Why am I me?

[FragileTag]

Yeah I probably have wondered the same thing. I feel like I am in a movie and I am the main character and my senses are cameras. I don't know but oh well.

[KichigaiNeko]

Then just ...

http://youtu.be/CmyUkm2qlhA

[FirstmadeLast]

Being conscious individually, as I assume everyone else is, the question comes to mind; why do I exist from a 1st person point of view? Obviously I couldn't exist from a 3rd person POV, but when I die it'll seem to me as if the world ends; MY world will end. How can I explain this... When you sleep without dreaming everything is nonremembered, and seems 'black'. If death is the same, then it'll be lights out for eternity, and therefore I'm wondering why I'm conscious to begin with. Why me? Why here? Why now? Why at all? etc.

Any answers or ideas? I've asked my friends and family, but they don't really grasp the concept of the question.

Your question has so many different answers.  All answers are relative, and all answers are limited, restricted only by the point of reference from which they are being answered.  For example, there is the Quantum Physical reference point; there is the Metaphysical reference point; there is the Natural (i.e. biological) reference point (which seems a popular reference point based on reading some of the answers to your question); there is the, dare I say, Religious reference point;  There are other reference points too, but my favourite is the Guessing reference point.  This one is easy because it's not based on fact (referring to even the Scientific reference point), but in short, my own opinion.

There are those who will say, "You are not you.  You are me and I am you.  We are.  Where you end is where I begin."  But you do not end and I do not begin.  We simply are.  You are not your biology as much as I can not be your biology, nor can you be my biology. It has nothing to do with biology in the first place except that biology restricts you.  This is a necessary thing (consider order, and the order of things, all things - Quantum Physical point of reference scores!).  Am I the car that I drive?  I am not.  Yet, when I am in the car it moves in accordance with my will (faster slower stop left-turn right-turn or not at all).  Is my biology not the same?  I can not be in me and in you at the same time.  As much as I can not drive one car and be inside another at the same time.  It is only when I get out of the car that I can enter another (consider demonic possession - Religious point of reference shoots and scores!)  When I look into your eyes I can 'touch' you without touching you (Metaphysical point of reference steps up). When I make love to you at what level do we become one, if we become one at all, and are we not one even before the act.  I would surely not want to be one with that thug who's just killed a helpless victim! I still am though. I am one even with the victim (enters empathy - as elaborated on so eloquently in a previous answer)  So, do I stop when my biology stops? No (with conviction) you don't. You will never stop (as if I know!).  Death is a biological experience only, at least the death we know.  You are not your biology, at least I'm of the opinion that you are not, and therefore death will not affect you - only your biology. 

However, your question still remains unanswered.  To this end I say; This much I do know, i.e., your question can not be answered.  At least not by anything that has to employ the use of "biological circuits" to answer it.  Consider this though; You have free agency (given to you, or just as a matter of biology - it doesn't matter how you got it, fact is, you have it) and because you are not your biology it would follow that you were before your biology. Which leads to the somewhat less than dramatic conclusion that you must have chosen your biology... (and the family into which you were be born into, environmental conditions, etc. Why choose your specific family and not the Royal from Buckingham? Only you will know).  So, let is sink in for a minute! And the reason you don't know this is because no one has ever told you, yet in the deep quiet spaces of your heart you have always known it, and realising it now gives you a sense of peace (biologically, metaphysically, religiously, scientifically - and on all other levels too).  So it follows, that if you chose your biology you did so for a reason.  Dare I say, purpose!  Leading to the even bigger question of "what's next?"

Then there is the time paradox (Quantum Physicists please correct me when I stray) which states that time is not progressive as we know it, moving in one direction only (from yesterday to today to tomorrow), but exists all simultaneously. You exist somewhere in a 'yesterday' as you do now in a 'today' as you do in a 'tomorrow' all simultaneously (without even knowing it) and if you can alter the vibrating energies of your quarks and electrons etc. in the slightest that you can move in-between these levels. So do you ever really die?  According to quantum theory you have already died. Your death and your birth is happening at the same time, as is your now. Take a few seconds to consider this.  If that is so, it only affirms that I am not and can not be my biology.  After all, I am able to perceive and conceive my own consciousness. It can therefore not be my biology that does this (I don't know.  I'm just guessing).

And again, there are many more answers to your question. One of these will find root in your heart and grow on you and eventually make sense to you and you'll live your life in accordance with it. The key is to never stop asking the question because it's what makes you individually you. First person..

[Mudhammam]

Since this old thread was revived, I might as well insert a fitting passage---and moreover, one of my favorite ever written---by none other than... Blaise Pascal

"I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.
"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty."

[deanalouise]

Really, can a mod lock this thread? I know that it's all chemical impulses.

Knowledge... that is the assumption that one is correct.  Yet we are so often wrong.

'Why' is a 'what' question. 'When' is a 'what' question. 'Where' is a what question. All questions are really asking 'what'. I tell you what it is not, for the reason that clearly you own such things as 'brain/body/soul', and especially 'delusion'.

Do you even know what you are asking when you wonder "For what reasons am I me?".  I think your question should rather be, "What defines me?".  More intriguing still... "Is what I have all that I am?".

A mod could surely lock the thread. But would that really be to the benefit of anyone?

I wonder

I think I understand the original question. Are you are asking why it is that you are the inhabitant of your own consciousness? What prevents you from being someone else's consciousness or being all consciousness's, or traveling from one to another? First I'll say that I'm not sure you would know if you traveled from one consciousness to the next because perhaps when you are in each you only have the knowledge of the present brain and therefore are not aware that you were previously in another consciousness, or being. I think this sounds scientifically hokey, but its an answer.

[account_inactive]

[FatAndFaithless]

[vorlon13]

[abaris]

What is it with you noobs that the first post is always the zombification of an ancient thread?

There's an introduction forum, you know. Much better suited than an act of grave robbery.

[vorlon13]