What is a man?

Since I was a child and learned more and more about what science tells us about ourselves, I was always fascinated by asking myself who we are as human beings. So many things we know go against what we intuitively think about ourselves.

For instance, there are more bacterial cells in our bodies than human cells. Yet, I think of my mass as 100% human and not part-human, part-bacterial. I don't say I weigh 170 pounds minus the contents of my digestive tract and the bacterial colonies populating my skin and hair. No, I just say I weigh 170 pounds.

I also consider that the materials that make up my body are continuously flowing in and out and replenishing themselves. Every time I inhale, eat, drink, or apply substances to my skin, new materials are incorporated into "me." Every time I exhale, urinate, excrete, and sweat little pieces of me leave and diffuse into the environment. This so happens over time that after a decade or so, little or none of the matter that once made up the past "me" is now part of the present "me." Those parts are all in the air, in the soil, in the water, in other animals, or in plants. Maybe some escaped into space.

I wonder about this in relation to Christ as well. Did only the matter which made up His Body at the time of His death rise from the dead, or did all the matter which ever made up His Body rise also: the spilled blood, the sweat, the tears, etc? Some of this matter, if it did not rise also, is still in the world. Atoms that made up Christ's body could still be all around us, diffused around the world in the intervening millennia.

Diogenes the Dog, who when reminded that he had once defaced the currency, replied that there was a time when he also used to wet his bed.

I also think about my past self in terms of actions and memories. I have no more control over actions I did five minutes ago than any stranger on the street, since neither of us has the power to alter the past, and yet I have the sense that those actions belong to me and not to the stranger. I take responsibility for them, and I assign responsibility to others for their past actions.

Thinking of the child who wet his bed, I say that I wet my bed, though the atoms that made up that child's body are not part of my body now, nor do I have any control or influence over the actions of that child who I claim was me. And by what authority have I the right to claim he was me? By memory I claim he was me. But what is memory and why have I so uncritically granted it this authority? I have some of this boy's memories, but I do not have all of them. Some of them he lost, and I have no control over what he lost. Perhaps, then, since I am dependent on his choices rather than he on mine, I should say not that he belongs to me but that I belong to him. Yet, we would not say that a man is slave to the boy he once was. He may have left behind some memories which I possess, but he has no more control of my present actions than I do of his past actions.

A possible conclusion from these thoughts is the absurd idea that we can never call a man good or bad except based on what he is currently doing, and whenever we call someone good or bad we are only describing persons who no longer exist. Since he has no control over his past, he can neither claim credit for any good nor incur debt for any bad. Those all belong to a past self, which is no longer in existence except for the memories bequeathed. And, since the present is always flowing into the past, we could argue that we can call no man good or bad, even in the present, for by the time we begin to speak we speak of a person in the past.

The price we pay for accepting credit for what someone else did is to accept blame for what someone else did. The price we pay for assigning blame to one for what another did is to give credit to one for what another did. We do all this unconsciously with our belief in the continuity of the self, which is somewhat in contradiction with empirical evidence.