Similar to our previous class discussion on whether or not we are our brains, Oliver Sacks’ “The Last Mariner” brought up the question to me, are we our souls then? Are we our selves if we cannot actually recall who are selves were the day before? Jimmie is a patient of Sacks in “The Last Mariner, suffering from a severe form of amnesia known as Korsakov’s. Jimmie appears to be stuck in 1945, still in his late teens or early twenties, although he is actually 49 at the time that Sacks writes about him. Jimmie is lively, intelligent, attentive, and recalls with great detail and affection what would be the past, but to him seems the present.
If then, Jimmie is stuck everyday, every moment back to some lost point during 1945 that he cannot move past from, can we say that he is brain? Is he his soul, if he cannot remember the experiences he has in the Home’s chapel, is he really the soul that the sister’s witness? Is Jimmie a self at all, if he cannot recall who he is past 1945? Although the past may shape who we become, if we suddenly couldn’t remember twenty-something years of our past, only 1945 and the present for just a few moments, what are we really? Does that mean that we are the diseases that affect us?
I think that Jimmie is still his soul even though he doesn’t remember a big chunk of his life. To me the soul and the mind are different things. To stay away from the religious definition of soul, I will define soul here as “vibes”. When you are around somebody and they give off good vibes or bad ones, then to me that is their soul. Jimmie still has that. He is also still a self, maybe not the same self that he use to be but one nonetheless.
And to answer your last question, I say yes, we are the diseases that affect us. We are them when they have such a huge impact on our lives that we cannot help but to ignore them. For example, take a person with high blood pressure vs. a person with Korsakoff’s. A person who has high blood pressure can go their entire day without being affected by their disease. At that point in their disease, they are not their disease. A person who cannot remember anything, even aspects of their own life is constantly being affected by their disease, therefore they are their disease. If a person’s high blood pressure gets so out of hand that they can no longer do the simplest tasks, then they become their disease.
Sacks always make connections between past and present and he mentions the roots are very important to us because it connect to our past and present. But for Jimmie things were very difficult even though Sacks try to show him something in few minutes he will forget about it. Sometimes the situation makes us act like this because the brain stops working at some point. I think it all has to connect to the brain, the memory part, but I can be wrong also. Our brain automatically tells us what to do when something happens, it gives the signals.
These kinds of questions always make me so confused and dissatisfied because I want an answer. When reading Jimmie’s case I also wondered who he really was. Before he lost his short term memory, he was walking, talking, thinking and breathing like everyone else. I think that Sacks ignored something important as well in his observation. Jimmie’s condition may have been brought on by his alcohol abuse, but maybe he also had PTSD. That would have cause his drinking and in that time the drinking screwed him up and the time when he felt most stable in the navy and in his youth before his problems, he was stuck there because he could handle it. In this case Jimmie was a person, and now he is his old person, but does that make him a person? He is different when he is expressing his intelligence, he is different when he forgets and he is different when accessing his spiritual side, is he a person or all of these people. I believe that Jimmie is a person because so many different thoughts, feelings, experiences and actions create who you are. If Jimmie is his brain, it would make sense because he is trapped in a specific mental state but he is also all of his personas. If Jimmy is a soul then religion will help him get through his illness and he will transcend it and in another realm or in another life he will carry his experience to the next vessel. His soul is now present in his body and when it is accessed through religion he taps into a part of himself he never had before. Jimmie is Jimmie, he is an abuser of alcohol, he has Korsakov’s, he is a navy veteran, spiritual, intelligent and he is Jimmie.
I have the same sentiment as Renee in being dissatisfied in my own thoughts when considering questions like these. I can not say that Jimmie is not a person or a personality because his mind is living in the past, because he is presently living in the present. He has reactions and interactions with present day people and his own emotions, even if they are only fleeting experiences and emotions.
I think Sacks’ overarching perspective would answer your final question succinctly. Jimmie is not his disease and his disease is not him, but they are intermixed and inseparable from one another. Jimmie’s experience in this life would have been completely different if the disease had never afflicted him, and he will never exist without it but, that being said he is still a person that has emotions, thoughts, fears etc that are not necessarily centered or controlled by this disease- in the moment that they are happening.
Jimmie reminds me of the movie with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore 50 first Dates. Where Drew Barrymore gets into a very bad accident and has short term memory loss and Adam tried every day to make her fall for him. But a movie doesn’t compare to Jimmie who is a real person with a real mental disorder. In my opinion our brains are connected to our soul and if Jimmie is stuck in 1945 I believe its good to say that his soul is stuck there also. And i believe that our experiences from our past make us believe and think the way we do in the present and the future.