Dilemmas In Critical Thinking

I have a dilemma. As humans, I believe we are social beings, and have become more so as our species has evolved and as technology has advanced. We can barely function without human interaction. It is essential to us. And yet, with the idea of solipsism and further the egocentric predicament, it’s completely possible that we aren’t in fact social, as we might very well be the only one, the only human being, the only self in the universe. My dilemma stems from the idea of complete and utter loneliness. I have so much trouble coping with this idea that I am alone. Throughout my entire life, I have been told that I am never alone, from birth to death, there is always going to be someone there. And now, here I am faced with the idea that no one …show more content…
Or have you and a friend ever been talking and they say something that you were just thinking about, or vise versa? Maybe it’s possible that I underestimated our ability to judge based on perception, to decipher body language so clearly and effortlessly that it almost becomes telepathy. On the other hand, it is our perception, which comes from our mind, which could be creating an entire illusion of a world of human beings around you like a blanket of warmth and constant company if, in fact, we are the single mind in the universe… But wouldn’t that make sense? If I am the only mind in the universe, and I am a social being that has no one else to socialize with, it would be completely plausible that my mind would create people, or rather the illusion of others like me, to keep me company. But how is it possible that I am the only mind in the entire, infinite universe? We are social beings, I stand by that, and so self could be defined by community as Hegel and the Jewish people thought about their respective identities. However, if I am the only mind in the universe, that makes the communal self …show more content…
I think that this theory also agrees with Sartre’s idea that the self is in the future and will thus forever remain incomplete. I did not interpret Locke’s theory as a self that is set in stone because of our inability to alter the past, but rather a self that was constantly changing and forever incomplete as well, as we gain new memories everyday. However, reading the excerpt from John Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding, I now understand that that was not his intention. In actuality, he believed that the self remains the exact same over time because we consider ourselves to be the same person over time, despite radical changes in appearance or even thought. I think that the idea of the self as incomplete, or the authentic self, goes directly against the idea of the essential self, the idea that self is defined by a set of characteristics. Disregarding my original interpretation of Locke’s self, as it was not his intent, there are still parts of his theory that I agree with, especially his argument of why we consider ourselves the same people over time. Because we remain the same, or at least think we do, there must be some sort of set or unchangeable self within us. In this case, the set of characteristics that define our essential self would be memories. However, as I said before, since we are constantly gaining new memories,