New Philosopher: Self

It's not often that I would include a magazine on these pages, but this one was such a read, and struck so many nerves; I thought I had to include it for my sake, to have a written record of how I felt through these articles. If you wish, join me below for a reflection on this issue of New Philosopher: Self.

   You're not 'entitled' to your opinion is an idea we are not normally greeted with, but within the logical framework engendered in philosophical debate it is paramount to good discourse. You can't take this mindset with you everywhere, sometimes it is not worth the effort, but remembering this idea is very useful when beginning to engage in intense conversation.

   Bread and Circuses touched on the idea that the ruling class could keep people content by fattening them up and stupefying them with entertainment. It has happened numerous times in history, and it is happening now. This touches on an issue that has come up frequently, using entertainment to drown out our inner voice, so that we do not have to reflect and deal with the issues that surround us.

   Finding and losing yourself is an article I think you could read over and over again. Finding yourself isn't something you ever finish doing, there is no static self, it is an open-ended process. We have this idea that we should be working towards something else, some other person, but the self is who we are right now, and who were yesterday, and who we will be tomorrow. All of these facets encompass the idea of who we are. "There's a sense in which a giraffe, living a good giraffish life of eating leaves and loping around the savannah is making itself into a giraffe."

   Invest in your masterpiece - yourself " "There is something crazy about a pattern of behavior that places the achievement of success above the need to love and be loved," [Lowen] notes. "There is something crazy about a person who is out of touch with the reality of his or her being, the body and its feeling... and there is something crazy about a culture that pollutes the air, the water, and the earth in the name of a 'higher standard of living.' But can a culture be insane?" "

   Losing ourselves to technology and Getting high on search both enlightened and enraged. We, as a society, are succumbing to information overload. "We are driven to fill our lives with the quest to access information", which wasn't a problem before the Internet, when the amount of information we had was manageable. But now, there is a never-ending stream of data to attempt to absorb, but we are saturated. "It takes an hour or so, the psychologists concluded, for memories to become fixed, or consolidated in the brain". And "to prevent cognitive overload, no more than four pieces of information should be processed at any given time, but the optimal amount is probably less than, at two..." How often do we consider this facet? How often do we click through page after page, under the guise that we are retaining this information, yet with every page link after 4, there is something lost in transit to the memory centers of the brain. "When the key to memory is attentiveness and deep concentration, when we must give ourselves time to form connections with periods of rest and contemplation, what do we make of the Internet, the television, the radio, and all these other forms of technology that have been thrust upon us with no thoughts to the human being at the helm?"

   From Getting high on search we know that "our ancient brains are constantly seeking because survival in the past - such as finding food and water - was a full time occupation... Internet search engines provide an artificial outlet for this kind of activity... Our seeking pathways, called dopamine transmitters, which energize while seeking, are firing when we're in search mode...We become sweating rats in the laboratory, pressing the lever to get our fix: refresh, refresh, refresh." And I am terrified that "the 'ding' announcing a new text or email message is akin to the bell Pavlov rang for his dogs." I'm not against technology, but I think, just like salt, sugar and fat, our evolutionary biology needs to catch up with the abundance of substance we have today. Obesity and diabetes are on the rise because the very things our body asks for are readily available, and without cognitive thought we will consume them. We need to engage in this same cognitive thought process about our Internet use and consumption.

   Do you really know yourself? offers this: "Who is this self I thought I was? Who am I really? The questions matter because the first step to realizing the philosophers' maxim "know thyself" is to recognize the context in which we live. Once we understand that we're caught up in a dominant cultural story that constructs a culturally appropriate self for us and shapes our lives, we've taken the first step towards knowing our true self: becoming our own self." We forget, that so much of who we are is determined by the culture, the time and place of where we were raised, and where we live. To begin to step out of the predetermined path we were raised for, we must first acknowledge its' presence. This is how growth will come, this is how societal change begins to gain traction. 60 years ago it was the cultural norm for blacks to not vote, 100 years ago it was the cultural norm for women to not vote, equal rights only gained traction when people began to look outside of the dominant cultural norms, and began to find who they themselves were and what they themselves held to be truths.

   Dying for your beliefs offers this gem "I would never die for my beliefs... because I might be wrong" Bertrand Russell. Along these lines it is useful to remember, even if your argument is shown to be flawed in some way, that realization will only take you closer to the truth. Either way, you win. It is also useful to remember, that an attack on your argument is not an attack on you, and that an attack on you is an ad hominem attack, and therefore fallacious. See the Fallacy Man comic for more good fun.

   Would you upload yourself? is a conversation I have had many times. I would, without hesitation, upload myself. How much of my consciousness is simply pushing electrons, and how much is it something else? Something we can't quantify? Is this part we can't quantify the soul, is it something that goes beyond physical properties and enters into the realm of mysticism? These questions could be answered with the first digital upload. Think, if we made a perfect, exact copy of the brain, digitally, but it was somehow, unseen, missing something, wouldn't that prove the existence of the soul?

   Piketty: unequal selves can be encompassed with this catchall "it is not inequalities of income and wealth per se that should matter to us, but their effects." There is the physical monetary inequality of wealth, but along with this comes different schools, health care, and overall quality of life differences. Understanding the goods and relations in which we should be equal is a broader task then simply removing inequalities of wealth. There is the burgeoning population of people who think technology is the answer to all our problems, from inequality, to climate change, but what I think they are missing is that these technological innovations will be restricted to those who can afford them. I truly believe there will come a time when nano-technology will be available, but it would be naive of me to think that it will be available to all.

  The road to surfdom gets a bit lost in its' own message, but evoked images and conversations I've had with my uncle, a serious surfer and philosopher in his own right. I like the notion that "no amount of money can make you a better surfer" and that this is common knowledge to the surfer. Their shunning of the societal status quo comes from an inherent social structure that is practiced amongst the waves. They are constantly fighting with the tragedy of the commons, yet through their own hierarchical system outlined by Tony Chandler it seems to be a system which works. "Through the lens of surfing, we get a glimpse of 'freedom'..."

   Social ghosts: Kenneth Gergen "Within any relationship, we also become somebody. That is, we come to play a certain part or adopt a certain identity. With my mother, I come into being as a child; with my children I come into being as a parent, and so on. Each relationship will bring me into being as a certain sort of person, and the actions that I acquire will enter the repository of potentials for future use. In a certain sense, we are prepared for a future in which we imitate various version of ourselves... As the years accumulate, so do the laminations of possibility. In this sense, one may view the 'third age' as one of the richest of a lifetime. In the latter years one may - ifthey dare - draw from an enormous repertoire of potentials. One may re-visit and re-kindle in wars that are impossible for the young. "

   Two and the same touches on the notion of replacing the parts of a whole, until the entire whole has been replaced. Is it still the same original thing. We know the human body, every 7 years, is from each individual cell to cell, wholly different. So it is asked, which is more myth? George Washington's axe? Theseus's ship? Or our concept of identity? "