You are musing on the meaning of self.
Self is the combination of the ongoing chemistry ( the life force)
and its interaction with the structure
of your organism (the body) and it adaptive nature
and the resulting imprint from experience
both endogenous and exogenous in nature.
When this stops, the life ends.

You are as much the operating system as you
are the mechanism. And the supra-mechanism,
the "machine" whether it be society or one
of its manifestations such as the automobile
or a computer, is not alienating rather it just is.
The machine is can be the simple camp fire,
hut, a club, the spear, the stick, the woven basket,
the fur skin vest, or the clay pot. Man is a builder of machines
both simple and complex. This is part of
his nature, your nature.

I wrote the following the day after I wrote the above:

What I realized hit me so profoundly that I have had difficulty
speaking for the past couple of days. It filtered down into my
consciousness at least down to the level of speech. It disoriented me
completely as I groped to find who I am when I am not flicking a
switch or turning on a faucet.

I realized that if so much of our world is contrivance and device, if
those disposable commodities that are intended to be used up, become
obsolete and disposed of are myriad and all-pervasive, then it is no
wonder that most people are nothing more than accommodation to
contrivance and device and that the cold artifice of it has pervaded
their very being. There can be no expecting people in a post-
industrial society to be real - because they can't. They have been pre-
empted by their machines.

My daughter called me and I had trouble speaking to her. I found it
difficult to speak in general and the feeling was exacerbated by
having to speak to her through the medium of technology.

Neither could I chat with friends on line. I simply wasn't able to
bring myself to relate to people through the computer, although I did
post. Yet, having a private conversation via technology was impossible
for me.

Once, when I was, oh, sixteen I think; I took acid. I remember looking
at a record player and it looked like nothing but artifice.
I remember watching the technology and thinking: "It's bullshit. It's
fake."
*Everything* looks that way to me now. Everything.  And this "trip"
has now gone on for two days.
This is as close to a psychotic break as I've ever come and yet I
know that it's probably the first time I've touched sanity since I was
a baby.

My husband said that the very same thing happened to him. He mentioned
feeling this way yesterday and then again today - total disruption, a
complete calling our consciousness and everything we called real and
every day into question - a disruption that leaves room for
restructuring.
This is being a radical. Everything before was cosmetic reformism.

This is today's continuation:

Before going to bed last night I thought: "Without myriad technology,
life would be uninteresting. What would my consciousness be able to
busy itself with except the basics of survival?"

Early this morning I forced myself to shower, it was a very strange
experience - the water from the shower head, the perfumed liquid
soaps, shampoos, deodorant, body lotion - all of it was so strange, so
unnatural.

I made myself go out. The sight of the traffic was peculiar too and I
found it hard to look at people.

I went to town and found that I could not longer breathe semi-
autonomically. I had to think about every breath. If I didn't breathe
consciously, purposefully, I began to asphyxiate. I thought: "This has
gone far enough. Is this the end of how far down the disruption will
go? What if it is not? What is the step after not being able to
breathe without being conscious of it?"

I was becoming exhausted and more than a bit frightened. Then I saw a
garden. In it were trees. I was drawn to the trees. I was drawn to
their life. I reached out and touched a young palm tree. Never had I
seen a tree, really seen one. I noticed every leaf, every speckle on
the leaves. I noticed the sun reflecting from some of the leaves. I
looked at the trunk of the tree. I saw more detail than ever I had
seen in my life. It was endless and I realized that the tree was
continuously changing. I thought: There is more to this one tree than
there is to all of the synthetic world put together. This tree is
endless. It is infinite. I could spend a lifetime observing this tree
and still not begin to know it." Then I realized I was breathing
normally again.

I went over to a small evergreen tree. I could see the texture of
every leaf-like growth. I noticed the differences in the acorns that
were on the tree. I never noticed detail like that. Never that I can
recall. Perhaps I did as a baby, but I do not remember that. The more
I looked, the more there was to see and the more I saw the more I was
taught how to see by the tree.

I went over to a patch of grass in a park and took off my shoes. I
walked through the grass though it was only about 10 degrees outside.
I felt the cold, but it was not my enemy. It was not something I had
to defend myself from. I sat down in the grass and looked at it. I
wondered how many blades of grass there are in the world - how many
there have been and will be.

I watched yet another tree as I sat in the grass. The leaves were all
sorts of colors and I watched them undulating in the wind. I
remembered Richard May's comment about susurrations of tautologies and
I realized there are no tautologies in susurration.  There cannot be.
Every undulation of every leaf is a world in and of itself. It never
was before and will never be again and the leaves do not return to the
same place unchanged.

I realized that in having disengaged and de-identified with technology
my consciousness had returned to its natural state. I was no longer
adapting my consciousness to the constriction of technology. It was
accommodating itself now to nature, thus it was expanding without
limit.

I had received my answer as to what my consciousness would be like,
who I would be if I was divested of the stultifications of technology,
if I was not accommodating myself to the synthetic, the devised, the
expendable, the disposable. I could see that nature was being created
continuously. I could see.

I felt very human, not at all animal, though I did connect with
something like feral fury when I realized that there were those who
would destroy nature. I was filled with a deep-abiding sense of
protectiveness of it and that protectiveness included self-
preservation, as I was part of nature. My own existence did not seem
more or less important than that of the trees I had observed. What is
more or less of infinity?

I experienced time differently too looking at that first tree. I
realized that had I had all the time in the world, I could not fathom
the depths of that continuously evolving tree or even see all its
morphological detail and that it was a privilege to see something of
it and see its endlessness. The amount I was able to see and the time
allotted to me to see it was irrelevant. What is a fraction of
infinity?

As I walked on I was able to call my husband on my cell phone, though
I had remained, and probably will remain, in a natural state of
consciousness. It is enough to break through the barrier once.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com