ABSTRACT
The picture of mind and consciousness developed so far can be regarded as quite optimistic in its way, the author suppose. The proposal is that people's essential selves are woven out of tiny chunks of subjective time. These components, dubbed SoSs, are envisaged as having an existence independent of objective, clock-time physicality. This chapter explores some aspects of the neurology and physics that might endow conscious mind with a form to fit the poetic image. Social implications, should the theory turn out to be true, would of course include a big change in society's attitude to death. Exactly how attitudes would change is unforeseeable, but there's a good chance that the cruelties involved in keeping people alive at all costs, however damaged or demented they might be, would be seen for what they are and mitigated somehow, which would be a great mercy.
