17

When I Don’t Remember You

NICOLAS MICHAUD

Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.

“Simon . . . NO!”

Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

             “I have to, Marcy. I have to save you.”

Wouldn’t you like to get away?

             “Please Simon, don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t leave me again. You promised!”

Sometimes you want to go.

             “I’m sorry Gu . . . Marcy. It’s the only way.”

Where everybody knows your name.

             “I love you, Simon.”

         . . .             

             “I love you too, . . . Gunter.”

. . . and that was the last time Simon put on the crown. It was then that the Ice King was born, for whom Simon Petrikov is only a confused and distant memory. It was then that little Marceline lost the closest thing she had to a father for the last time, and she had to grow up.

Poor Simon. Poor Marceline. Poor, poor Marceline. What must it be like to lose your dearest friend and protector? And then lose him again? And then again . . . and then again? I wonder if Marceline, as a little girl, asked herself, “Is this it? Is this time the last time Simon puts on the crown?” Or did she just assume, like children often do, that every time Simon lost himself in the Ice King, he would get better. Because he would have to get better, right? All I can say for sure is it must have been torture for that little girl to watch her only friend slip away into madness. . . . Was it a relief that last time, or did it break her already broken heart to cry out to Simon, and see nothing but cold fury in his icy eyes. What was it like for that little girl to realize, finally, that her only friend was gone?

Really, if we think about it, there’s a worse nightmare for Marcy. Accepting that Simon was dead would have given her a kind of peace, a way to say goodbye, some closure. But he isn’t quite dead, is he? The Ice King is still kind of Simon—worse, we have even seen Simon come back, if only for a little while. As long as Simon has those brief moments of consciousness, Marcy can never quite let go. I imagine it is like having a parent who slips into Alzheimer’s. Caregivers sometimes dread the few brief moments of lucidity more than the moments when their parent doesn’t know them—because in those aching moments of awareness, when you can look into their eyes, you have to tell them, again, that they are sick, dying, and won’t remember you—at any moment they will be lost again. How would you hide the hurt and pain they cause while they are lost in the illness? We see Simon suffer this, realizing every time he comes back how poorly he’s treated those he loves, only to disappear again, leaving Marcy with worse than nothing—leaving her with a broken friend. But maybe we can ease Marceline’s pain. Maybe, even though Simon Petrikov appears to come back now and then, he is dead. Maybe Simon Petrikov really did die that day.

Nobody Wants to See This Old Skin

To help Marcy, the first thing we have to accept is that Simon and the Ice King aren’t the same person. It seems pretty easy to confuse them. After all, isn’t the Ice King just Simon with the crown on his head? Well, we can see that’s not true. The Ice King is different from Simon in every way that matters. Let’s think about it like this. . . . What stuff makes us who we are? And what is it that makes me different from you? I mean, what actually makes us different people?

Well, there are a few answers that we usually give to a question like that. To distinguish between you and me, we might say we have different bodies, we have different minds, and we have different souls. It seems that the Simon and the Ice King actually share some of those things. Even though their bodies are different in some significant ways, Ice King’s body is actually Simon’s, just with some magical transmutation. But when the curse is lifted, the Ice King’s body is transformed back into Simon’s. Simon’s mind is probably also in there somewhere, right? Simon’s mind, like his body, becomes twisted when he puts on the crown. And if they share the same body and mind, then it only makes sense that they have the same soul. Case closed. Simon and Ice King are the same person for the same reason you and I are different people. . . . Well, here’s the bad news—though perhaps good news for Marceline—not really.

Check out each of the criteria we just listed. First, there’s the whole body thing. You and I have different bodies, so we are different people. Simon and the Ice King have the same body, so they are the same person. Well, there is a huge problem here—because if it’s your body that makes you, you, then you aren’t the same person today as you were yesterday. The fact is, our bodies change a lot. Cells in my body die and new cells are made. In a decade, there’s a good chance that none of the cells in my body will be the same. Worse, if what makes me, me is this physical stuff sitting right here at my computer, then when every atom that makes me up is gone and exchanged with some other atom as time passes, I cease to exist. That’s what happens when I eat and breathe; I’m taking in the outside world and turning it into this body, and I expel parts of my body all the time. So we can’t say that what makes me, me is my body.

Here’s another way to look at it. Is Finn dead just because he lost his arm? If what makes Finn, Finn is his body, then how come we still think he’s the same guy after he loses his arm? Remember Finn as a baby, crying, stuck to that leaf? Well, think of the young man he is now. All of his cells are different, all of the atoms that made him up as a baby have been exchanged with new atoms he’s taken in from the world around him, and he’s lost an arm! How can we say it’s his body that makes him Finn? We can’t! It isn’t his DNA either! Otherwise, Finn would be the same person as his clone, right? If I have an identical twin, are we the same person? No, even if we have identical DNA! Our DNA is just a blueprint for making us, but it isn’t us any more than the blueprint of a building is the building.

