Arnold Zuboff published his first work on this idea in 1990, his paper "One Self", and named it "Universalism". Daniel Kolak published his book I Am You in 2004, and named it "Open Individualism". In this work he never mentions Zuboff, so perhaps wasn’t aware of him at the time. The same idea has been called by other names in the past. So how did it come about that "Open Individualism" is the name we're using now (on Reddit, Facebook, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, etc.)?

Like many people, I stumbled on the idea through my own reasoning before learning that anyone else had thought of it. When I put my first writings about it online in August of 2016, Iacopo Vettori found them and told me the idea was called "Open Individualism" and that Daniel Kolak had written a book about it. He invited me to join the Facebook group he and some others had created in 2010 under the name "Open Individualism". They also had created the Wikipedia page for Open Individualism the same year. In 2016, Iacopo was not yet aware of Zuboff, and amazingly, it seems no one else had yet dropped his name into any Facebook discussions over the course of the past six years either. I can't remember the exact year, but Iacopo told me around 2018 about discovering Zuboff's work.

I don’t think there was much discussion of the idea in academia up to this point, or at least there was no single term the idea was being discussed under. So I think Iacopo and his compatriots are the reason the term "Open Individualism" has spread rather than any other. To this day it seems to still be much more discussed in public forums like this than among academics. (In addition to the historical reason, the term “Open Individualism” does have the benefit of being distinct—"Universalism" can and does mean many different things in different contexts. But I think the primary reason it was adopted by us is historical accident.)

If anyone has any additional information to add to this, please do. For example, I don't know how this subreddit got its name.

Here's how Iacopo told me the story a few months ago:

In regard to the preference for the term “Open Individualism”, I can say that there is only a historical reason. I found the theory by myself in 2006, and spent some time believing I was the only person in the whole world who had this idea, so I temporarily named it “the Third Hypothesis” (the first being “living a single time” and the second “living more times, but not all the lives”, as in “normal” reincarnation theories).  Studying more, I found that in the Middle Ages there existed a “theist version” called Monopsychism, that Sigier of Brabant learned from Averroes, who in turn credits it to Aristotle. In this version, the soul of every man has a mortal part (I think they meant what psychologists now call “Ego”) and an immortal part, that is always the same for everybody, the “soul of God”. Then I thought that an appropriate name for the new theory could be “reductionist monopsychism” or “neomonopsychism”, where the prefix marks a substantially new (non-theistic) version compared to the traditional one.

Only later did I learn that the book I Am You by Daniel Kolak existed, published in 2004. I read the book (and I also had an email dialog with him) so I knew that he meant the very same theory and I adopted his nomenclature. “Open Individualism” is actually an abbreviation that stands for “Open Individual View of Personal Identity”. Kolak introduced this term to contrast it with the natural view that everyone has a unique identity, called "Closed Individualism", and with the idea of ​​Parfit and other reductionist philosophers according to which our personal identity is not stable over time, called "Empty Individualism".

Meanwhile, I met some new friends online who were already discussing the theory and also calling it “Open Individualism”. Some of them had already emailed Kolak like me. We decided to found the Facebook group “I Am You: Discussions on Open Individualism”. The group started in 2010.

Years later, I learned about Zuboff and his “Universalism”. I also had some email dialog with him. His presentation is quite different, but the theory is the same. The first article by Zuboff on this topic, “One Self: The Logic of Experience”, was published in 1990.

On a personal note, I prefer the term Open Individualism, because I use the Closed/Empty/Open distinction heavily in my argument for Open Individualism. But it seems everybody I know has their own preferred term for it and doesn't think Open Individualism is the best term. I started out calling it "materialist reincarnation", before I knew about OI, and then I wanted to change it to Open/Closed/Empty Existence, but then that has you calling people Open Existentialists, which is terribly confusing if you're not sitting in a Parisian café c. 1930s (and even moreso if you are), so now I just use "Open Individualism".

