Single personality disorder

 

Humans are one of the few animals that are capable of passing the so called "self-awareness" test, along with some species of monkeys, magpies, crows and dolphins and perhaps killer whales. It's an intriguing concept, that of that most animals seem to survive without the need for recognizing itself as a single entity, controlling it's own body, while continuously traversing in time, as a single personality. This raises a question, is our self-perception actually beneficial to our own survival? Studies have linked depression with higher cognitive abilities, after all, understanding self and your own short and insignificant life and it's ultimate fate, in the grand scheme of things, can be a mortifying thought. But being where we are as a race, in terms of our place in the food chain and in terms of our grasp on the control of the entire planet, intelligence doesn't seem to be an undesirable trait. So perhaps, a personality and self-awareness, sense of continuum of one self is?

Since the beginning of recorded history, we imagined the world to be continuous, only to find out it's made out of smaller and smaller particles, that are made of even smaller particles, that are made of even smaller particles. And when we looked for something whole, we realized those particles are actually just waves, that collapse into particles when interacted upon. But our illusion of continuum continues to this day, we each get a name when we're born and carry it like a badge, we're convinced we're the same person that goes to sleep at night and wakes up the next morning, we have to believe in something unchanging, something that remains with us wherever we go, we always have ourselves. This is perhaps, the greatest disorder that's plaguing humanity to this day, except how can it be a disorder right? What is a disorder in the first place? For example, having ten fingers on your hands is not a disorder - it's a common trait of our species and thus is recognized as "normal". The sole basis that majority of  species has it, is what we deem as "normal", and everything else - a disorder, not based on any objective criteria of truth or quality. The few people that we recognize as having multiple personalities - we lock them away from society, they're viewed as a threat, but perhaps, just perhaps, losing sense of self is the next greatest step in human evolution, and a necessary one?

From the very early days. we were trying to figure out, if what's seemingly continuous to us, actually is. And we'd always find, that it is not. The table is made out of  "wood", then that this wood is actually made out of carbohydrate molecules (and other stuff), then these molecules are made out of atoms, then we found out these atoms are made out of quarks and gluons, and so it goes. Is it possible, that the very idea of continuum doesn't exist beyond our thoughts and imagination, outside of the product of our brain, that's doing it's best to abstract and simplify this complex world into something manageable? Most physicists agree on the concept of space time continuum, because it's easy to visualize, it's easy to use in the equations, because continuum for us feels natural, feels cozy, it doesn't challenge our primary beliefs. However, we've know for a while now of planck distance, the shortest distance between anything two that can exist, which is perhaps the biggest hint we have so far, as to the true nature of our universe's fabric - it's geometry. Yet, we still by a large part are refusing to acknowledge even of it's possibility. What if there is no such concept as space time continuum, rather, we live on a discrete, quantum spacetime, just like everything else that once seemed continuous to our ancestors and we'd find out it isn't in the end. Some effort is being made into exploring the mathematical side of quantized nature, and it's results are nothing short of fascinating, many of our fundamental constants no longer need be constants, as they instead can be derived from the very geometry of the universe and interactions of fundamental forces of the nature. This topic, as little as it is explored right now, lives under the name of "theory of quantum spacetime". String theory suggest something even stranger - that spacetime is neither continuous or discrete, rather it exist in an entirely different state of existence, the one that we can't yet comprehend!

So, can we just figure it out and be settled with it? Unfortunately, not. Our science and research has far surpassed the point where we can test our theories, we can no longer apply the very basis of the scientific method - experimentation, due to enormous engineer challenges it poses to further probe the true nature of our universe. After all, it was long expected to turn out this way - for us to be entering a new era, where theoretical physics split into two separate fields - testable physics, and untestable physics, a purely mathematical form of physics, a scientific philosophy, if you will. Ironically, Newton's most known book, about physics, is called "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.

So perhaps we're just returning to our roots then.