Does the Mind or the Body Go First?

Image credit: Marcus Aurelius

There’s that old comment or dinner-party question about whether someone prefers the mind or the body to “go” first.

I think most people say they’d prefer that their body “goes” before their mind, though I’ve heard a few people say that they’d prefer not to have full awareness when locked in a failing body.

Frankly, the question never really made sense to me. I guess I’m not enough of a Cartesian.

What’s the Difference between Mind and Body?

How do we really divide the body and the mind? Isn’t the mind part of the body? The brain certainly is. And without the brain—and the circulatory and respiratory systems, and, frankly, all our other physical or corporeal systems—we cannot have any sort of consciousness. Right?

If your mind really “goes,” your body cannot exist. Parts of your brain control your breathing, your digestion, and all the rest. Sure, these aren’t the parts we consider the “conscious” parts. But some people have accidents and need to relearn how to breathe—which transitions the “unconscious” act into the conscious, at least until it’s relearned.

I certainly had to spend a lot of consciousness on learning and using French—and still do—and only some of it has now transitioned into unconscious reflex in my brain’s functioning. English, my native language, doesn’t require much conscious thought for me to use—but sometimes it does. And I still consciously and actively learn new things about English to absorb into my reflexive brain all the time.

The opposite happens as well: Many, many times our minds busily work through problems and decisions and fears and anxieties when our bodies appear, at least to an outside observer, at rest.

Further, any medical person will tell you that what your “body” (if we bizarrely separate consciousness from our physical form) does affect your mind, and vice versa. If you stress your mind, your body reacts. If you stress your body, your mind reacts. This stress could come from unmanaged anxiety on the mental side or lack of exercise and crappy eating on the physical side. Eat a bunch of junk food and sit on the couch for even just a few days and see how that affects your mood.

Scientists have even discovered that your mind—the things you dwell on and the things you think about—can physically change your brain and how it functions.

Your senses—all of which we’d agree come from physical parties of our bodies, such as the complex mechanisms of our eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and skin—generate signals that your brain, or “mind,” interprets to generate a reaction in your conscious or unconscious brain. If you lose access to one or more of your senses, your brain changes. Your consciousness changes.

Aside: Your senses can even trick you, convincing your consciousness of something that has no basis in the world beyond your mind (and body).

If you feel an emotion of some kind—good, bad, or indifferent; love, hate, anger—does the feeling come from your mind or your body? Probably a bit of both, right?

You can get a stomachache purely from something you’ve eaten—and you can get a stomachache due to anxiety. You can cry because a foreign object entered your eye—and you can cry during a sad scene in a movie. In these latter cases, where the mind has affected the body, you’ve had a physical reaction to a mental process based on something completely external to your mind or your body.

But I digress.

Body and Mind Exist in Lockstep

You’ve got to be wondering where I’m going with all this.

All this to say, in sum, that I can’t see how one can truly believe that the mind could stay tip-top while the body declines—or the inverse.

Ultimately, if your body declines, your mind will decline as well. Right? Stands to reason, seems to me.

If you have a major physical setback of some kind that becomes a chronic problem, I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t affect your mind.

Though, sure, I get the general concept. We can all cite people who seemed to physically keep going long after their minds let go and people with minds that kept going even when their bodies decided to be “done.” I think though, that these examples might be the exception, rather than the rule.

Because it seems to me, and as I’ve observed among the people I’ve known who’ve lived long enough to go through the process, the mind and the body tend to stay in step. If you first experience a physical setback, your mind will follow along with your physical decline—even if with a bit of a delay. And if you have a mental setback, your body will gradually let go as well.

And yes, I recognize that it may seem I’m completely mistaken when it comes to certain diseases and conditions. People with senile dementia or even Alzheimer’s disease seem to have minds that go before their bodies. People who have ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, seem to have bodies that go before their minds. However, all these conditions or diseases are caused by the body that affect the mind—as do all diseases, in some way or another. The rest of the body gradually gives in to the brain’s degeneration, though in some cases sooner rather than later.

The Body Always—and Ultimately—“Goes” First

Ultimately, I believe that our bodies always fail our minds. Even when it seems like our minds are “going” first.

Not only because I don’t believe our minds and our bodies have a clear demarcation point, but also because, in the end of it all, our consciousness cannot exist without the physical body through which to experience and engage with the world beyond it. We can take care of our mental wellbeing and improve our physical wellbeing, and ideally we take care of our physical wellbeing to improve our mental wellbeing as well. We need to do both—just one or the other won’t do the trick—if we want to live as high quality a life as possible as long as possible.

However, when the mind seems to go, the “going” usually has a physical cause—and this physical cause will eventually manifest in other parts of the body as well. When the body fails, even if the mind seems intact for a time, it ultimately fails the mind. In the short term, as things wind down for us all—and in the long term, when the body gives out entirely and takes the mind out with it. As all bodies do.

What do you think?