There’s one idea of late that’s really had a profound effect on my thinking. Unfortunately it’s hard to put into words. (In fact, as you shall see, that is the idea.) Basically it’s the notion that our mental concepts of things are not really things the way real physical things are.

For example, I’m looking at a chair right now. The chair exists in the sense that it is made up of physical matter that exists (barring exotic theories like the universe is a hologram.) But the chair doesn’t really exist as a chair. The idea that this collection of matter exists primarily as a tool for humans (and cats) to sit on* is an unreal idea; it’s a concept of the human mind applied to this collection of matter. If all life on the planet ended, the matter we call this chair might continue but its meaning, its concept, would not.

* Chairs are also good for swinging about in a drunken rage.

But what if we apply this idea (that things and their semantic descriptions are different) to people? Let’s take Elvis. People talk about Elvis the performer and might say he did such and such on some particular date. But people also talk about a more ethereal Elvis—more of a concept of Elvis. The conceptual Elvis is an entity linking various disparate concepts like the South, Hollywood, Rock music, Sexual playfulness (the hips shaking and all that), icon worship and on and on. Some people have a more negative view and link Elvis to White appropriation of Black music and maybe some kind of sexism. But this conceptual Elvis is really quite different from Elvis the guy. Elvis the guy was essentially a collection of matter (e.g. the molecules that made up his body) and perhaps also a consciousness though we still have trouble really defining what that is.

But my real point here is that, like Elvis, we all have conceptual and real versions of ourselves. Other people interact with us and build their conceptualization of us off of those interactions, but also off what other people say about us (true or not) and the various stereotypes (true or not) they apply to us, whether we remind them of their dad, and a whole host of other factors. I’m reminded of the ending of the Michael Douglas film “Falling Down” where Douglas’s character, after shooting up parts of L.A. (in his mind, righteously) finds himself saying, “I’m the bad guy?” He realizes that his concept of himself and everyone else’s concept of himself don’t match up.

To make things more complex, we seem to build our conceptualization of us off these external factors. We think “Everyone says I’m a liar therefore I am.” Or, “I belong to (some particular stereotype) therefore I must act in this or that manner.” Or, “My dad was a violent drunk therefore I must be.” It turns into some infinite feedback loop—you think you’re X and thus behave like X and everyone sees you as X and you become more set in the pattern of X etc.

But in the end, you’re really just some molecules.