Eakin. Autobiographical Consciousness.

Eakin offers conjecture coupled with ideas from noted neurobiological thinkers. The content is difficult to fully grasp as much of this chapter relies on work that we have to take his word for, as readers we would need to read the complete text of quoted works or already have a semblance of those works to fully be aware of this complex argument. For me “I” is a suggestion and a spotlight on the actual self making the person the actual focal point. I can be egotistical braggartism which lends to stories full of excitement or I can have more heartfelt emotional content melancholy and dark as in his illustration using Mary Karr’s “The Liars Club: A Memoir”. As for tolerating what is read in an autobiography, he suggest we are all gullible when reading one as autobiographers fabricate much of the content. We are told people “mis-speak”, people are judged to be in a traumatic state when recounting past events incorrectly.
If self happens before birth as suggested genetics and DNA shape our self long before we are born, offering the only true real self prior to contamination of social human influences. Damasio’s theory if founded would serve well as a defense to a serious crime where a disease such as PTSD or any other temporary emotional disorder is said to be the cause for the crime. We can see Damasio’s consciousness theory at play in today’s Reality TV programming and Social Media where individuals augment their persona’s to conspire to a more interesting self. Recently TV in operating rooms and surrounding patients in hospitals has been problematic where families have not been informed and therefore not agreed to the situation, but have complained that the care received by their loved ones has been reduced and undermined because the physician has been more interested in self promotion due to the access TV crews have been allowed.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/01/12/debate-over-cameras-crew-films-boston/we50wuQ6bUPAU6sFcXA17H/story.html