Eduardo Giannetti - Onde está o eu?

Somehow, in man's evolutionary route, has happened the sophistication - the enormous - sophistication of brain and of the mental states that escort our experiences. Exactly why this has happened and succeeded, I have no answer. But what's curious is this, and everyone can think about their own case. Everything that is mostly important that happens in your internal metabolism is completely closed to your will or conceit choice. My heart is beating, the blood is flowing, food is being digested, the hypothalamus is controlling a myriad of homeostatic processes of metabolic self-regulation. An infinitely complex myriad. None of these goes through deliberation, conscience or choice. However, acting in the world, when I raise the finger, make this gesture with my hand or use my tongue to talk, I have the feeling these are things that are coming from me. They are not completely closed things, sealed to my will and choice. Where does this scission come from? Why does the border fall where it falls? An experienced actress can control, through conscientious will, her lacrimal glands. I can't. She's trained for that, but that's right on the border. If I stop to think about breathing, I can accelerate it or slow it down, to a certain point, but when I'm sleeping my breathing continues on auto-pilot, I don't have to think about it. Why do some processes connected to our behavior give us the impression that they are subjected to a "Sovereign Me"? E quem é esse “Eu Soberano”? Where is it placed? It is probably placed nowhere, we have this idea of a small man, a little me, who is in there and it's me. There's no such thing. At a certain point in the book I wrote a sentence, my character did, that's not me, “I am the experience that my brain has of itself”. Then he questions himself “but wait a minute, ‘my’ brain? Whose 'mine'? who is this 'me' of whom the brain is property?” Then he rewrites: “I am the experience that a particular brain has of itself”. There is no "little me king" proclaiming laws and royal orders. It's all part of our intuitive psicology inherited from the archaic world. With the advance of neuroscience I imagine many things will be reviewed. The "me", in the end, is a piece of fiction.