The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 71 of 254
I contain multitudes
Although most people find the idea of multiple-personality disorder strange and alien, many, perhaps the majority, buy into a weaker idea of multiplicity. For instance, there is a reason why these lines from Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’ have become so widely quoted: Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) Many, if not most, people believe that they are multi-faceted, and that people who only know them in one specific context are not seeing the full picture. Although it is true that a great number take pride in saying that ‘what you see is what you get’, many others will tell you that there is more to them than meets the eye. However, this weak idea that we are multi-faceted seems light years away from saying we are in some deep sense multiple.