The Elastic Self

This post was sparked off by a Radio 4 programme yesterday morning, Me, Myself and Mine, an exploration of what the self actually is. One of the more fascinating points was how elastic the brain’s idea of “me” can be – to the extent that it can be persuaded to adopt anything from a teaspoon to a space station as part of its own body. Provided the experience is repeated often enough and comes with instant sensory feedback, the brain will obligingly rewire its sense of self to include the object in question. Give it a bit of resistance here, a vibration there, the odd splatter in the right place, and suddenly “I” now extends into something that definitely wasn’t issued at birth.

This is why an astronaut can end up feeling as if the robotic arm of the International Space Station is an extra limb, and why I, after a lifetime of driving, regard my car as an extension of my own nervous system. But here’s where things get interesting – and occasionally domestic. My wife does not, under any circumstances, experience her car as part of herself. It’s just a box that gets her from A to B. Her sense of bodily extension is rooted firmly in the kitchen, where the cooker, sink, and a set of stainless steel pans form an integrated biomechanical ecosystem. The way she moves around them, the way her hand goes unerringly to the right utensil without looking, you’d swear the implements were wired directly into her cerebellum.

This isn’t down to some mysterious gendered wiring, despite what a few retrograde types might mutter over their pints. It’s pure exposure and reinforcement. I’ve spent decades fine-tuning throttle control, feeling the feedback through a steering rack, judging closing speeds to within a gnat’s whisker. She’s spent just as long fine-tuning heat control on the hob, feeling the feedback through a knife blade, and judging a joint’s readiness by smell alone. The brain simply learns what it’s given.

So if I can “feel” the contact patch of my tyres on a wet bend, she can “feel” the exact moment a sponge cake reaches perfection. If she can’t parallel park without a stiff neck, I can’t sauté an onion without burning the garlic. We are each, in our own domains, fully integrated cyborgs – half-human, half-machine – only our chosen machinery is entirely different.

And in the far future, the possibilities boggle the mind. Imagine astronauts with their proprioception wired straight into spacecraft hulls, “feeling” micrometeorite impacts on the far side of Mars. Imagine surgeons working through kilometre-long nano-fibre manipulators as if they were their own fingers. Imagine gardeners who can sense the moisture levels in the soil through neural-linked trowels, or divers who can feel the currents around an entire submersible as if it were their own skin. The same brain machinery that once learned to swing a hammer could one day learn to pilot a ten-mile-long generation ship – and still be grumpy if the coffee machine at the other end is out of order.

And perhaps this is where it circles back to something bigger. If the boundaries of “me” can stretch to a car, a saucepan, or a spacecraft, perhaps they can stretch without limit. Perhaps the self is not a sealed jar but a temporary eddy in a larger stream – an expression of something vast that flows through all of us. Call it The Source, if you like – that deeper reality behind all appearances. If my mind can embrace a steering wheel and hers can embrace a Kenwood mixer, maybe both are just warm-ups for recognising that every extension, every sensation, is already part of the same Source… whether it’s taking the car out for a spin, or making a Victoria sponge.