No, I have not had any plastic surgery ~ I just thought that this ship dilemma was interesting. It isn’t a trick, and I do not have an answer, other than to say how I often describe myself as being a geographical entity. I mean that “I” right now am a specific collection of cells hanging out in a precise location. I differentiate myself from others in this manner; no one else has these cells at this GPS location. I can move my cells to a new GPS location in the bathroom or the car and still be me, but what if only one cell was moved or ten or a million? At what point would there be no me? I don’t know.
Would “I” continue to be me if all of my likes, dislikes, memories, mental abilities, etc., were uploaded into a computer program? I don’t know, but I tend towards no, at least not at the present time from the little I grok about technology. Would there be consciousness of the self? Dreams? Hopes? Anxieties? All the inconsistent me-ness of me? Maybe someday.
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Anyway, I have read more of the Daughters of England stories written by Victoria Holt (aka Philippa Carr), and I notice they’re very uneven as far as endings, character development, info dumps, typos, etc. After reading 15 out of the 20 DOE books in this series (the last novel, Daughters of England [published posthumously], may have been ghostwritten, no pun intended), I can’t make generalizations about the series as a whole.
As I mentioned earlier, a few are not even romance novels ~ they don't have happy endings or even happy for now final scenes. Sometimes there are historical info dumps, but I would rather read the opinions of the characters because that's more interesting to me. Some of the DOE books focus on character driven storylines, while in others the protagonist is at the whim of her environment and doesn't seem to have much agency. Some DOE books are riddled with typos and other mistakes. Others seem to cut off abruptly without a real ending. My ratings on Goodreads thus vary from two stars to five.
If I weren’t so OCD, I’d probably move on from the Victoria Holt books now, but I am, so I’m not. I still have a few on hold at the library, and I have used ones coming from eBay. I managed to find all of the DOE novels and many of the other stand-alone Holt books. There are 52 in my list that I either have or can easily obtain (she wrote over 200!), plus as you know, I am still working on the 2025 Reading Challenge. Not to mention the 3-5 books I commit to read each month for my book clubs. This year, so far, I’ve read 81 books, which is insane. But here we are.
Today I finished We'll Meet Again, which was set during WW2 ~ I generally don't read those, but this was part of a series so I had to obviously ~ and it was really good! In a lovely case of serendipity, the protagonist turned 25 during the story, so this book satisfied my 2025 Reading Challenge requirement for that specific age of the MC. (What a silly requirement!) I was happy to cross off that box.
I decided I don’t want to give away all the new physical books I read, so this weekend imma look for shelves. The used books and the throwaway psycho thrillers will get donated, but the new series books will stay (esp if they have gorgeous covers), along with old faves I have in a box.
That's a trippy thought: That your cells are in a unique geolocation. That's one way to define individuality: Who else is occupying the very spot you are?
ReplyDeleteAs for whether or not we are ourselves after everything is replaced, we are because our cells are replaced constantly: The lining of our guts is renewed in just a couple days, for example. Our central nervous system lasts a lifetime, though, so that may be why our sense of self stays intact even when our other cells are getting swapped out. For insurance purposes in Norway, a brand new house built on the original (and sound) foundation from a very old house can be insured as wholly new.
But none of this answers the question: Are we us if all of our body is swapped out? The folks who believe in reincarnation would say yes, since we aren't our bodies.