When I read a work of poetry, there is a distinctly I-Thou quality to it. I am in the presence of what Martin Buber described by this relationship; the World before me is vague, Mysterious, and hauntingly personal, vulnerable, available and Open. The Encounter of such a World stands in stark opposition to the remoteness of objects as they are experienced in the I-It mode, although alternation betwixt these two is inevitable. This dynamic alternation is essential to the Humanity of the human being, and it is clear to myself and several others that my generation of peers has little to no knowledge of the Other; it appears at best to be an abstract entity to them, with the obvious exception of a few.
In a preface to a re-publication of Martin Buber's seminal 'I and Thou', Jewish theologian Walter Kaufman pointed out that a number of people do not have an 'I' at all, but merely live as objects amidst objects in an It-It fashion. (This is miles from the Dingen of Rilke, in whose case Things are more akin to Thou's.) The people inhabiting It-It usually commit the barbaric sin that Nietzsche ascribes to Socrates of gathering information they do not intend to use. They keep the company of their fellow enthusiasts, whom they respect to the degree that they are just as devoid of a Soul -- an 'I' -- as they.
It would be unjust to suggest that the Scientific Community is any more densely populated with people of this kind than the Artistic Community, the Philosophical Community, or the Thoroughly Literate. Strictly speaking, we simply do not (and cannot) know, for one can only judge a person to be a given way one person at a time. To try to arrive at any broad knowledge of 'how many' people inhabit 'It-It' (through statistics) would require reducing everyone involved to an It, eliminating the possibility of spotting an I. As Sartre rightfully noted, one cannot comprehend the other person as a Subject if one treats that person as an Object. Such an inquiry would be entirely misleading, for although any socialised agent can fake sincerity, in theory, a genuine 'I' cannot come out of such a process. One ceases to be a true Subject once one consents towards being treated as an Object.
In light of the It-It tendency as a conceivable possibility, though, one can understand the origin of any trend in popular science which makes a claim towards having identified the 'exact part of the brain' that is responsible for individual Identity. Yet such a conjecture would tell more about our cultural biases than a 'matter of fact'; it is merely symptomatic of our naiive materialism and a Crisis in our modern conception of Identity. One cannot simply reduce Human Identity, in all seriousness, to a function of one isolated part of the brain. It is a grand pretension.
The first and most apparent reason for this is the complexity of Identity, and tied in intimately with this is the crisis of Identity in Modernity. Depending in part upon where one lives, one may be hard-pressed to find many people with whom to have a deep, vulnerable conversation that challenges and compels one to examine the Soul as an unknowable Mystery. To one who has not made such an enterprise a Goal, the description of such an encounter may appear to be 'mere words' plagiarised from out-dated texts.
Yet the few who possess what poets regard as genuine Self-Knowledge obviously inhabit an entirely different World than those who are content to 'understand each other' through small talk and common sense. Theirs is a different, if not greater, I. But if this begins to sound spiritually elitist, consider simply the basically incontrovertible fact that Identity varies from person to person and within each individual over the course of a life-time. The immediate awareness of a distinction between a superficial conception of one's self and an Authentic one should suffice to prove this.
The Scientific Process, in postulating a given lobe or gland as the 'origin' of Identity, commits its prime sin by reducing Identity to a Known It, by Analysis. Yet the Identity as it is understood in relation to Thou definitionally cannot be Known. This resolves the initial problem of a Theory of a Unconscious. How can we Know an Unconscious Mind to exist, if we would definitionally be Unconscious of such a Mind? The answer is that to be aware of the Existence of such a Mind -- a Second Subject -- is not the same as to be Knowledgeable about its Essence. If the Mind and the Identity are fundamentally Unknown, we affirm this Existence.
dm.A.A.
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