The Boundaries of Self: Part Three

November 6th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Boundary, Evolution, Self |

Adaptive logic provides a relatively convincing narrative of how an individual organism, through the evolutionary necessity of optimising the survival of genetic material, might evolve an ability to set the boundaries of the self at the extents of the body, and also to be able to extend this boundary to include an enlarged community of organisms who share this genetic material. This extended self is not a product of rational conscious thought, and may not even be available to consciousness, but rather is experienced as an emotional and ontological fact. We do not only think it is a good idea to protect and look after the interests of our closest relatives, we also feel that as a desire and an imperative.

Given the current crisis that the environment seems to be in, the crisis of global climate change brought about be industrialisation and the pollution that accompanies that process, it would be useful if we were able to extend our sense of self to encompass not only our family but the entire ecosphere. If this were possible we would not only see the threat to the environment as a rational problem, we would also feel it as a personal crisis, a threat to our extended sense of self. We would be physically and psychically pained by the experience of leaving a light switched on unnecessarily, and would find it somatically necessary to defend the planet with as much vigor as we would show defending our own bodies from attack, or the bodies of our loved ones. Given, however, that in all of evolutionary history such a widening of the sense of self has never conferred any adaptive advantage, such feelings do not naturally exist. Without careful conscious effort we do not feel harm to the planet as harm to our selves.