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Mon 15 Jan, 2007 06:22 am
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 controlÂ…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
cob
You say that the "self" is in the body. I do not know if I agree. There is no such thing as self. The notion is as hard to define as the noton of "god".
What is music?
If I say that music is sound, I bet most people would nod their heads in agreement. But music isn't just sound. It is the harmonical intermingling of sound and silence.
Similarly, if we think of the self as an ongoing symphony, we see that it is an intermingling of external and internal impressions, in the interest of harmony. There are no clear boundaries to the self, and there is no absolute substance to it. Self is an illusory dream entity, same as god, which we cling to in order to make some sense of our existence.
And much like the notion of god, self can be shed as soon as we possess the insights needed to experience harmony without it, as an undistinguished part of everything.
Cyracuz
Cognitive science has in the last three decades introduced a new paradigm?-the conceptual metaphor. This cognitive science has discovered that there is reason to conclude that there is a Subject and one or more Selves. The Subject is the center of what is described as consciousness, will, reason, and everything that use uniquely what we are. The Selves are everything else. There is no single unified agreement as the the nature of our inner reality.
The Subject and the Self are not arbitrary distinctions however. The metaphors we use that give some indication of what we think the self to be indicates we think of the Subject as being person like with an independent existence from the Self. It appears that we think of the Self as being a person, an object or a location.
What is clear is that our naive concept of the Self is inconsistent to what we know scientifically about this matter.
I am not sure I understand your distinction self/subject
The distinction subject/object is pretty much the same as the distinction self/non-self as I see it. But they are both two sides of the same coin. Inseperable. Self is merely the relationship between subject/object. But once one overcomes subjectivity, one overcomes objectivity. They merge, and we see that there are no distinctions.
Cyracuz wrote:I am not sure I understand your distinction self/subject
The distinction subject/object is pretty much the same as the distinction self/non-self as I see it. But they are both two sides of the same coin. Inseperable. Self is merely the relationship between subject/object. But once one overcomes subjectivity, one overcomes objectivity. They merge, and we see that there are no distinctions.
"Philosophy in the Flesh" by Lakoff and Johnson the book that details the cognitive science paradigm I spoke of says "That the person may have more than one self, but only one of the Selves is compatible with that Essence." The Essence spoken of is the Essence in the Folk Theory of Essences: Each person is seen as having an essence. "This is called the "real" of "true" self. There idea goes on and on from there.
The matter cannot be understood without comprehending the general theory and one would have to study the book to make sense of it.
I understand it in different terms.
There is "self", this entity which retains an ego, and which can only experience subjective reality, and then there is absolute reality, what we experience when we see through the illusory elements of our existence. In buddhism it's called enlightenment.
As far as I'm concerned, cognititive science is miles behind the eastern philosophies when it comes to understanding the nature of the human experience.
Foley, I am uncertain of how to understand your one-word response.
Ditto, as in -back at you? Or do you agree? Or perhaps disagree?
Self discipline is real power. Little else can compare.
You have a point, ros. No matter what you do, without self dicipline you won't get far.
Cyracuz wrote:You have a point, ros. No matter what you do, without self dicipline you won't get far.
And with it, especially at a young age, there's very little most people can't achieve.
I think Self Discipline is the only true power anyone can ever claim to have.
I agree ros. Everything starts with self dicipline, and without it we are just puppets to our own wants and needs.
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