You asked for it, you got it! Almost half of you who took my little poll requested I write on this:
So here goes! This is not spoiler-free, btw.
The key thing to remember about the protagonists from LotL is that their memories are stored in different parts of their crystalline bodies. Cut yourself shaving, and you might forget what you had for dinner 200 years ago; lose an arm, and you start forgetting the names of those around you.
As demonstrated in the series, lost body parts can be replaced with new crystalline or mineral objects, even if they differ from the individual’s normal crystal structure. So Phos, for example, is able to replace her* missing limbs with sea mollusk cartilage(?) and solid gold. She still loses the memories stored in the old limbs, though.
(Incidentally, I once had a professor (of Ancient Greek) who opined in class that memory, in his experience, does in fact seem to be stored all over the body, not simply in the brain.)
Now, suppose she loses her entire original body piece by piece, replacing every part until none of the original remains. In that case, all her memories would have been replaced as well.
In which case, should Phos still be considered the same person?
Why the link between memory and identity? Because more than once I’ve seen anime do exactly that. Take Golden Time, for starters. When the main guy gets amnesia, he becomes a different person. His old self even hangs around as a ghost and haunts him! Or in Rosario + Vampire, changing Moka’s memories results in a different “Moka” appearing (Outer Moka) who is a different person than the original (Inner Moka).
In other words, change your memories, change your person.
However, there are other ways to approach it. I’ll pull out one or two next time, so stay tuned…
- I realise Phos is asexual and I should say “they” instead of “she”. But that could make it hard to distinguish when I’m talking about Phos and when I’m discussing the whole group. So I’m going with “she” for clarity.
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this is an interesting idea. personally, im generally convinced that every aspect that we associate with memory and consciousness can be linked to a product of the brain (so your Ancient Greek professor and i would likely disagree). as far as identity goes, ive always liked the idea that you essentially inherit the same identity as you incrementally change throughout your life. as you grow, most of the aspects that you attribute to yourself tend to stay the same, so small changes to personality/appearance/behavior/etc would be inherited by that base identity. so while you can look at any two points in time and see completely different people, you maintain yourself as basically the same person because you’ve shuttled that identity throughout your life. amnesia becomes a special case because there’s a clear line after which all of these aspects change, so you could be considered an entirely different person.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Marth! I’d love to respond, but think I’ll save it for part 2. 😉
Also, glad you commented because I had wanted to follow your Twitter but couldn’t find it; turns out I was omitting the first ‘r’.
fair enough. and since i didnt fully answer the question in the post, i’ll do it here: i think the case for the minerals becomes a little bit awkward, since the inclusions may or may not be able to migrate into the new body parts. so if some of the inclusions with phos’s memories move into the new body parts before the older body parts are replace, i would consider the two identities to be equal. this sounds a lot like the ship of theseus problem 😛
lol nice. i should take that username too
Always love more analysis posts. Good work!
I love analytical posts like these!
Keep it up
Thank you for your kind words and encouragement!