Selfishness
Mar. 22nd, 2012 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
localfreakThe current readings for my module made me a little introspective over dinner The fundamental questions in life, that oft-toted but little-understood statement: I think therefore I am. But what am I? If I am a ‘self’ then what is the basis of that construction we call self? A consciousness of physicality or of what we look like, as with Lacan’s mirror theory: that moment when we look in the mirror and don’t see ‘another’ but see ‘me’?
I don’t like the first person pronoun usually- certainly not in writing if it can be avoided. It feels too raw, to intimate and, to be honest, too self-absorbed, particularly if writing in terms of an address. But the spectre of ‘I’ can’t be avoided. I am a voice. “I” is the sum of my parts- mental, physical, metaphysical and whatever else you could bundle up and attach to me. Or, perhaps more accurate, I could bundle up and attach to me. I is the ultimate in subjectivity, because it is purely mine.
So, coming at this from a traditional perspective therefore everyone/thing else is ‘other’- is ‘you’ or ‘who’ as I believe Levitas has postulated. I can never know You in the way I know I. Because you are other you become a different sort of equation of parts, some parts that I can see and classify and interpret, and some that I cannot see at all (the metaphysical). Equally you can never know I- although you could read my writing, hear me speak, know my hobbies, what food I like, what sports I watch but on this kind of philosophical limb I become ‘you’ to you. I am the other to you, but to me you are.
The implications of this with regards to ethics, to accountability of self, and to the way in which I develop a moral and substantial ‘character’ are based on my understanding of I. If I do not understand myself then can I ever give a full account of myself (as Butler would say)? Can I be held ethically responsible? But then my ethics – do they come from an essentialist perspective- a matrix, a beginning? Most, would say that they come from a sense of norm, which belongs to other but is accumulated to the formation of I. Postmodernism would argue there is no essential self, but a flowing of impulses, states and everythings which shift and change over time. But then again we can say that there is a fluid self but a static I? I am a conscious (and unconscious) being (although whether I exists when I am unconscious is again another question- do I? Other people say I do, so I exist at some level to other people- a tangible level- but I in terms of thinking or being, feeling dreaming or awake- I do not exist when unconscious. I must exist sometimes when dreaming however because I remember my dreams, and I certainly bodily exist whether the other physically observes my physical existence or not- a camera could prove this to me, but I think the drool on my pillow does the job well enough.
In other news apparently someone in Warsaw tried to hack my facebook account today. Considering its sum total is links to Awesome Fan Videos like this one and pictures of the family pets and landscapes I can't conceive what they could possibly hope to gain from it. There's sod all on there of interest really.
I don’t like the first person pronoun usually- certainly not in writing if it can be avoided. It feels too raw, to intimate and, to be honest, too self-absorbed, particularly if writing in terms of an address. But the spectre of ‘I’ can’t be avoided. I am a voice. “I” is the sum of my parts- mental, physical, metaphysical and whatever else you could bundle up and attach to me. Or, perhaps more accurate, I could bundle up and attach to me. I is the ultimate in subjectivity, because it is purely mine.
So, coming at this from a traditional perspective therefore everyone/thing else is ‘other’- is ‘you’ or ‘who’ as I believe Levitas has postulated. I can never know You in the way I know I. Because you are other you become a different sort of equation of parts, some parts that I can see and classify and interpret, and some that I cannot see at all (the metaphysical). Equally you can never know I- although you could read my writing, hear me speak, know my hobbies, what food I like, what sports I watch but on this kind of philosophical limb I become ‘you’ to you. I am the other to you, but to me you are.
The implications of this with regards to ethics, to accountability of self, and to the way in which I develop a moral and substantial ‘character’ are based on my understanding of I. If I do not understand myself then can I ever give a full account of myself (as Butler would say)? Can I be held ethically responsible? But then my ethics – do they come from an essentialist perspective- a matrix, a beginning? Most, would say that they come from a sense of norm, which belongs to other but is accumulated to the formation of I. Postmodernism would argue there is no essential self, but a flowing of impulses, states and everythings which shift and change over time. But then again we can say that there is a fluid self but a static I? I am a conscious (and unconscious) being (although whether I exists when I am unconscious is again another question- do I? Other people say I do, so I exist at some level to other people- a tangible level- but I in terms of thinking or being, feeling dreaming or awake- I do not exist when unconscious. I must exist sometimes when dreaming however because I remember my dreams, and I certainly bodily exist whether the other physically observes my physical existence or not- a camera could prove this to me, but I think the drool on my pillow does the job well enough.
In other news apparently someone in Warsaw tried to hack my facebook account today. Considering its sum total is links to Awesome Fan Videos like this one and pictures of the family pets and landscapes I can't conceive what they could possibly hope to gain from it. There's sod all on there of interest really.
