A while ago I read Douglas Hofstadter’s book I Am A Strange Loop (out in paperback this June!) which contains a description of Hofstadter’s earliest memory of being conscious: looking at his reflection in a mirror, and realising that there was – or perhaps more accurately, generating – a conscious entity inside the head of the person reflected.

My own earliest memory of consciousness is of winding myself into a panic by focusing on my finger just in front of my face, then focusing on a chair on the other side of the room; watching two translucent copies of my finger swim together into one solid finger, then fly apart as a pair of ghost chairs swam together and fused to make a solid chair. Fear that my eyes didn’t work, followed by existential vertigo as I started to doubt that I was perceiving the real world at all.

Part of me would like to see a linguistic ego birthday, with children trained from the age of two to look out for the emergence of the human self – then there’s a party, and then the child commences the overpoweringly crucial training in how to manage that self.

To save money on cards, just find a birthday card from junior’s last birthday which says “Now I am 5″ or whatever, and cover the number.

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