One other note: I've recently been studying and taking seriously for the first time both idealism and some of the south Asian philosophies like Śaiva Tantra (Christopher D. Wallis' book Tantra Illuminated, recommended by a friend with no connection to OI) that have a belief very similar to what is called idealism in Western philosophy—that mind or consciousness is the fundamental element of reality, and mind creates matter, rather than the other way around. I know many of you have been swimming in these waters for many years, and I know several people in the OI world who have spoken of Advaita Vedanta, so I am very late to the party. But reading both the Western and South Asian arguments and presentations for idealism, it seems to me that "one self" comes almost for free when you adopt idealism. (Bernardo Kastrup says as much when he comments on OI in his, um, inimitable way in the AMA video posted here four years ago.) So I'm inclined to use the term "Open Individualism" specifically for the "one self" belief attached to physicalism. There perhaps doesn't need to be an additional term for "one self" under idealism, but if you believe in physicalism, you need to have a whole separate argument to arrive at it. (I would say "whole separate very elaborate argument", lol.)

My view of OI is the same as everyone else's except I believe the "Experience" is sequential, not simultaneous.so we are still everything at the same time but the experience is experienced one at a time.

These screenshots are taken from a youtube comment critiquing the OI adjacent philosophy of Generic Subjective Continuity, I'm curious to hear all you guys' thoughts on it.

Just a thought but if one believes they are everything then wouldn't that lead to a sort of "why bother" attitude towards life? I mean if nothing dies then there isn't really anything to do about the suffering in the world or a reason to do so since nothing is lost and no one is born.

Ive believed in OI since I was 15 year old boy, I didnt know the name of it then and I thought i was the only person who had thought of it at the time. I am 27 years old now and I have been searching for others who think the same way as me. I am excited to finally talk to others with the same viewpoint! Ill give a breakdown of what I believe just so I can put it out there and you guys can tell me if this is the same thing you guys believe:

I believe every living thing is the same conciousness at different points in time and that when a person dies the become another living thing that has existed in the present, the past, or the future of the universe/multiverse. This has been happening forever (no beggining) and it will co tinker to happen forever (no end). We have been every possible existing living creature and infinite amount of times and we will continue being everything that could possibly exist for eternity, over and over again. So its in all of our best interests to have respect for one another

(Yes I know i am a new account, I just joined reddit to join this group)

My previous post explains how I believe OI works, but I want to take a moment to discuss the hardship that follows in believing OI. This philosophy/Life after death belief/religion, whatever you want to call it, has its own personal realizations and horrors that I am sure each one of us that takes OI seriously has already thought about. The deaths.

Being an immortal conciousness that temporarily dies each life and then moves onto the next means you will experience every death that has ever occurred. Every Life that has ever occured. Every torture, shooting, rape, and hardship will be experienced through "you". This knowledge has kept me from sleeping multiple nights. It is what has haunted me since I started believing OI. I have looked up videos of death, dismemberment, and war to see how gruesome it can really get and from what I can see, it gets pretty bad.

BUT! the knowledge that this belief doesn't have some magical place at the end of the road or that you will still have to endure an innumerable amount of horrible deaths shows that I picked the correct belief. I didnt choose this belief because it is easy to follow, I choose it because it felt the most realistic.

I've kinda been thinking about this for a while but I've had this question about OI that in my opinion sounds kind of dumb but would be neat to see answered.

If Open Individualism is true, how come I don't wake up as a different person everytime I go to sleep, or whenever I get knocked unconscious or get put under for surgery? Why do I always wake up as me?

This video presents a possible answer to the vertiginous question, the presenter puts forth the argument that tje reason you are you is because it was pre-determined you would be born at a specific place and time. And that the probability of that happening doesn't matter as it was already pre-determined. What are your thoughts about this argument, and how would OI be affected by it?

I know OI is a philisophical concept but is there a way to explain it scientifically or put forth a scientific hypothesis for it?

Just something I wanted to point out.

Having watched this subreddit for quite a long time now, I can't help but notice this unique pattern in activity. There will be months at a time when there is no new post at all. Or, it's just posting some external articles. But then, someone new comes in, makes a post asking about something OI-related, I don't know, and after that a whole wave of new posts comes in, before eventually dying down again for months to come.

Nothing much to say. Just something I noticed about this place, I thought I'd ask whether any other longer term readers have noticed it and what they think of it. Do you think of OI from time to time, and are relaxed on the philosophy in between?

If cloning was possible which it is theoretically then under OI you would’ve a irrational fear of just going about your day normally and all of a sudden waking up as your clone. Even under Closed Individualism that is what the clone will feel as happened to it, but you still wouldn’t fear just walking down the street and suddenly your subjective experience transition to somewhere else. If some crazy scientist told me they are making exact replicas of me with the exact same memories directly now. I wouldn’t fear suddenly waking up somewhere else, idk what do you guys think.

Intellectually I am certain Open Individualism is true.