So we can’t say Simon and the Ice King are the same person just because they share a body, even if the DNA is the same. There must be something else that makes a person one person and not another. We had a couple of options left: the mind and the soul. When we talk about the mind, we want to be specific. We tend to say things like, what makes me, me is my mind. But what does that even mean? It can’t be your mind if we don’t even know what you are. Maybe we mean something like our memories, beliefs, or personality. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that what makes Jake the Dog himself are his memories, beliefs, and personality.

I Know My Mind Is Changing

Well, we’re gonna hit the same problem we do with Finn’s body. What happens when Jake gets really hungry? Doesn’t it seem like he totally changes, almost like he forgets everything that matters to him? After all, we’ve seen him get hungry enough to decide to eat Marceline, even though he’s terrified of vampires! Also, we can’t say that Jake’s memories make him who he is, because what if he got amnesia? Would we say Jake was dead? Probably not, right? People with amnesia aren’t dead; they’ve just lost their memories. Doesn’t the same thing go for our beliefs? When Jake stops being afraid of Marceline, and changes his beliefs about vampires and become her friend, does that mean Jake has ceased to exist? No! Even if he changes his beliefs, he’s still Jake. So what the heck makes Jake, Jake, if it isn’t his body, his memories, or his beliefs?

Well, there’s always the personality, right? If anything clearly is mine and no one else’s, it’s my personality! Well, there’s the problem. Just like with body, memories, and beliefs, my personality changes. So if what makes you and me different is the fact that we have different personalities, how come we don’t say the same thing about me of the past and me of the future? All of our personalities change a lot over our lifetimes. Think about the stuff that mattered to you when you were five. How different is a lot of that stuff now? And when we first met Marceline, she was a lot meaner than she is now; hanging out with Finn and Jake has reminded her what it means to have people who care about her. But even though her personality has changed, she stays the same person!

So we can safely say that it isn’t your body or mind that makes you, you because even when we change those things, you are still you, right? So they can’t be the center of your identity. It would be like saying that the Ice Kingdom is the Ice Kingdom because it has ice, then removing the ice and saying, it’s still the Ice Kingdom! That makes no sense. If we defined the Ice Kingdom as “A Kingdom with Ice,” then if we remove the ice, it isn’t the Ice Kingdom any more.—Or, if we say, “No, it’s still the Ice Kingdom even we change it so that it doesn’t have ice,” then we have to admit that the ice isn’t that important to the kingdom being “the Ice Kingdom” because it’s still the Ice Kingdom, even after the ice is gone.

Okay, so far it seems like I’ve proven the exact opposite of my point. I’m trying to prove that Simon and the Ice King aren’t the same person. But all I’ve shown is that our bodies and minds change, and yet we remain the same person. So no matter how much Simon’s body and mind changes, he’s still Simon! But I’ve also shown something else—something kinda scary . . . it can’t be our body or mind that makes us who we are, so it must be something else that makes us who we are, right? Something like the soul. . . .

Well, sadly, the soul seems to not help much at all. Because the soul, if it is what makes me who I am, must be different from everyone else’s soul.—So the question is this: What is different about it? It can’t be different because of memories or personality, because—as we’ve pointed out already—those things change over time without changing entire identities. So what’s the deal? If my soul isn’t different from everyone else’s, it really isn’t what makes me, me (and not someone else). On the other hand, anything that might be different about it, is likely different over time too—like the memories stored in my soul, my soul’s personality, or my soul’s beliefs.

I Can Feel Myself Slipping Away

So here’s the problem. . . . We like Simon, and—if only for Marceline’s sake—we really don’t want Simon to be dead. So there needs to be some connection between Simon and the Ice King, something about them that’s the same. The problem is that all of the stuff that could be the same between them is all stuff that—if we think about it—doesn’t really make someone who he is.

There’s a good chance you are asking yourself, “What’s the big deal with change over time? So what if my personality changes over time or if my soul changes over time? It is still mine, so it is what makes me, me!” Well let’s think about something else that changes over time, like the Candy Kingdom. What if we asked the question, “What makes the Candy Kingdom, the Candy Kingdom?” It can’t just be the name. No matter how much I want to, I can’t just decide to name a town the Candy Kingdom and poof! there it is! No, the Candy Kingdom is a specific place with specific people, right?

