Do you know who you "truly" are?

Sigh..

I don't want to repeat what I've already said. And I'm cranky today.. not much in the mood for anything. Here's some zany stuff.

Does a little dirt ruin a perfect day? Yeah. Sometimes.
Got a name for that reputation? Heh.
Ever play peek-a-boo with a nightmare?
Ever wander around at night in hilarious delirium?
Everything is so fucking funny. It really is.

Existential intolerance and a wicked death wish.

Kundalini is serpentine.
Serpentine is reptilian.

Everything changes but some things stay the same. For all of god-damned ever the same.

Like... your name.

Who
What
Where
When
How
Why

If
So
Then

Almost like it's wrong to know the answers.

And even more wrong to ever talk about them. Except it's always safe when it's hidden in art.

I think I'll make some more coffee. And just keep on laughing. I laugh almost CONSTANTLY. I laugh when nothing's even funny. HAHAHAHAHA

I can't stop laughing!! lol

So, yeah.

 

Hey---what's going on here?!

ginalee14 asked the question, "Do you know who you truly are?" in the Existentialism corner of this forum.

That is one of the most important questions that existentialists deal with---that and something along the lines of, "Are you aware of, and do you embrace, your own existential freedom?"

So where are all the existentialists? Instead it is as if she posted the question in the Christian Sanctuary, or the Alcoholics Anonymous sharing corner... There are arguments over why she won't explain who she truly is (but she didn't ask, Do you know that I know who I truly am?) she asked if you know who you truly are... And then she is hit with this bit about, we are all just a part of that one universal self...

I mean, where is the discussion of the mindless masses who spend their lives in a self-imposed delusion to avoid facing who they truly are? Where is Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or Sartre in all of this-----they all brought up this very serious and largely misunderstood question. I would say hardly anyone, very few at most, took this question in all of its serious implications.

Really, do any of you know who you 'truly' are?

 

Of course not and its 'truely' a stupid question. Compared to what or who?

 

As a physical being I am a localized effect. As a conscious being I always stand in relation, I am that I am.

 

No.

 

I am another yourself

 

Strange I should recognize you. What we see in others comes from us.

 

Compared to all the phony personas that your ego has built up around the true you. For example, when you are showing off in front of a bunch of girls, and do something so stupid that even you are embarrassed---is that the true you? The face you wear around public in a very formal situation---is that the true you? When you buy something that you just 'have to have,' and in the end you discover (and you rarely actually admit this to yourself) that you probably didn't need it anywhere as much as you thought you did (and a year from now it will probably be stuck in a drawer, practically forgotten)---is that the true you?

Almost all of us are so buried in personas that we can no longer remember who we truly are, nor can we tell the difference between our true self, and anyone of our ego-constructed facades we consciously use to project a desired image of who we want to make others think we are out to the world. Our society around us is also continuously programming us to be that which we are not. We are programmed what to want, what we need, how we should spend our leisure time, who we should marry, what we should become... If we try to break out of this, we risk becoming a dysfunctional outsider who marches to the beat of a different drummer---a non-comformist deadbeat---a broken cog to be spat out the bottom of the machine, like broken pieces of metal sitting at the bottom of the transmission tray.

But there are more sinister sides to this. Consider the case of Eliot Spitzer---former New York Attorney General and Governor: He aggressively tried to end prostitution in his State (among other wrong-doings in an attempt to create a morally right State), and went after vice with an iron fist. This all ended when it was discovered that he had spent a huge fortune in public funds in trysts with expensive call girls.

So who was the true Eliot Spitzer, the morally good Spitzer out to rid the world of evil, or the whoremonger Spitzer who would rather spend a weekend with call girls than his lovely wife and kids? I think it is fairly clear that neither one was the real Spitzer. The former one was a repressive ego persona working hard to deny the problems it saw within his own self, trying to achieve an impossible ego-ideal, the latter was his shadow acting out repressed, and long forgotten and very likely naively innocent feelings that had festered and grew into something sinister. The true Spitzer was buried somewhere beneath all of that, and included those once innocent and naïve feelings, that the ego misunderstood and repressed in an attempt to follow someone else’s righteous ideals (such as those of a parent, a teacher, a minister, or someone else in authority, or even a friend who he wanted to model after).