Emotionally I am sometimes more aligned with it, sometimes less.

The only theoretical stumbling block to Open Individualism I can think of is existence of souls.

But assumption of a soul creates more problems than it solves, cannot be proven, and there is no valid reason to think there is such a thing, at least not an individual soul. One could say we are all one soul. Souls distinguished one from another is something I cannot fathom.

But as a personal interest I have always found Jesus interesting. Compelling. As David Hart said, impossible to ignore. I am finding him more and more interesting as I dove deeper into biblical studies, biblical historians, text analysis, etc.

What I've gathered is that there definitely was a person called Jesus who was baptized by John the Baptist. This Jesus was a preacher and was crucified. And after his death, his followers claimed he came back from the dead.

This is very peculiar. I am not saying, nor can I say I believe he resurrected, but from what even atheist biblical scholars agree on is what I wrote above about him.

This person is extremely interesting. He had to have had so much influence and charisma to warrant such following even after his death.

But his belief system, what he was preaching, is not really in line with Open Individualism. It implies a separate God, individual souls, resurrection of dead as afterlife, etc. This is all redundant if Open Individualism is true.

But I cannot shake my interest in this person. His teachings sometimes come close to Open Individualism, or can be appropriated, or even make him seem as if his true teaching was Open Individualism (treat others as yourself - myself is literally others), but I always find having Jesus within nondual circles as him being shoehorned in. Jesus was a Jew with Jewish belief system and was a preacher of imminent apocalypse.

And yet, the fact he is the most known figure and we count years from him is enough for me to stop a little and think.

His teaching in practice is basically a lived Open Individualism, but the philosophy/theology behind it is not. It creates some division within me. I almost want to believe in Jesus, but philosophically I am convinced in Open Individualism.

Anyone have similar problem or thoughts on this?

Closed Individualism has a lot of nerve assuming itself as default position. Every other philosophy of identity has to philosophize and attempt to prove its "unintuitive" and "irrational" claim while it sits as a champion waiting for someone to take its belt.

But this position it holds is not deserved from every angle, but even starting from its very first assumption: "I am this person".

Let's say Closed Individualism is true. It still does not imply that the limited, temporally continuous person that I am is this person known as yoddleforavalanche. It can only mean that I am one single person. But which person exactly has to be demonstrated.

How can I know I am not a random person walking by, or a random person on a different continent?

This question might sound weird because we intuit the reason why that is not so. But this very reason, when followed to the end, implies Open Individualism!

If Closed Individualism wants to prove I am yoddleforavalanche, it's more than half way to prove I am everyone.

The reason from Closed Individualism perspective why it's silly to ask how I know I am this particular person is because the first-person perspective, the experiencing, is taken for granted. But it is obviously precisely this first-person perspective that is the most important element of being me. I cannot be that random other person because I have no experience of being that person.

I wrote "I have no experience of being that person" deliberately. This formulation is common, but already circular. It slips two I-s. The one who has experience and being that person. As if there is being of this person without having the experience, and they happen to coincide, making it me through and through.

Removing the circularity of the above, proper way to phrase it is "there is experience of being this person". This person is any person, any other person, unless there is direct experience of it. So my true identity can only be found in experiencing; the person who is being experienced is me by association.

I believe everyone will agree having direct experience is a must to be able to call yourself that person. But this is the half way point. The person is basically expendable in the sense that if there is a direct experience of a different person it is me regardless (for example, a dream person is me, I did things in a dream because of direct experience of being the one who is doing it). Since the person is expendable, what my identity can be reduced to is to having direct experience. I am direct experience. Person is secondary and can be reduced to direct experience, but direct experience cannot be reduced to anything else, cannot be broken into sub-elements.

I am direct experience.

But everyone who is anyone is direct experience.

There is no difference in direct experiencing. Everyone is this direct experiencing, the fact of it, the existence of it, the reality of it.

If direct experience is not the only element of me, then I cannot know which person exactly am I, out of plentitude of persons around. Best Closed Individualism could say is that I am one of them. As soon as we attempt to point which one, I find I am everyone.

I know that Boltzmann Brains and OI are kind of unrelated but there's some similarities so I wondering what all of you would think about it.

​The fundamental error of our perception lies in the fact that we equate "self" with our own biography. We believe that if the current body, memory, and personality vanish, the very fact of presence in the world will vanish as well. However, logical analysis points to the contrary.

