Comas & Conscience
1/13/06
Ariel Sharon's medically induced coma made me think about what is the conscience if it can be turned on and off by bio-chemical adjustment. All the personality, character, stored memories, experiences, realities, spirit? Where do they go? What is this entity that we call our "selves" when we go to sleep? Does it reside solely in our brain cells? It can be altered by alcohol, caffeine, anti-depressants, music, dance. One can feel full of energy and out to conquer the world, maxing out credit cards with the conviction that, yes, that 14 piece furniture set will make your life a better experience one day and then cringing with fear when the post-man arrives to deliver the circulars. Both are valid feelings, one experiences them the same way, that is with total belief that it is a true feeling to act on, but they are polar opposites. When someone undergoes surgery the body's reaction is the same whether it receives anaesthia or not, but the brain percieves the sensations differently when the pain receptors are turned off or muted. So, the gall bladder patient has been cut open with no memory or pain and walks away slighttly gassy but not too much worse for the experience. Yet the soldier may have the same invasion of his body with a piece of shrapnel and be forever affected, mentally and physically, by that same experience because it included conscious awareness and the perception of pain.
So, when we are in a coma, are we really who we are if we're not experiencing ourselves and the world as usual? WHen you present a different face at work and at home, with friends and with foe, are you not encompassing more than one perception of yourself, of life? What then, is the true self, awake, asleep, fearful, joyful, explosive, composed? When you are all of these things at once do these characteristics cancel each other out and become white or blend together and become black, or are wer really a rainbow? And when asleep or comatose, just passing behind a cloud, until the skies clear again?
Ariel Sharon's medically induced coma made me think about what is the conscience if it can be turned on and off by bio-chemical adjustment. All the personality, character, stored memories, experiences, realities, spirit? Where do they go? What is this entity that we call our "selves" when we go to sleep? Does it reside solely in our brain cells? It can be altered by alcohol, caffeine, anti-depressants, music, dance. One can feel full of energy and out to conquer the world, maxing out credit cards with the conviction that, yes, that 14 piece furniture set will make your life a better experience one day and then cringing with fear when the post-man arrives to deliver the circulars. Both are valid feelings, one experiences them the same way, that is with total belief that it is a true feeling to act on, but they are polar opposites. When someone undergoes surgery the body's reaction is the same whether it receives anaesthia or not, but the brain percieves the sensations differently when the pain receptors are turned off or muted. So, the gall bladder patient has been cut open with no memory or pain and walks away slighttly gassy but not too much worse for the experience. Yet the soldier may have the same invasion of his body with a piece of shrapnel and be forever affected, mentally and physically, by that same experience because it included conscious awareness and the perception of pain.
So, when we are in a coma, are we really who we are if we're not experiencing ourselves and the world as usual? WHen you present a different face at work and at home, with friends and with foe, are you not encompassing more than one perception of yourself, of life? What then, is the true self, awake, asleep, fearful, joyful, explosive, composed? When you are all of these things at once do these characteristics cancel each other out and become white or blend together and become black, or are wer really a rainbow? And when asleep or comatose, just passing behind a cloud, until the skies clear again?
posted by Barbery at 4:16 PM
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