Gear 2: Oceans of Me.
It was Hume who arguably pointed out that there is something rather odd with the idea of a Me. One talks of oneself, and excepts everyone (at least in the west) to talk of themselves, as if what I am is the not naturally and easiest idea in the world, and yet one can never directly encounter what one is or meet oneself. On the contrary the idea of ones own identity is as strange inferal one makes from all other perceptions. I am the site or thing or object which these other things occur in. Or at least, Hume suggests I would be if passions do not interfere. Passions operate in such a way that this odd ragbag of ‘being me’, this site for others as well, is in fact felt (via the passions) to me the most important, and most real of territories. M me might then never be felt, and as an idea might be a wash out, and yet as a feeling is almost over powering. The problem then Hume suggests is how owe deploy this feeling?
The problem here is a very real one. The passions are Hume suggests are very powerful, so powerful the to feel is to demand a reality in which these feelings can express themselves. If thought these feelings are powerful nought this demand will become itself creative. That is If I feel myself to be strongly enough, I will create from that feeling a place in which or that idea can be. I will simply demand that all my perceptions of the world and all other people within it bend over backwards to allow for the fact that I am. I become them, via my feeling for myself something that must be impressed upon the world A Feeling which demands a reality. The only problem is what kind? Here the trouble is of course that the idea of Me, as a Gear, that is as an idea that demands manifestation in others, can naturally have many different way of express itself There are very many different types of Many place to be a self within. In is essay I will trace seven of the main strategies, seven different types or forms of me. These strategies might be usefully divided into those that start with some other human (which I will consider first) and those which start with something other than a human.
Surely the first me, is the that of confrontation. Sometime ( for us in the West around two or three) a child learns that it really can say no. Or better that is it does say no it can control or affect the adults around it. The child therefore asserts what it is in the knows of creates, in the being difficult, in the not doing what it is quiet told and seeing the react. Or to put it differently, it is in the anger of exasperated parents that the child initial hatches must be a me, the cause of these looks and thee master’ is born. A parent’s ‘sensible discipline’ is therefore not really out morality and not even about protecting the parents from the little tyrant in their midst, so much as creating sensible places of conflict between them and their child, places that allow the other to be without destroying the parent in the first place! What I am is therefore impressed upon other (and their drudgery. A power that remains at base a power of Me. The power to bugger everyone else off,…I
Building on that power of no, the next hunting grounds for element soft being a Me is surely conversation and exchange. I still in the reactions, or the refraction of others that I se what I a., but these reaction never need o be a no. They might rather be the echoes of attraction or disgust I read in other thought Or the effects, my words o presence has upon them Or else the way I am able to help them or make them rethink how they themselves are. Or even the agreements I reach within them. Or even more in the praise of value they give to me. under their love as I perceive it, a Me surely exists.; and to be a me becomes caught up with a circle of people (call them friends) you enable or permit the me to be in these reactions.
And yet this secondary conjuring of a self is rather complex. Once a me is not a direct point of confrontation it becomes fine art of listening and noticing. So that exactly where I start to see a conversation as being all about Me or the point I remember myself as being and being special or the extent I draw on the love of friends to be is always a complex affair. Here are really no rules here. No set of places or constant set of guides. I can conjure what I am in very many places. It will therefore my own sense of identity wandering across often very dark lanes and problematic places. I is so very easily to confuse a me with a you or with a demand for a reaction or with a supposed pretended power of myself and to attempt to demand the world bares witness to this assertion. In a sense, a Kierkegaard says, them is actually helped in itself endeavour if what it asserts is a little bit daffy. That is he feeling that there is something special about what I am is all the stronger if that special is wacky. The more wackier, the order the more I am a Me, and the more identity I might assert. And yet here one needs to put in such a caveat. If one over does this being a Me , and this point, one might easily become wither very lonely, or very mad.
At which point another strategy kicks in. Maybe the burden of being oneself is too much. Maybe then the feelings that needs to be cobbled together to be a self are not those points of difference or specialises so much as those pointers of collectivistic. Maybe another Me I possible, a me as a part of a collective enterprise, be it family, company or nation. A might then be a me through being interchangeable with others or else able as we share in being a thing to learn from them. What I am therefore becomes aught up with a collective sharing a pooling of identity, and a learning or reaction as a pool. I react this way in the name of the rest of us. I act as a part in a team and know myself or contain myself as such. This construction of a M is then helped b the fact that such large complex groups usually have enough texture within them in contain many passions and man facts of their indwellers. That is a old (say anger or being boy) will not merely be mine; but also in being it will put me in mind of the body member of the community,. I will then contain that feeling in thinking of another, and reflecting in that thought the feeling back into the group identity of ourselves. Feelings that might be disruptive of a self And cause a nice little me to not be able to hold itself down where it was), can then be caught upon in a far wider group and so held. Group make powerful places for M to be. And yet of course they only do so in restricting the sense of that me. That is I am collective then what I am can only be the kind o thing that can be shared. The group has then always a tension with those very many feeling that it cannot be, and w=yet which inhabit its peoples. Feeling that can so easily develop and destroy everything, and in so dung destroy the very cru of identity, that is the group: In the name of such a risk groups will then become crusading and liable to persecute any Non-me within them.
