# Who or What Am I?

The left cerebral hemisphere is largely responsible for creating a coherent 
belief system in order to maintain a sense of continuity towards our own 
lives. New experiences get folded into the preexisting belief system. When 
they don't fit, they are simply denied.

To counterbalance this, the right cerebral hemisphere has the opposite 
tendency. Whereas the left hemisphere tries to preserve the model, the 
right hemisphere is constantly challenging the status quo. When the 
discrepant anomalies become too large, the right hemisphere forces a 
revision in our worldview or belief system. However, when our beliefs are 
too strong, the right hemisphere may not succeed in overriding our denial.

This can create a profound confusion when mirroring others. When the neural 
connections that physically define our belief system are not strongly 
developed or active, then our consciousness, the unity of all the separate 
active circuits at that moment, is going to consist mainly of activity 
related to our mirror neurons. Just as when we experience hunger, our 
consciousness consists mainly of other neural interactions for consuming 
food. This is not the result of a core self giving commands to different 
cerebral areas, all the different parts of the brain become active and 
inactive and interact without a core. Just as the pixels on a screen can 
express themselves as a recognizable image when in unity, the convergence 
of neural interaction expresses itself as consciousness. At every moment, 
we are in fact a different image, a different entity when mirroring, when 
hungry, when reading this text. Every second we become a different person 
as we go through different states. When we are mirroring, we may construct 
the idea of identity. But if we observe ourselves with our scientific 
understanding, we see something completely different.

The extent to which our neural activity brings about our consciousness, 
which creates our sense of reality, goes far beyond our current concept of 
the self. The separation we perceive between our environment and ourselves 
is only a conceptual practicality that we use to make sense of things. This 
is not a hypothetical philosophy, it's a logical consequence of how 
everything we experience, external or internal, takes place within our 
consciousness from a neural activity point of view. Seeing the concept of 
the self as merely yourself excluding the environment is a misconception. 
This is even reflected in our super-organismal features through evolution, 
where our survival as individual primates relied on our collective 
abilities. Over time, the neocortical regions evolved to permit the 
modulation of primitive instincts and the overriding of hedonistic impulses 
for the benefit of the group. Our selfish genes have come to promote 
reciprocal social behaviours in super-organismal structures, discarding the 
notion of survival of the fittest. The brain's neural activity resonates 
most coherently when there's no dissonance between these advanced new 
cerebral regions and the more primitive ones. 'Selfish tendencies' is a 
narrow intellectual interpretation of what self-serving behaviour entails 
wherein human characteristics are perceived through the flawed paradigm of 
identity instead of what we are, a momentary expression of an ever-changing 
unity with no center.

The psychological consequences of this as a more objective belief system 
allow self-awareness without attachment to the imagined self and bring 
about dramatic increases in mental clarity, social conscience, 
self-regulation and what's often described as being in the moment.

The common cultural belief has mostly been that we need a narrative to 
establish moral values. But with our current understanding of the empathic 
and social nature of the brain, we understand that a purely scientific view 
with no attachment to our identity or 'story' yields a far more accurate, 
meaningful and ethical paradigm than our anecdotal values.

This is logical since our traditional tendency to define ourselves as 
imaginary individualistic constants neurally wires and designs the brain 
towards dysfunctional cognitive processes, such as labeling and the 
psychological need to impose expectations. Practical labeling underpins 
most forms of interaction in our daily lives. But by psychologically 
labeling the self as internal and the environment as external, we constrain 
our own neurochemical processes and experience a deluded disconnection. 
Growth and its evolutionary side-effects, such as happiness and 
fulfillment, are stimulated when we're not being labeled in our 
interactions. We may have many different views and disagree with one 
another in practical terms, but interactions that accept us for who we are 
without judgment are neuropsychological catalysts that wire the human brain 
to acknowledge others and share ideas without dissonance.

Stimulating this type of neural activity and interaction alleviates the 
need for distraction or entertainment and creates cycles of socially 
constructive behaviour in our environment. Sociologists have established 
that phenomena such as obesity, smoking, emotions and ideas spread and 
ripple through society in much the same way that electric signals of 
neurons are transferred when their activity is synchronized. In a sense, we 
are a global network of neurochemical reactions and the self-amplifying 
cycle of acceptance and acknowledgment, sustained by the daily choices in 
our interactions, is a chain reaction that defines our collective ability 
to overcome imagined differences and look at life in the grand scheme of 
things.