Maybe you do not do the things that Spitzer and so many other blatant hypocrites do (such as the respected preacher here in Colorado who adamantly preached against homosexuality and drug abuse, until he was caught in the arms of a male prostitute, high on drugs), but I would bet you a hundred dollars that there are sides to you, that you deny---perhaps even things that you think is wrong with other people around you (and that makes you angry), but what you do not realize is how others see that trait negatively in you, and that you are simply projecting your shadow onto others. Is that who you truly are? No, but seeing that within yourself brings you closer to the true you, and if you were to come to terms with the original repressed feelings that were pushed into your shadow---then it would probably defuse the negative traits you express from that shadow element.

We become aware of our true selves through a process of individuation. As true selves we are individuated, or more fully individuated—we are in a deeper connection with, not only our conscious self, but more importantly our subconscious self. There are very few people that are individuated to any extent---but those who are do not suffer from the hang ups the rest of us do, they do not play games with peoples feelings, or worry and fret. Jung listed such people as Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, and other like people as examples of more fully individuated individuals.

People are afraid of facing their true selves. It is not the self that fits easily into the group situation where man is acting out his fit into a social context. Nietzsche saw the true self, the archetypical man, as the Satyr. The satyr is free to act out its true nature—the true Dionysian Man free of repressing controls and management.

This question is especially important in the Modern Day world with its strong emphasis on objective reality---the world ‘out there’ as opposed to the world within. More so today as the world ‘out there’ is rapidly becoming evermore abstract, as technology shapes a reality around us that is far more simulacra than the living world of actual things and living beings. How many people do you know that experience the world around us, in a given day, more from television and computer screens than the real world. Then there are the hours and hours spent by many in a virtual reality of gaming in computer-generated worlds of fantasy.

If Marx realized that man was becoming increasingly alienated from his true self in a world designed after the mindless machine, imagine how much more alienated we are today where even the human process of thinking is being shaped by the more elaborate machine, the thinking computer. In this Modern World man is quickly programmed into slavery, i.e. a mere tool, whose function is determined and measured by computers, often even the language is scripted (think of typical call center employees), and in return he or her is given just enough income to allow him or her to create the illusion of happiness, but not enough to escape the fetters of debt and the financial obligations necessary to enable survival. And yet herein lies part of the fear of facing oneself and asking the deepest questions of ‘why,’ because it may all be meaningless. The job, the money, the objects and things, the people—it may all be meaningless…

The Japanese live in a culture where life and social relations, deeply immersed in group ethic, are based on the proverb, “The nail that stands up, gets hammered down.” But even there the question of the ‘true you,’ is becoming apparent within the phenomenology of the culture. One of the triggers of this is the onslaught of American Culture, i.e. the Post-Modern Global Culture (this is the only case---American Culture in the context of Global Culture, that I speak of Post-Modernism as a cultural phenomena, and that is to differentiate it from the older Western Culture which was also largely influenced by European Modernism, otherwise I use Post-Modernism in the context of a Modern Day crisis), as it shapes Japanese culture with the concept of a perceived rugged individualism. In truth, I argue that individualism in America is an illusion, masking over an elitist form of group ethic. But the point is that Western influences in Japan are causing them to face this deeply significant question. But clearly it is more than just Western culture, clearly the Japanese themselves, despite a long heritage of placing the group above the individual, are surely reaching a point where they too have become so alienated from their own selves, due to the heavily alienating forces of the modern world, that they too are longing for a reconnection.

