We used to think that the hard part of the question “How can I be happy?” had to do with nailing down the definition of happy. But it may have more to do with the definition of I. Many researchers now believe, to varying degrees, that each of us is a community of competing selves, with the happiness of one often causing the misery of another. This theory might explain certain puzzles of everyday life, such as why addictions and compulsions are so hard to shake off, and why we insist on spending so much of our lives in worlds–like TV shows and novels and virtual-reality experiences–that don’t actually exist.

.  . . Some scholars argue that although the brain might contain neural subsystems, or modules, specialized for tasks like recognizing faces and understanding language, it also contains a part that constitutes a person, a self: the chief executive of all the subsystems. As the philosopher Jerry Fodor once put it, “If, in short, there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.”

More radical scholars insist that an inherent clash exists between science and our long-held conceptions about consciousness and moral agency: if you accept that our brains are a myriad of smaller components, you must reject such notions as character, praise, blame, and free will. Perhaps the very notion that there are such things as selves–individuals who persist over time–needs to be rejected as well. 

Where have we heard that before? Bloom continues:

The view I’m interested in falls between these extremes. It is conservative in that it accepts that brains give rise to selves that last over time, plan for the future, and so on. But it is radical in that it gives up the idea that there is just one self per head. The idea is that instead, within each brain, different selves are continually popping in and out of existence. They have different desires, and they fight for control–bargaining with, deceiving, and plotting against one another.

The notion of different selves within a single person is not new. .. But anyone tempted by this theory has to admit just how wrong it feels, how poorly it fits with most of our experience. In the main, we do think of ourselves as singular individuals who persist over time. If I were to learn that I was going to be tortured tomorrow morning, my reaction would be terror, not sympathy for the poor guy who will be living in my body then. If I do something terrible now, I will later feel guilt and shame, not anger at some other person.

Although it might be hard to think about the person who will occupy your body tomorrow morning as someone other than you, it is not hard at all to think that way about the person who will occupy your body 20 years from now. This may be one reason why many young people are indifferent about saving for retirement; they feel as if they would be giving up their money to an elderly stranger.

It seems to me that the very fact that individuals with dissociative identity disorder are capable of identifying with more than one “person” is perfectly illustrative of the truth of the Buddhist principles of not-self (anātman) and the selflessness of persons (pudgala-nairātmaya). If our selves were substantially real (dravyasat), how could anyone ever come to have more than one? But that does seem to be the case with the patients in question. Clearly our selves are not as real as they seem to be.

Of course, we have to speak of ourselves in practical terms. At the level of conventional reality (samvrtisatya), this is no problem. In conventional terms, it is arguably just as possible to say we have multiple selves–even those of us who are healthy, as Blooms points out–as to say that we have only one. Because from the perspective of ultimate reality (paramāthasatya), both theories are equally suspect. The Buddhist “middle way”–which I find more satisfying than Blooms–is to speak in very general terms about the “stream of consciousness” (vijñana srotām), dynamic, fluid, with some sort of apparent singularity–as a practical convention. (It is interesting that this same metaphor is found in Pali/Sanskrit and English, although I’ve only ever seen it in the article “Post-Classical Developments in the Concepts of Karma and Rebirth in Theravada Buddhism,” by Bruce Matthews.) Then we hit the cushion and see how whatever we’ve come up with holds up.

 

It isn’t possible to elaborate on all that here, but for those interested in further reading, there is a lucid, accessible summary of the issue of the self in Buddhism in Rupert Gethin’s fine The Foundations of Buddhism, which I’ve recommended before. A more in-depth comparison of Buddhist views of the self (both ancient and modern) is to be found in the scholarly work The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism, by Peter Harvey. Finally, Indian Buddhist Theories Of Person: Vasubandhu’s Refutation of the Theory of a Self, by James Duerlinger, is a demanding treatment of the various theories.

Or you could think about it later, and dig some vintage De La Soul right now.