So the Candy Kingdom seems like it would have a physical existence, just like any other country does. But, if we think about it, the Candy Kingdom isn’t really a physical thing. — Because although it has buildings and the palace and the people who live there, over time, all of those buildings will eventually be torn down and new ones built. Imagine the Candy Kingdom one thousand years later; it’s likely a very different place. There’s a good chance it will have all new buildings, and, all of the people who once lived there have likely died and been replaced by new people. This is the same problem as thinking that it’s my body that makes me myself. My body will be very different thirty years from now with new cells and new matter, just like the Candy Kingdom will have new buildings and new people.

In fact, imagine that Lemongrab became the ruler of the Candy Kingdom again, just like when Princess Bubblegum was too young to rule. Imagine that he takes power, but no shots are fired, no one dies, no bombs are dropped. It’s not hard to also imagine, then, that Lemongrab decides to remake the Candy Kingdom in his own image. He would likely rename it after himself—maybe “Lemongrab Kingdom”—and he would change the very way the kingdom works. He would change the rules and the laws to suit himself. So, the Candy Kingdom would be gone. But notice, here, that in this case all of the people are still there and all of the buildings are still there too. It’s like Lemongrab killed the Candy Kingdom without doing anything physical, almost like he killed its soul.

Oh. I . . . I See. It’s all Making Sense Now

What we realize is that our way of thinking about the soul, the very heart of what makes us who we are, might be very wrong. Maybe the “soul” of the Candy Kingdom is really just the way the ruler, the laws, and the people work together. So even if you change rulers or the people grow old and die, the Kingdom still exists because it is the way everything coexists. Some philosophers, like Gilbert Ryle, think that the whole idea of a soul is really just a way of saying “the way our brains work to produce us.” Just like the way the people work together to produce the Candy Kingdom.

The point is just this: we’re trying to figure out what makes us who we are, but there doesn’t seem to be one physical thing that does that. Even the soul is really best understood as something that doesn’t have a physical (even magical physical) existence. Really, it’s better understood as the way physical stuff works with other physical stuff to make something. A quest isn’t the hero. It also isn’t the treasure or the monsters. A quest is all of the stuff added together: the hero, plus the quest, plus the monsters, plus the working together in a specific way that makes “quest.” If the hero and the monsters travel down to the dungeon and have tea, it isn’t a quest, even though it has a hero, treasure, monsters, and a journey. A quest only happens when all those parts work together in a very specific way. And so it might be the same way with us. I only exist when the cells of my brain interact in a certain way. Yes, some cells can grow and others can be lost, but they must keep working together in the same way . . . or I cease to exist, just like if Lemongrab takes over the Candy Kingdom. All the stuff of the brain could still be there, but if it doesn’t function the right way, I’m gone.

And I Need to Save You, but Who’s Going to Save Me?

So. There isn’t something magical that stays the same that makes me, me, like a soul. And it can’t be my body or mind; all of the reasons we give for saying you and I are different people turn out to be differences I also have from my past self. That’s a real problem. And that’s why Simon Petrikov is dead.

It’s true that Simon and the Ice King are very interconnected. You might say that Simon is what causes the Ice King to exist. But being the cause isn’t enough. You aren’t your parents even though they caused you. Even if Simon and the Ice King share the same body and mind (though, truly, it seems that they don’t) that still isn’t enough to say they are the same person. The soul doesn’t help. Think about how different Simon and the Ice King are. Simon is extremely intelligent, brave, self-sacrificing, and thoughtful. The Ice King is generally shallow, cowardly, selfish, and thoughtless. So if they do share the same soul, it seems that the soul doesn’t really count for much. If it is supposed to be the magical thing that makes us who we are, but it doesn’t account for our intellect, virtues, or personality, how does it really matter? . . . So we’re stuck.

Now, let’s not forget that Simon comes back on a rare occasion. It might be even that he can be brought back for good. But notice that to do this, we have to lose something else—namely, the Ice King. If I’m right, bringing Simon back requires killing the Ice King. So we’re trapped between two very bad options. If it is the mind and body that makes us who we are, then Simon and the Ice King are different people, as their bodies and minds are quite different. But we’ve said that the mind and body don’t really make us who we are, as we remain ourselves despite all that stuff changing all the time. Maybe it’s the soul, but that doesn’t seem to help us much, either: the soul, if it does make Simon himself, is either lost when he becomes Ice King (making them two different people), or it is the same . . . but really pretty meaningless. Because, like I said, if the Ice King and Simon have the same soul, well . . . Cabbage! What is it good for, if it doesn’t prevent Simon from becoming a cowardly, selfish, lunatic?

