A week ago, when I underwent surgery, I was given a choice between a general, full anesthetic and a spinal anesthetic, which would paralyze me and remove all feeling from the waist down. Now, my initial inclination was that the full anesthetic would be greatly preferable: I didn't want to be awake for surgery, which I think is a reasonable thing to want to avoid. However, the anesthetist strongly recommended the spinal, adding that, as I would be on morphine, throughout the operation, I would not remember any of the procedure. In the end, I went with her recommendation: after all, a medical professional I am not.
Now, this story is mostly background for what I want to talk about, but I think it's useful in seeing where these speculations come from.
For two and a half hours, I was awake, aware, and remember nothing. This is a fact with shocking implications: if the memories of my life are not contiguous, can it really be said to be me who underwent those experiences? Certainly my physical body did: I have medical staples and a nicely healing scar to prove it. I'm not sure it can. Who we are is in many ways defined by our memories: they are what gives our personality shape and substance, and any point of interaction with the world must inevitably be a structure of memory, not of awareness. While I am sitting here typing these words in some kind of Now, soon it will be simply yet another piece in an ever-growing Then.
And if I don't remember experiencing those things, if I therefore never experienced those things - at least for a reasonable definition of "I" - who did? Some sort of mystical other-me, who existed for those two hours and then disappeared - or died? Or maybe it is the other way around, since after all, his memories were contiguous: everything from my birth to the end of those two hours he remembered, and it is I who have this strange hole in my past. Maybe waking up in the recovery room was when I was born?
But what really bothers me is the choice I made - to experience something unpleasant, but to have no memory of it. If it was not me who underwent that experience, then did I not force someone else to bear my burden? Do I not have the blood and fear of the other-me on my hands?
This is why I hate metaphysics: something interesting always becomes something just a little too disturbing. Of course, I suppose that is rather the point.
Moving (New Blog)
13 years ago
2 comments:
Barring insomnia and the occasional all-nighter, there is a gap in the continuity of our lives every 24 hours, generally speaking. We fall asleep, and wake up the next morning, and every day we take it for granted that "I" waking up am the same person as "I" going to sleep...but when we sleep we lose consciousness, and I do believe our brain activity changes before it is restored to the waking state in the morning. The memories are the same, but the possibilty remains that "we" as we know ourselves die and are reborn approximately 365 times every year.
Being awake and retaining no memory is of course even harder to figure out. I really can't say I have a significant leaning on who was present for the operation.
I am curious about what you did and/or said for two hours while stoned, but awake and being operated on. Did you deleriously ponder this quandary of identity? Did you crack jokes with the operating team? Just what DO you say to the guy who is cutting into your flesh in order to repair you, anyway?
I'd say "they should keep an audio/video recording of the procedure and give it to you after the surgery is over", but perhaps that would be a bit much for most people. At least you might be closer to an answer if they did, though.
Ah, the question of sleep. I'm glad you brought that up, actually, because I meant to discuss it in the original post, but it didn't end up fitting in with the rest of the pondering.
I don't believe sleep or unconsciousness presents the same problems as a lack of memory of waking moments. During sleep, or if you hit your head really hard on something, your mind halts its activity - puts your existence in suspend mode, if you will accept a computer analogy. It is possible to have your thinking change through dreams while asleep, certainly, but that still provides you with a contiguous mental identity.
As to what I said - well, I was on morphine at the time, and my particular sensitivity to drugs of that kind meant I was even more high than most people would have been in such a situation. In the interests of Science, however, I did, in fact, ask one of the attendant nurses to write down what I said during the procedure.
My two favorites were "[Red-headed Nova Scotian roommate] is a pumpkin" and "Must get [my girlfriend] a giraffe. No, wait. Can't ride giraffe. Legs too small. Maybe giraffe ride elephant."
Whether or not that was me talking, I/Other-Me am a pretty classy dude.
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