Wisdom, Human Nature, Personal Identity, Multiple Personality, and the Universal Truth, Part A: People are Basically the Same, Part B: People are Basically Different.

Prejudice misapplies Part B.

Overgeneralization misapplies Part A.

Wisdom is the appropriate application of both parts A and B.

In regard to personal identity, most people apply Part A: they think that everyone has the same kind of sense of personal identity that they do.

If they have a single sense of identity, they can’t believe that anyone could really have multiple personality. If they have multiple personality (and if they know it), they feel that everyone else probably does, too, but that many people are either not self-aware or simply don’t want to admit it.

A related example is hearing non-psychotic, rational voices—or having non-self or other-self thoughts—in one’s head. People with multiple personality, who experience this occasionally or even routinely (it is the voices and thoughts of their alternate personalities), think that everyone probably has the same thing, but that many people are either not self-aware or simply don’t want to admit it.

After all, they think, if everyone did not have this kind of experience, why would there be such common expressions as hearing “the voice of reason” or the “voice of conscience”? Don’t all normal people hear the voices of reason and conscience?

But the fact is that people without multiple personality, many of whom are quite reasonable and moral, do not have this kind of subjective experience.