I had a dream last night wherein a gaggle of elementary school girls asked me "Would you like to give us a quote for our school newspaper?" to which I responded "Sure." The girls giggled, ran back to their work table and wrote down "Sure.". It was at this point that "I" got the joke, too. "Sure" was my quote in the newspaper. Not the cleverest joke, but definitely the sort of thing elementary school kids would find funny.

The odd thing about it was that the I that was dreaming didn't get the joke at the same time that the I that made up the elementary school kids did. How could one part of "me" get the joke and another part of me not get it? Humour is usually a gestalt sort of experience - an all at once recognition of a juxtaposition - the resolution of which results in the human (yes, this is a truly unique trait of humans as far as I've read) response of smiling and laughing.

I take my dream last night as further evidence of my "hypothesis" (certainly neither unique nor original to me, but merely a hypothesis that I claim to believe at this time) that the "I" is an illusion. There is no singular I that is doing the experiencing inside my head. I suspect the brain is composed of numerous "agents" which would be networks of nerves that perform particular functions - the sum total of which is everything the brain and body does. One of the "last" agents in line for receiving information is the narrative agent. This agent puts together a story about what's going on to give the animal a sense that there is some sort of unity stuck inside his head that is worth preserving. The story, however, is based only on what the narrative agent has been told - which isn't everything - and can go "offline" while other processes continue to function if necessary (such as when the brain has to conserve energy because oxygen has suddenly run very low).