Who am I?
That is a very good question. The general
attitude of the population in so far as I have been able to observe is that this question is to be avoided.
Many people will answer, "What do you mean? I'm me, that's who!", or something equally inane.
However, when one takes this question and holds it close, to examine, understand, and
answer it, one finds that it cannot be answered so simply at all.
The problem is that one must understand three things to answer this question
correctly. They must understand themselves, the
world around them, and what divides the two.
The reason I phrase the means by which the answer to this question must be constructed in this manner is that, when you really get down to it, the universe exists purely inside your
mind.
The only thing you know to be real is what your
senses report, and the senses themselves only give
information to your brain, which builds up a construct of concept from which it draws certain conclusions about the nature of its
environment. The sensory data is the world. The entity of "I" is what records, catalogs, and analyzes this data, and draws pertinent conclusions. The difference, learning to know where data ends and interpretation begins, is what divides the universe without from the universe within.
This presents an amusing irony: to attain the objectivity required to define who you are, you must accept that the entirety of the
universe is purely subjective.
After accepting this, it is a natural conclusion that one must learn to separate fact from interpretation, and weigh the two accordingly.