So if we want Simon back, we basically have to kill the Ice King, because having one means getting rid of the other, which is a tragic option. After all, the Ice King is pretty endearing in his own way. And while Simon is obviously the better guy, is it right to get rid of the Ice King just to bring Simon back? What would poor Gunter do?! The most obvious evidence for the tragic nature of bringing Simon back at the expense of eliminating the Ice King is the fact that Simon himself is very unaware of what he does when he’s the Ice King. And the Ice King doesn’t remember being Simon. In every way that we think about what makes us who we are, they are two totally different people. And I can’t imagine that the Ice King would agree to the argument that he should cease to exist so that everyone can have Simon back.

What Am Us?

The realization, then, is very dark. It’s vampire dark, actually. To bring back Simon permanently is (assuming there aren’t any magical options) to delete the Ice King. Simon isn’t trapped inside of the Ice King; he’s gone. And sometimes, we can bring him back. It’s a bit like turning a computer on and off. If I turn off my computer and load in a new operating system and turn it back on, it will basically be a completely different machine with different programs and functions. I can turn it off again and reboot the old operating system, but I can’t really have both running at the same time in the same machine.—Not unless I want to have some sort of weird simultaneous split-personality thing going on. Imagine what that would be like for Simon and the Ice King! If we had both of them existing in the same body at the same time, . . . they’d be miserable!

The problem gets even worse. In showing that the Ice King and Simon aren’t the same person, we seem to also have proven that we aren’t the same person as our past and future selves. So far, we’ve found nothing that makes us who we are over time. There seems to be no one specific thing that we can find that holds us together. In the same way that Simon and the Ice King are not the same person despite sharing a body and brain, we would be different from our past selves. The fact that they’re so connected makes it even worse. Simon can kind of vaguely remember being the Ice King, and the Ice King seems to have some very vague connection to Simon, even recognizing that he once wore glasses. But despite that connection, they aren’t the same person, any more than two people who share similar memories are the same person.

In splitting apart the Ice King and Simon Petrikov, we seem to also have split apart ourselves. No wonder Marceline is so messed up. If she separates the Ice King from Simon, that means her friend is completely dead, but if they are the same person, then her friend doesn’t remember her, doesn’t seem to really care about her, and is often pretty mean to her. It might be just easier for her to believe that Simon is actually dead. And all the evidence about personal identity seems to support this; when the Ice King exists, Simon is really dead.

Please Forgive Me for Whatever I Do . . .

Well, there is one upshot to all of this. If it’s true that all of us are different people when our bodies and minds change, then it’s also pretty much true that the old version of us is constantly being deleted and a new one is constantly coming into existence. In other words, the person who started reading this chapter is dead. Whoever that person was, with particular cells, DNA, beliefs, memories, and so on, is gone. That person was replaced with a person with very similar cells, DNA, beliefs, and memories—so similar that we might as well just keep calling that person by the same name as the old person. It’s kind of like we don’t rename the Candy Kingdom every time a new building is built and an old one is torn down. But it also isn’t the same Candy Kingdom, and if we stepped away from it for a thousand years and came back, we likely would think it was a different place.

Maybe in this way we can give Marceline a kind of peace. Death is a pretty scary concept, and it sucks to think of losing your best friend. But if there isn’t really anything all that magical to death and to who we are, then we die a thousand deaths every day. As we grow and change, we leave behind the self that was once us.

So, when I get scared of death, I remind myself that I already have died, and it doesn’t bother me that much. Weird thought, I know. But, seriously, the person I once was is gone, but he doesn’t know he’s gone. There is a new present (or future) self who has taken his place, and when that present person goes, he won’t be around to be sad about it. He won’t even know.

So maybe Marcy can have some peace.

Just one more thought, though. Remember what Death tells Simon when Simon is dying: “Get real, man. You’re gonna be the Ice King till the sun blows up.” Notice he said, “You’re.” This seems to imply that Simon is the Ice King. And we do know that Simon has a very vague awareness of what he does as the Ice King. In other words, he’s in the limbo that scares us all the most. That’s the world in which Simon Petrikov still exists. My past self doesn’t get to come back, but my present self can still regret the decisions of that past self, and mourn the losses experienced by that past self. So although the past self doesn’t have to continue to suffer the guilt and loss, that guilt and loss can continue to be transferred forward to a new entity—one who didn’t even exist at the time. This sounds like the Hell to which Simon is condemned . . . having to know that he might come back at any time, perhaps at the very end of time, and have to bear the guilt, shame, and losses of his other life.

    . . . When I Don’t Remember You.

              —The Ice King and Marceline

      . . . together.