The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 251 of 254
Someones and Anyones
a quite useful way of simplifying three forms of subjective experience. The first she calls the ‘Someone’ scenario, which is the normal case of ‘you being different from someone else’. This is how we almost all, almost always, feel ourselves to be. ‘In brain terms, the Someone scenario could be reflected in the forging of idiosyncratic connections, and associations that are unique to your particular experiences, and also leave you open to modification by those.’ Although we tend to think of ourselves as Someones, we are on occasion also ‘Anyones’, the second of her scenarios. ‘Sometimes in our everyday life, we’re all parts of a team, it’s where we subsume our own interests, our own individuality, we sacrifice what we personally want to do in favour of the group.’ Instead of ‘living out an individual life story’, Anyone lives out a collective life story.