# Open individualism

Open individualism is an idea in the philosophy of self, according to which there exists only one numerically identical subject, who is everyone at all times, in the past, present and future.$^{:617}$ It is a theoretical solution to the question of personal identity, being contrasted with "Empty individualism", the view that personal identities correspond to a fixed pattern that instantaneously disappears with the passage of time, and "Closed individualism", the common view that personal identities are particular to subjects and yet survive over time.$^{:xxii}$

## History

The term was coined by Croatian-American philosopher Daniel Kolak, though this view has been described at least since the time of the Upanishads, in the late Bronze Age; the phrase "Tat tvam asi" meaning "You are that" is an example. Others who have expressed similar views (in various forms) include the philosophers Averroes, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Arnold Zuboff, mystic Meher Baba, stand-up comedian Bill Hicks, writer Alan Watts, as well as physicists Erwin Schrödinger, Freeman Dyson, and Fred Hoyle.

## In fiction

Leo Tolstoy in the short story "Esarhaddon, King of Assyria", tells how an old man appears before Esarhaddon and takes the king through a process where he experiences, from a first-person perspective, the lives of humans and non-human animals he has tormented. This reveals to him that he is everyone and that by harming others, he is actually harming himself.
In the science fiction novel October the First Is Too Late, Fred Hoyle puts forward the "pigeon hole theory" which asserts that "each moment of time can be thought of as a pre-existing pigeon hole" and the pigeon hole currently being examined by your consciousness is the present and that the spotlight of consciousness does not have to move in a linear fashion; it could potentially move around in any order. Hoyle considers the possibility that there might be one set of pigeon holes for each person, but only one spotlight, which would mean that the "consciousness could be the same".
"The Egg", a short story by Andy Weir, is about a character who finds out that they are every person who has ever existed.

## In reality

According to open individualism, physicalism implies experience never dies, because there is no one to die. There is always a substructure embedded in the sum of all experiential computations which assimilates the past from the inside of its causal structure. Our human intuitions are of hindrance here, because we don’t think in this clear, physical way by biological instinct. We stubbornly hold on to linear identities of fundamental characters who are not themselves, we imagine, composed of sub-characters.
From this perspective reincarnation in the common sense isn’t true, but rather that you are already reincarnated as everything because no one is traveling. This computation that knows: “I am here” is the same subject as that computation over there in the future that knows: “I am here” and there is no computation which knows: ”I am not here”.
The answer to the vertiginous question is that all experiences are "live”, but the illusion of separateness caused by the physical brain and memories causes it to feel like, from each person's psychological perspective, that their experiences are the only ones live.

## In ethics

Since open individualism fundamentally challenges our present view on the self, the outcome of the philosophy also suggests a radical change in how society views revenge, punishment, and in general any justification of suffering that is founded in our own alienation from the subject experiencing the suffering. From a utilitarian perspective it could be argued that killing wrongdoers is justified if it lowers the amount of suffering that the wrongdoer will have to experience in total. However sadistic punishment just for the sake of revenge doesn’t make sense, according to open individualism, since it just causes more suffering for you to experience.