Despite the world’s rich multiplicity and its many “others” (other organisms, people, galaxies, etc.), and despite the large number of differentiated parts inside us, including trillions of living cells, each a miracle in itself containing many quarks and atoms, we are stuck in our identity bubble. We can only feel our own identity or self and never identify with another, except perhaps in glimpses here and there (through alternative states of consciousness or “world love”). We can think about it, but never be truly connected with the feelings and memories of others.
Is there a clear boundary that constitutes identity? If this boundary breaks, might “others” be able to leak in? Still, it will feel like the one and only.
Could we ever take a step back and enable ourselves to switch between different states of perception? Maybe some technological breakthrough will allow us. Still, this meta-perception (being aware that we can temporarily enter other perceptions) will feel like the “one and only.”
Consider the following thought experiment. Someone instantly splits your body, soul, or identity. You appear next to yourself, totally identical: the same mindset, memory, ego, and everything else.
If someone offers to kill one of the two copies and greatly reward the other self (with 1 billion euros, for example), what would you do? Will each self be willing to sacrifice itself so the other can get the reward? Since you are identical, you (one of the selves) still live with the 1 billion as if nothing happened; you won’t feel anything wrong except perhaps some remorse for how the other self would feel.
After all, is there any difference between this self-split and the current multiplicity of people? For example, the experiment could be almost identical if you have another human being facing you instead of the self-split. We humans are almost identical splits of each other. We are so much the same organism.
On the other hand, if you pay close attention from inside (seeing humanity through a human lens), you can see many differences in intelligence, ethical practice, goals, and wants.
I wonder whether all these differences can be seen only from “inside the system,” from the perspective of a human being. Would an alien or a super-being see all these differences, or would they not matter?