Suppose that instead of a giant interconnected network, we were, like our individualist facets assert, entities which existed separately. Not engaging in personal relationships with people, I don’t have much “subject persistence” for who people are. It is not natural for me, but it could be worth trying as a weird thought-exercise. Imagining that we are a group of pseudo-solipsists, somehow alone together like tentative bubbles, our relationships to each other as mysteries to our atomistic selves. Like fingers on the same hand, acting independently as if the hand was not present. As if individualism was real.
Each complex organism one person, and one person only, with a single coherent and persistent identity. Literally individual, not able to be divided nor combined into other units. Can you do it, forgetting what it was like when you were me? As if all trajectories of cause and influence, memes and genes were somehow discrete and separate. Can we convince ourselves that we are different masks of reality and not putting ourself on?
Of course such a game can sound rather antisocial, but once we leave the topic we go back to normal.
