Flexibility of the self is REAL power

[coberst]

Flexibility of the self is REAL power

 

Those people are STRONG who can withdraw a pseudopod at will from trifles as well as from important matters. The individuals who are strong enough to control the ego rather than the ego being in control is indeed “master of their domain”.

 

One of life’s more urgent and difficult problems is learning to set the boundaries of the ego. Such control represents true maturity of character and personality.

 

The “self” is in the body but is not part of the body; it is symbolic and is not physical. The human can be symbolically located wherever s/he thinks part of her really exists or belongs. The more insecure we are the more important these symbolic extensions of the self become. In conceiving our self as a container that overflows with various and important extensions that our technology provides us we might appear like a giant amoeba spread out over the land with a center in the self.

 

Because the child has no such control and is almost always identified through the parent, the child reflects the parent’s point of view. The child is the parent before s/he is his or her self; psychoanalysis’ call this “repression”. “This simplified discussion of the ego and its boundaries take us right into the heart of psychoanalytic theory, and to one of its true and lasting discoveries: the famous “mechanisms of defense”.

 

These mechanisms describe how the child stakes out the extensions of the self. “Introjection” is the taking the parts of one person into the image of the self. “Projection” is the placing of the child’s desires and thoughts into others. “Each of us is in some ways a grotesque collage, a composite of injected and ejected parts over which we have no honest control…Little wonder that we spend our lives searching in mirrors to find out who we “really” are.”

 

Ideas and quotes from “The Birth and Death of Meaning”—Ernest Becker

[Sacri Sankt]

well, im certainly concious of being a collage, of being unreal. but i think such a view is pathological. but then, my personality is just a smokescreen anyway. i dont have any firm traits or set beliefs, its all subject to sudden change. guess that gives me a better perspective on this.

[chill]

Yeah, I agree that this is the case. But think about this. Surely we were born tabula rasa (apart from our genetic traits, that is) and during the course of childhood and adolescence we were formed, shaped by external influences. Seeking our who we "really are" by shutting out all external influences is pointless, because who we "really are" is as you said a collage of various relationships and interactions, cultural identities (which are external), and moral values (obtained through society and upbringing, and hence external too). We really ARE how the world affects us. And I disagree with negative portrayal (connotation) of such external influences; how it is deemed as being "defensive" for instance.

 

Jean-Paul Sartre, a proponent of existentialism, famously quoted that "Hell is other people"; not being able to define one's "true self", being forever under the influence of other people (we are constantly forced to put up appearances; "images" of ourself so as to maintain our standing in society. Indirectly we are forced to act a certain way as to gain standing in the eyes of other people). This he argued, a world where we are bound by our desires, our connections to other people, is Hell.

 

Believe me, this is NOT the case. A world where we shut ourselves out, from "other egos", from relationships, from emotions, that is Hell. Sartre says "Hell is other people". Well i say "Heaven is other people". Come on, love comes from accepting another ego totally, from making love and definitely from "other people".

[Sacri Sankt]

Yeah, I agree that this is the case. But think about this. Surely we were born tabula rasa (apart from our genetic traits, that is) and during the course of childhood and adolescence we were formed, shaped by external influences. Seeking our who we "really are" by shutting out all external influences is pointless, because who we "really are" is as you said a collage of various relationships and interactions, cultural identities (which are external), and moral values (obtained through society and upbringing, and hence external too). We really ARE how the world affects us. And I disagree with negative portrayal (connotation) of such external influences; how it is deemed as being "defensive" for instance.

 

in the instances of pathological development thats true. but a normal person learns to maintain a choherent personality, a kind of emergent defence against too much self knowledge. any normal person who wanted to see what its like for me to look at my self will have to become pathological.

 

Jean-Paul Sartre, a proponent of existentialism, famously quoted that "Hell is other people"; not being able to define one's "true self", being forever under the influence of other people (we are constantly forced to put up appearances; "images" of ourself so as to maintain our standing in society. Indirectly we are forced to act a certain way as to gain standing in the eyes of other people). This he argued, a world where we are bound by our desires, our connections to other people, is Hell.

 

hmm, interesting. i am always very aware of putting on a show when im with people. its always a performance. but thats because i have no stable personality to shield me from the knowledge that i am a collage of events, so im unable to rely on my past actions having built up credit with the people im with. i always expect them to reject me, and im so afraid of it happening, that im constantly trying appeal to them, to make them like me. it must be really annoying for them, lol.

 

Believe me, this is NOT the case. A world where we shut ourselves out, from "other egos", from relationships, from emotions, that is Hell. Sartre says "Hell is other people". Well i say "Heaven is other people". Come on, love comes from accepting another ego totally, from making love and definitely from "other people".

 

O.O doesnt bode well for me, then. :eek_big: