literally and figuratively? And if not, where is that person? Is she dead? But there is no corpse, just shed cells eliminated along the way by various biological methods. I have these memories, but like the cells, the memories die too and new ones replace them. Sometimes I'll remember an event from someone else's past better than they remember it themselves, or vice-a-versa. That's where it starts to get a bit spooky...that you have someone else's memories.

Posted by Ann @ 10:28:2005:12:42 PM CST

If we by "person" mean our personality, most psychologists will agree that it become rather stable after puberty, without this meaning static. Sometimes it's like only the identity is the same, you are registrated as that or that person and given a unique number, because when you for example look at things you've written ten or fifteen years ago, and which were your sincere thoughts, it sometimes seem to be the wild ideas of a very different person and not related to you at all. At the same time, some basic values and ways of thinking are very stable.

Posted by Nicolas @ 10:29:2005:05:45 AM CST

Mostly when I look at things I've *written* years ago, I'm just embarrassed. But I can look at *art* I've done even over 20 years ago and still be proud of it. I wonder what that means? I wonder if it is different for writers, that they can still be proud of their older writings, yet completely embarrassed of other non-literarly creative things they've done?

I've heard that our basic personality is formed by the time we're 5. This is a very frightening prospect for me because I simply wasn't exposed to enough by that age! Other than parents, I had no relatives except a grandmother (my grandfather died when I was about 2 1/2, and the other set of grandparents I didn't meet until I was about 6), I hardly socialized because there were no kids in the neighborhood, my dad was working on his phD, so we never took trips except the occasional trip to my grandmother's, in fact the only things I remember from that time were Captain Kangaroo, coloring with Crayola 64s, a yellow bedroom and lots of oak trees in the yard. I am doomed! I am doomed to having no personaity, unless that theory about our personaities being formed by 5 is complete rubbish, which I am inclined to think it is.

Posted by Ann @ 10:29:2005:10:22 AM CST

It is amaizing that the mind may be composed or nearly every part of the body. I think this idea has been around for 1000s of years, but it is now begining to show itself in the contemporary terms of medical science.

I think the mind is very much only a function of bringing all of the senses together. The concept of 'self identity' is primarily an illusino the mind generates as a matter of centeralized control. It's the mind's function to bring it all together and keep bringing everything together - sight - hearing - the stomach - etc.... Thus, the nature of self identity is very dream like and mutable even though it appears to be very solid.

Posted by Stan @ 10:30:2005:09:08 AM CST

I know this post is "cold" but obviously you can tell when someone adds a new comment ...

Re: your comment about embarrassing things you wrote 20 years ago. After HS I had scores (stacks!) of notes that we had written back and forth. I wanted to save them, because a lot of what we had written was just factual, diary like things that would be interesting to read in the future [i.e., like now]. Many things we wrote were very funny, and it would have been interesting to see how our outlooks changed over the years. Fun to reminesce. However I threw every single one away many years ago (except one) because we [virtually] always got onto the subject of sex, who we thought would be the most endowed, etc. Talk about embarrassing. What a couple of nuts.

I have exactly one note from you - written in 9th grade - and I've kept it all these years because it was so funny. Someday when I run across it, I'll retype it and email it to you. You'll think it's a hoot - guaranteed.

And guess what the note is all about - a dream.

Posted by greenthumb @ 11:03:2005:01:07 PM CST

Hmm...was the note involving someone we nicknamed/codenamed "Rancid", complete with pictures featuring "stink lines"? That's all I can remember that I would've written about back then. 9th grade was such an awful year for me.

Re: the topic of conversation degenrating into sex: Actually, I'm sure most if not all teenage girls talk about endowment and sex all the time...it wasn't just us! I guess we wouldn't be human if we didn't! Or at least we'd be fodder for a nunnery or something.

I don't have anything from that long ago. The only thing I still have are a few rocks and an amazing snake plant (sanseveria) thats been with me over 30 years. A few keepsake boxes, some rings, but that's it. I'm not a very sentimental person and tend to go through "throw-out sprees" when I'm cleaning, much to my later regrets, unfortunately.

Posted by Ann @ 11:03:2005:02:21 PM CST

Ooops...I re-read that the old note was about a dream. Then that probably rules out the topic of "Rancid." LOL!

Posted by ann @ 11:03:2005:02:24 PM CST

Actually, it doesn't rule out "Rancid" at all. Although I haven't read the note in (I'm guessing) at least 8 years Rancid popped up in your dream several times!!

Can you imagine how devastating it would be if you found out (especially in the junior high years) that someone had nicknamed you something like "Rancid"? We really weren't as nice as we like to think we were ...

We had Typing together in 9th grade and you were out sick so much I'm surprised you remember it at all. But you were smart enough that you could just pop in a few days a week and keep up.

Besides that note I have a couple postcards that you wrote on your summer vacation in 1978. You went to Salt Lake and it was covered with flies. (I guess I kept the postcards because you didn't mention sex in them - being postcards!)

I think sex was a lot more fun to talk about, and write about, before I found out it's not always everything it's cracked up to be ...

Apparently Snake Plants must be long lived - my parents have one from about 1964-65. (It came in a gift planter.)

Posted by greenthumb @ 11:03:2005:03:28 PM CST

I'm sure I've been called worse things, before, then, and since. At the risk of sounding sexist, I suspect being called a disparaging name is worse on young females than it is for young men. Stan routintely refers to himself being called an asshole by other people and it really doesn't bother him. He rather enjoys it.

I thought I went to Salt Lake City in 1979? Anyway, Stan and I went there in 1988 and there were still flies. Actually, they really don't bother you when you're swimming, it's just a bit offputting to see them on the surface of the lake. But they leave when you enter the water.

Our Sanseveria bloomed this year. Last time it bloomed, ironically speaking of which, was in 1988. It almost died some time in the mid-90s, but we managed to bring it back to life. It's now in 3 planters, one of which I gave to the neighbors. They're great plants!

Posted by Ann @ 11:03:2005:05:14 PM CST

You went to Salt Lake in 78 - the summer I babysat for the Langthorns.

Stan likes being called an asshole? He must have a thick skin. Must be a guy thing.

Posted by greenthumb @ 11:03:2005:05:26 PM CST

This evening I asked my Mom about the Snake Plant - she said they got it in 1963 - an employee of theirs (who called me "Pickles") was celebrating buying his first car after getting out of prison... Instead of every picture tells a story, most of Mom and Dad's house plants tell a story.

You'll need to leave your plant to someone in your will ...

Posted by greenthumb @ 11:03:2005:09:17 PM CST

I asked my mom about the SLC trip, and according to both her and my dad (who keeps records of everything...he's mister fastidious) they said it was 1979. He went there for some convention. I thought it was the year after I graduated. In 1978 I took another trip with them up to the western slope...Gunnison, et. al. That might be the one you're thinking of? That's when I got super sick and barfed my guts out and had to endure a dreadful pope funeral on tv in a motel room (living hell). When I came back to Ft. C. I was like a walking skeleton, I had lost so much weight.

Posted by Ann @ 11:05:2005:12:48 PM CST

By Ann @ 18:43 AM CST:11:05:05 ..::Link::..

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