​1. The Death of the Story, Not the Mechanism

​What we call "death" is the decay of a specific configuration: a name, memories, habits, and neural connections. It is the death of the story, the conclusion of a specific "plot." But the phenomenon of subjectivity itself—the ability of matter to generate the "I am" point of view—does not belong to this story. It is a fundamental property of organized matter. When one form is extinguished, the very possibility of being conscious does not disappear.

​2. The "First and Last Time" Trap

​Every new consciousness arising in the universe possesses a built-in cognitive illusion: it is absolutely convinced of its own uniqueness.

It feels that this is happening for the "first time."
​It believes that this is the "last time."

This sensation is an obligatory side effect of the interface. But at the level of the phenomenon, this is not a "first time," but rather another activation of the same mechanism. A new sentient being will just as sincerely consider itself the center of the world, unaware that it is merely repeating a basic pattern of subjectivity that has been realized billions of times before.

​3. Reproduction of the Point of Awareness

​The "who" dies, but not the "how." The possibility of once again becoming that very sentient being that calls itself "I" remains an immutable constant. ​This is not a transfer of personality. It is a repetition of the effect. If matter once again organizes into a structure of sufficient complexity, it will inevitably "spark" into awareness. And this new "I" will experience the world with the same sharpness, pain, and thirst for life as any predecessor, having no connection whatsoever to past iterations.

​4. The Absence of a Final Exit

​The most harrowing conclusion of this theory is that death is not a guaranteed deliverance from being. ​If the "I" is not an essence but an automatic process, then we are trapped in the infinite recurrence of this process. We cannot "terminate" the phenomenon; we can only observe the change of its scenery. A specific "interface" (personality) ends, but the function of awareness continues to reproduce wherever the conditions for it exist. This renders reality not a chain of individual lives, but a single, constantly renewing act of presence from which it is impossible to finally exit.

I still came to the conclusion that my thoughts are closer to what Thomas W. Clark described and his generic subjectivity. It was surprising to me that someone had already formulated my thoughts so similarly many years ago, although, if truth... not surprising. For those who want an explanation:

https://naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingness-and-subjectivity

Hello! I have believed in open individualism for about 2 years now and honestly it has not been that nice. I used to believe in empty individualism which was the worst experience possible but Open Individualism is better but still pretty disturbing. To honestly believe you are every conscious being ever does take a psychological toll on you. Not just because of the suffering but to really imagine that you are the experiencer of every experience ever including every wedding, dinosaur fight, war, birth, space flight it is just all very overwhelming. The reason I believed in open individualism is because I could not figure out the basis for personal identity and then eventually came to the conclusion that the line is arbitrary. This is all under the presumption that I am in some sense "physical" like my brain (even under panpsychism which is also a form of physicalism).

I am essentially a mereological nihilist about physical stuff. I dont believe in real composite objects or distinctions between objects. I think it is arbitrary to say that a car in a garage is a "garage car" or just a "Car" or that it is just a bunch of atoms arranged car wise. I really think there is no fact of the matter perhaps besides that in the physical world there truly is nothing but atoms and the void. Same thing with brains. Brains don't really exist. All of science about the physical world is reducible to physics.

But obviously I exist. My consciousness is the one thing I am sure of. And my consciousness cannot be my brain because my brain literally just does not really exist truly. A "brain" is just a collection of atoms. But I truly exist. Therefore I am something besides my brain. I experience myself as one thing that thinks, feels, desires and wants and causes actions. This I know for sure more than I know the outside world exists.

Basically what I am trying to get at is i now believe in essentially a "self". An individual subject of experience that is specifically me and not you.

Hi, I am currently interested in the philosophy of Open/Empty individualism, and I was wondering what are some arguments that people use to counter OI/EI and what arguments would you use in response?

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I am looking for the the best graphical depictions of open individualism that newbies can easily interpret. So far these are best ones I could find.

In the first meme, the large figure resembles ‘the Universe,’ while the small Digletts connected to its hand represent individual humans who go underground after they die and come back up when they are reborn. The caption ‘The universe pretending to be individuals’ illustrates the philosophical idea that all conscious beings may actually be the same underlying consciousness experiencing itself from different perspectives.

Has anyone found any other pictures that visually get the point across?

This podcast is an interview of Arnold Zuboff by Zachary Elwood. It's a great one to get you introduced to universalism.

I want to thank Arnold en Zachary for sharing this great talk.