My god you have no idea, or maybe you do. My life is a fucking reading list. And an album-listening list. And a movie-watching list. I'm addicted to taking in various forms of culture and I was luckily not born in, say, 1430, so I'm constantly overwhelmed.
I don't know what your lists are like, but I do know that I get overwhelmed by them in my own life. I make lists like crazy and though I tend to accomplish most of what I set out to read, listen to, watch, experience and learn, I never feel like I've come to the end of The List.
I have 2800 articles open in my feed reader right now, and if I could I'd read them all. I have a tab full of slowcooking recipes that I want to at the least read and at the most cook. I have Cloud Atlas next to my bed. And a dozen other novels. I'm halfway through this article. I try to read old magazine articles I have bookmarked as often as possible, because you don't get so good a snapshot of life retroactively. I have like 7 Alice Munro short stories to read that I just found, because I'm curious about her. I still need to read my beautiful copy of Xenophon. I want to reread Tolkien's History of Middle Earth -- 12 volumes. Little Dorrit. I'm in the middle of Notes from Underground.
So anyway that's the tip of the iceberg. And you're right, it never ends. Wouldn't have it any other way.
I need an auxiliary brain for reading. Imagine that: an auxiliary brain that would subconsciously inform the main brain. Our prejudices, preferences, opinions and beliefs are already formed by things we take in consciously as well as subconsciously. It might drive a person crazy, but it might be worthwhile to see how it plays out. You know, once.
Truth continues to be stranger than fiction, humanodon: http://www.tulpa.info
I have heard the word "tulpa" before, but always described as an imaginary friend that one convinces oneself is real. I have heard of something similar, where someone who has amnesia will sometimes display a distinctly different personality than their pre-amnesiac persona, or even people who have suffered some sort of mental or physical trauma and for some reason they then begin to speak in a different accent.
I know it's unethical to experiment on the human mind (and I would not advocate such a thing), but I do wonder if subjecting ourselves to certain stresses with the intent of adapting the mind in desired ways might be possible.
Is it unethical if one is doing so oneself? From what I understand people are taking the development of these personality fragments into their own hands (and at their own risk). I supposed it touches on the same field of pros and cons are the arguments for and against experimentation with entheogens / hallucinogens.