The origin of you

Imagine this: a machine that creates a label for everything. You feed it information and it automatically creates a name for it. There's no way to turn it off. Sensory information creates patterns of activity, these patterns of activity are automatically given a label. If no satisfactory label can be found then the mind will keep churning until it gets one. We think we are in control of this process but, if we look closely, we see that it happens all by itself - a self sustaining cycle of labelling.

What purpose does it have? Labelling closes a loop so that the rest of the machine does not have to deal with it explicitly anymore. It can move on. This may seem unremarkable until you realise the machine has started labelling itself and this label has created a sense of consciousness, of self. This might seem a bit far fetched but if you look closely you will see it for yourself. The labels have created a life of their own - they have run away with the show. They have made something solid out of nothing. They have created us.