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Musings Thought Experiments

The Infinite Versions of You (and Everyone Around You)

  • November 17, 2022
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  • The Infinite Versions of You (and Everyone Around You)
Last Modified: November 17, 2022
5 Comments
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I find thought experiments helpful for getting a better understanding of our relationships, our sense of self and the way we see the world. With a bird’s eye view, we’re able to get a clearer picture of what’s shaping our realities. We can then use this information to make better decisions. Here’s a series of thought experiments that help us contemplate our existence.

Blake Miner

Blake is a social scientist, entrepreneur and full-time traveler who writes about the psychology of personal freedom, exploration, and location independent business. He's the founder of Flâneur Life, an internet home for free range humans.
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1. Different Versions of You

In the book “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand” (Original Italian: Uno, Nessuno e Centomila), the main character is struck with a sudden, haunting epiphany: 

Inside the imagination of every person he comes across exists a different version of himself—a version that’s a mismatch of his own self-image. 

He realizes “he” was only “him” to himself. Everyone around him had created their own copy of him in their minds.

Take a moment to think about that.

The story you tell yourself about who you are is different than the story everyone else has constructed about you.

Your parents, siblings, and friends all have their own version of you. 

So do:

  • Coworkers
  • Teachers
  • Colleagues
  • Exes
  • Neighbours
  • Strangers you pass by on the street

Everyone who you cross paths with in life has a different version of you in their mind, and their versions differ from your sense of the true “you.” 

2. How to Disappear Completely: The Paradox of the Self

We live our entire lives in a tiny locus of consciousness that we experience as our own self. It’s as if we’re in a tiny little home, peeking out through a window that’s the focal point of everything we experience. It creates a very real, vivid sense of identity.

If you were to ask yourself the question “who am I?” right now, the answer may seem obvious. 

But as you continue to dig deeper, the walls begin to crumble. Follow the logic tunnel far enough and you wind up right back where you started.

This is what’s called the Paradox of Self-Consciousness. 

Although we have the conviction that there’s an “I”, it can’t be logically proven without using circular logic. We’re using the mind to think about the mind; your sense of “I” is what defines its own existence.

In an empirical sense, no “you” even exists.

“As I ran on like this, a fresh anxiety laid hold of me: the realization that I should not be able, while living, to depict myself to myself in the actions of my life, to see myself as others saw me, to set my body off in front of me and see it living like the body of another. When I took up my position in front of a mirror, something like a lull occurred inside me; all spontaneity vanished; every gesture impressed me as being fictitious or a repetition. I could not see myself live.”

Luigi Pirandello (One, No One and One Hundred Thousand)

3. Sonder: Flipping the Mirror

It can be interesting to imagine someone else having this same realization: that although their perceptions feel very real and vivid, their way of viewing the world is unique to them.

Use the first person that pops into your mind as an example. Imagine them having the epiphany that their version of stories, memories, emotions and identity is unique to them and that you have your own version of them living inside your head.

At some level, we all understand this. But it’s one thing to know it logically and another to have the complete awareness of it.

There’s even a word that’s been created to describe this feeling: sonder.

Sonder:
A sudden, profound awareness of the human condition; the humbling realization that that every passerby, everyone you’ve ever known or encountered, is living a life as vivid and complex as yours.

The story you tell yourself inside your head feels very real to you, but each person is walking around with this own sense of realness. That version of reality feels just as real to them as yours does to you.

4. A Spider Web of Influence

The people you come across in life help influence your actions, behaviors and thoughts. You, in turn, influence theirs.

The degree of influence depends on how big a role you play in one another’s lives. But whether it’s the person you run into on the street or your parents, you create a version of each other. What that version looks like is greatly dependent on your own version of self and the stories you tell yourself.

Who we are is a complex amalgamation of these relationships. You’re helping shape others’ sense of self just as much as they’re helping shape yours. “You” don’t exist independently.

People come into your life just as quickly as they leave it. Some influence you for long periods, and some for just brief moments. But even long after the memory of the interaction is gone, the imprint remains.

But here’s the kicker: moment by moment, thought by thought, we’re all constantly evolving.

Our thoughts, beliefs, psychology and entire sense of who we are is ever-so-slightly different this moment than it was just a moment ago. Every new thought we have subtly changes our own version of ourselves and in turn, the versions we’ve created of others.

It’s an ever-evolving spider web of influence.

These different versions of us and everyone we encounter never really exist in a concrete form. Since we’re constantly changing, trying to conceptualize them is nothing more than a failed attempt at capturing a fleeting process.

Related: Eye-Opening Travel Words from Foreign Languages

Filed Under: 
Musings, Thought Experiments
  • Tusker says:
    January 14, 2022 at 7:37 pm

    I think about this often. What I think is my self only exists as a series of thoughts that only exist within my brain and nowwhere else. But those thoughts are not an accurate description of myself, only an always changing interpretation of a network of neurons, of an always changing blob of energy.

    Reply
    • Blake Miner says:
      January 15, 2022 at 11:41 pm

      Love this!

      Reply
  • What I'm Committing to Overall in 2020 » Flâneur Life says:
    January 30, 2020 at 12:25 am

    […] The Infinite Versions of You (and Everyone Around You) […]

    Reply
  • Down the Rabbit Hole: 16 Movies That Make You Question Reality says:
    September 16, 2019 at 8:48 am

    […] allow us to temporarily switch off our reconstructed mind-worlds to take on a new perspective, one that’s a collaboration between our perceptions and the ones […]

    Reply
  • Abigail Tor says:
    August 29, 2019 at 3:37 am

    The idea of sonder has always interested me. I am one of those people who can put on an agreeable face even when I want to scream. My internal struggles are completely unknown to most of my acquaintances. The idea both comforts and alarms me.

    Reply
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