The ghost in me
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Depersonalization
13 min read
The author's vivid description of losing their sense of self during illness—feeling like a 'visitor to life,' unable to access desires, agency, or identity—closely mirrors the clinical phenomenon of depersonalization, where individuals feel detached from their own mental processes or body
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Vitalism
13 min read
The article's meditation on 'ghost' as life force, the three-part identity beyond body and mind, and the sense of something essential departing during illness connects directly to vitalism—the historical philosophical position that living organisms possess a non-physical vital force distinct from physical and chemical processes
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Sickness behavior
10 min read
The author describes the profound cognitive and motivational changes during severe illness—loss of interest, inability to make decisions, withdrawal from engagement—which are hallmarks of sickness behavior, a coordinated set of adaptive changes orchestrated by the immune system that goes far beyond physical symptoms
I do not believe in ghosts, at least, not in the way that people tend to mean when they say that they do. I do not think that shades of past lives retain physical or energetic form in our world. I could be wrong.
But the word ghost has meant many things including, originally, the life force of a human. When our ghost slips away, when we give up the ghost, we die. It leaves a vapor trail, or it doesn’t, or you have to be just the right kind of person, so sensitive and attuned, to notice the wisp as it departs this world.
Some says that our ghost may go on to haunt houses or classrooms, people or events. But this is just hearsay, the ramblings of the superstitious. Nobody serious believes in ghosts, any more than they believe in telepathy or bodily meridians, UFOs or the healing power of faith.
What a list. So confusing. Many believe in one or some or even all of these things. I am among them.
I also don’t believe in souls, at least, not in the way that people tend to mean when they say that they do. I do not think that humans are fundamentally different from our cousins among the primates. If our lives are enrobed in meaning not contained by “body” or “mind,” if we have something that could be described as a soul, so, I think, do they. We have more, but others have some. This is probably the deepest rift I have with people of faith, that I do not believe that humans are special due to divine gift. I do see great specialness in humanity, but I attribute that to a remarkable sequence of events, evolutionary innovations and cultural inventions, that made us into the unique, precious, extraordinary species that we are.
I do feel, however, that there is utility in the idea of a three-part identity. Body and mind are not quite sufficient, they don’t capture all of what we are. There is something emergent. We are more.
Over the last two weeks I became desperately ill. Saying that I became deathly ill seems like hyperbole, but in truth, that is what it felt like. I felt that death was there.
I have been very sick before. I have had flu before. I have, I think, had flu that blossomed into bacterial pneumonia before, ...
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