But then of course one can learn how what one is though splicing rather carefully these relation with others. Or better on might set up those others to learn from them/ Another become then not a place of exchange so much a pale from which one sucks p a being. In their reaction in the mannerisms, in their being one learns what one is: One apes then a type or manner or even a sequence of attitudes. One become a self in reflecting another’s life. A process that will then go beyond a mere copying (or at least can do) The other in ones mind can actually itself become generative and animated. That is one might very easily place ones role model on a variety of different circumstances and setting; They might then become open to changes and react 9in ones imagination of them), and a self might me might be born in those imagines reactions. Role models become then less ideals, and more little whirling gears of there own ? To think another a ole model is to demand something elsewhere lops up, a loo which one then reacts to, and conjured up a being around.
Or to put it another way, a role model slips very easily into that second register of being a me, that is moving beyond others an asserting what one sis more directly upon the world. At the core of such assertion Hume suggests lies property. Property be it a house a car or even ones body is that bundle of tricks that one has immediately for ones own/ Perceptions therefore that are theoretically open and could being to anyone become dragged into bundles of properties. These flowers become not nature's or God’s but mine. In feeling them to be amine I then express very directly ht intangibility on being a self, Tat is I might not directly perceptive myself as such, no even in these followers den yet in feeling them as somehow bound to me, and demanding that others express and allow for that feeling I embody myself (and its ambiguity) very directly in the world. I become then a physical presence or demand. Within this presence I am then free o do what want and when I want it. Property is then the den of being a me; the palace were ones ‘me-ness’ is directly impressed upon a world and a space created in which it, and must be allowed for.
In this sense of course a body counts as a very special type of refuge or den. In being a body in having one, and having invaluable control over it I very directly become myself. And yet of course there is a real tension. In a way that is not true for other repossession a body is open to the world as and is so even as it is mine. To put it differently me, a body is only mine as I is retain to the world and caught up in others, be that through perceptions or diseases or action or genes or whatever I is mine in acting (otherwise it is a corpse). The body is then rather a difficult place to assert an Me within. One might that a simple right and the ability to modify that body( Eating, exercise et) but one never has the light to electivity. On the contrary a body is almost in itself definition a thing which allows us to share a world. It is then rather a perilous place to pitch all ones identity: it is all to easy to slip into madness, death or the dream of absolute control (a dream which expressed itself in modernity in the dream of living longer and longer); To assert that one Must have right to ones body ad that it MUST express ones mind is to open oneself up the celebrity disease of attempting over police something that cannot be policed: One might then endless assault ones body with surgery drug or diets but in doing o risks than that great other it also contains, death suddenly flips one out.
If the body is not safe place to inhabit a me from what is? Most individualities are caught up with that other great Human invention Habit. I am what I am because Always do this or that or think this or that and do it then. I am a self therefore across a sequence of repeated behaviours, behaviours I hold onto in the face of the anarchy of the world. To be a habit or a collection of habits is therefore o assert yourself and your effects upon the world across stable set of interaction within the anarchies of the world. am in else actions (and them alone). Individuals become then bound within a habitat and caught up in the clock. What is always so interesting in such habits is that they defy any passions or desires. That is the fact that always do do a thing is enough to ensure that I always continue to do it. The fact that I am indifferent to it or that it is not helpful tome now is neither here or thee. Habit is forms and a Me is created within that habit and that is enough, to ensure it gets done. Action but also friends or homes become then infused with a cod necessity ad they become that through which I am, that in which I am a me.
Running cross all these theme is of course thought. To them, that is to have a sequence of images, and word bubbling cross a mind is often enough taken to be the touchstone of being a me. The very fact that these thoughts are at all I my head means to I am. Or rather it means to I have a right to these thoughts. This right is then founded on the assertion that these thought, these ones here makes one somehow special. Thoughts or a set of thoughts become a badge of identity. It makes no difference that the thoughts are common place (we all have certain ideas0 I feel that in my mind in my thought they have a peculiarly power: I very easily feel that the thoughts are mine alone and that I have then first or different or better or something. Likewise it does not really matter if thee thoughts are really nonsense. In a sense if they are then so much the better, as that will earn less people have them (or only a selection have them); all hat really matter is that I identify them as my own, and use that identification to some how tie them to my own being in the world. I might believe in UFO’s or the power of the CIA or Al Queada, or leyline or whatever nonsense, so long as the thoughts (and paranioas they spin of) or mine,. So that the function of such thoughts is less an the explication of reality, and more a way o assert the rights on an individual to have something in their minds that is their own n matter the use or power of that thought beyond the production of such a me.
The idea or gear o a Me, then cuts into all these strata. I whirl across them. I all of then a e can be asserted in it own manner, and yet the very idea of that me also allows the gear to whirl and element from the one realm to become a part of another. The habits I have, become confused very quickly my feelings for a land and feeling of collectivity, and breed nationalisms; or else my hero worship of another becomes confused in my relation and leads me to assume that merely looking like a hero is enough to form relationship ; or else confuse the no of the sate with the not of the parents, and set myself up against it,. Many different ‘Me’s in different ways or manner or whirl are then naturally formed or reformed. And yet all these disparate 'identities' have at their base the same deep oddity. The Me, as a gear appears so natural, we all feel we ought to know where we are or event hat we are after all. And yet this naturalises is always a construction of a problem it always demands an action; I is the from the actions that lives are both written and endless judged. A me might not be there might not be real, and yet that very absence becomes the plotline for our existence in the world, a fact no one can ever afford to forget.
