Individuality is just an illusion – we’re mere parts of one identity, scientist claims in book

JOHN DONNE, the English cleric and poet, wrote in the 17th century: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

And now a British academic has claimed that human individuality is indeed just an illusion, because societies are far more intertwined at a mental, physical and cultural level than people realise. In his new book, The Self Delusion, Prof Tom Oliver, a researcher in the ecology and evolution group at the University of Reading, argues that there is no such thing as “self ” and not even our bodies are truly “us”.

Prof Oliver said society urgently needs to understand that people are not discrete beings, but rather part of one connected identity.

“A significant milestone in the cultural evolution of human minds was the acceptance that the Earth is not the centre of the universe: the so-called Copernican Revolution,” he writes.

“However, we have one more big myth to dispel: that we exist as independent selves at the centre of a subjective universe.

“You may feel as if you are a discrete individual acting autonomously in the world… This is the illusion I seek to tackle. We are seamlessly connected to the world around us.” Prof Oliver, who is also a government adviser, said his journey as a scientist had led him to believe not only that supernatural powers do not exist, but individual humans do not either. He argues that there are

‘We are like a thread in a tapestry that is unaware of the majesty of the whole interconnected piece’

around 37 trillion cells in the body but most have a lifespan of just a few days or weeks, so the material “us” is constantly changing. In fact, there is no part of your body that has existed for more than 10 years.

Likewise recent findings in psychology and neuroscience suggest that even our minds are simply an echochamber of previously learned beliefs.

“We are like a thread in a tapestry that is unaware of the majesty of the whole interconnected piece. We are not sovereign individuals but part of a deep interconnected universal network.”

Prof Oliver claims that individualism is bad for society: “We are at a critical crossroads as a species where we must rapidly reform our mindsets and behaviour to act in less selfish ways.”

The Self Delusion: The Surprising Science of How We Are Connected and Why That Matters is published on Thursday.