The Third-Person point of view

by Macabee Callard

Recently I was looking in a mirror and suddenly saw myself as a stranger. I then had a realization that I’ve never had before: I thought of myself in the third person. Huh. Who is this Macabee Callard guy? This is the thought that I had, and the thought that I’m hoping anyone else who reads this paper can eventually get about themselves. When you think about yourself in the third person, you seperate your soul from your body. Normally you think about yourself as your soul and forget about your body. But you always associate other people’s bodies with their souls. There’s person A. They think like this. There’s person B. They think like that. But if you look in a mirror, see your body, you may feel amazed that you own this thing. I think that when we look at other people’s faces and look for emotions and thoughts, because we don’t automatically know them. We ignore ourselves and think thoughts without realizing that we’re thinking them.

    But if you sometimes think of yourself like this, you may come to realize that you’re liking a thought you shouldn’t or you’re hating a thought you should like. I think this is why you sometimes think before you speak. You have an emotion and want to express it and say something without realizing you’ve said it. There is another thing that I feel gives me this kind of thought. Try imagining the entire universe. Our minds are built to say “Hey, what’s bigger picture than that? What’s outside of that? What matters more than that? But then you realize your summarizing everything. Everything there ever was and everything there ever will be. There are no edges of reality.

    I think the second thought is much bigger-picture than the first, but they both give you this feeling of wow- there’s something else besides my first level of consciousness. These thoughts can help with realization and perhaps even redemption, but they can be so astounding that you feel this really weird sensation like your leaving body. Everything I’ve talked about is very hard to understand, and you kind of have to have this thought yourself, where everything that mattered before doesn’t anymore.