OPINION
I’ve got a bad back and it won’t go away - and if there isn’t a column in those eleven words then I’m a chiropractor. (I arrived at the figure eleven by counting ‘ve and n’t as halves. Though, strictly speaking, n’t is two-thirds of a word, and it also leaves the problem of the dangling wo, which isn’t a word at all. But I have so much to say about the bad back that I don’t have time to go into the maths. I’m sorry. Another day.)
Saying I’ve got a bad back implies that the back and I are separate entities, with me being the owner and the back being owned. It’s like saying I’ve got a bad dog. (Not that I have got a dog, at the moment, bad or otherwise. Nor, when I do have a dog, would I claim to own it. I just live with it and hope for the best.)
But the implication of owning my back is that there is an essential me - a self, a soul, a ghost, a spirit - that exists independently of my flesh. It’s an ancient idea, but one with no supporting evidence. All the evidence in living creatures from protozoa to us points to the fact that the self and the flesh are the same thing and that when one dies the other goes with it. In other words the notion of there being a me that owns my back is nonsense.
The definition of my back is a puzzle as well. The back of a wardrobe is the whole of one side of it, top to bottom. But the human back is only the stretch between neck and rump. Such places as the back of my legs and the back of my head are at my back but aren’t my back.