Take this Japanese commercial, for example, of the Hybrid Harrier (H.H.) a Toyota hybrid car (You have to skip ahead to 5:43 for the actual commercial):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjrFHCkqJoQ"]Japanese TV Commercials [ 2014 weeks 10 & 11 ] - YouTube


(Or you may just skip ahead to 6:30 for the bra commercial---Tenshi no buraa (Angel’s Bra.)

H.H. is a pony-tailed foreigner, the most blatant individual you can have in Japan—the gaijin—outsider, alien, foreigner. This is even emphasized by the fact that the commercial is narrated in English with Japanese subtitles, which serves the dual purpose of also providing a foreign air of sophistication. But the real point is in the narration:

“They call him H. H.
It’s difficult to describe him in words.
In the middle of no where, he never loses his air of sophistication.
Yet in the city, the scent of the wild still clings to him.
His presence is at once reassuring, yet challenging.
Amid my comfortable existence, he poses the question.
“Who is the real you?”
So he sets my mind racing.
Hybrid Harrier.”

H. H. is a perfect modern day motif of the Japanese satyr. This is more apparent in the older Hybrid Harrier commercials where H. H. is a lion, dressed in an expensive suit with an air of success about him, much like the ‘Most Interesting Man in the World’ of the Dos Equis Beer commercials airing here. This lion is adored by women and does all kinds of exciting things---such as flying a helicopter. What is a lion, but the king of the jungle, the one true individual that is able to live out his existential freedom without consequences. Even the Ancient Greeks, as we find in Plato, saw the King or the head of the state as the single true individual in ways no others can be. It truly goes against Japanese culture for everyone to want to be king, but here you go, a commercial catering to just such an idea.

But here is the undermining factor wherein Modern Culture outwits us, and makes questions like, ‘Do you know who you ‘truly’ are?’ seem, as you pointed out, stupid:

Because this commercial, like so many counterparts in America, and around the world, points out the questions we should ask, with the question already answered for us. Not the true answer, but the answer intended to keep us programmed, manipulated, and oblivious to the underlying issues we keep tucked away in the darker corners of our subconscious. If you want to be an individual, then their answer is clear---drive a Hybrid Harrier, drink Dos Equis Beer. If you are unhappy---drive a Honda Civic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlz1y2G730k"]#LoveToday: Today is Pretty Great 2014 Civic Full Video - YouTube

 

You have some Marxist theory for the God of matched and observed attitudes of communication. The "means" are for the imagination to improve on that communication. Whether we succeed is for the deity to decide, or was it some person of authority here on Earth who can represent the deity, or is the person truly lording by the deification? That is the theory that determines imagination, was my point of view.

 

It's the personality that does that. Other forms of personality know the Other per the Ideal Lord and the conscience of the mode of experience determining It. Our personality is also for sharing that way. I have enough left in reserve over myself onto another encounter. I'm sorry, I cannot encounter you now.:biker:

 

As much of an essentialist that I am, it is here in this regard that I am existentialist---I certainly believe that we all have an existential freedom (though curious enough as a market trader, I see plenty of evidence of fate---such as the fibonacci sequence and how it predicts where prices will find support and have found support.)

But I don't feel that God has a lot to do with finding oneself----though I would agree with there being a purpose to it... But outside of that, I feel that it is a matter of personal growth, and that even if there is a divine purpose to it------that it is still a personal choice.

But Marx was one of many who identified the problem of alienation. But the problem with him, and this is related to his break from Hegel, and his fall into rationalistic objectivism, is that Marx felt that the true individual could only be realized after communism was realized. Therefore Marxist theory does not take into account the individual, which is a bit strange considering all of its humanist objectives. Then of course there is its utopianism and the fact that he identified the market, a huge alienating force, as a dynamic of capitalism, when in fact it is actually a dynamic of industrialization.

 

Also I wanted to add---for those who think the question is stupid----

Do you think that all those Germans during World War II were naturally so cold-hearted that they would allow horrible evils to take place against their neighbors? They were conditioned, programmed into doing such things. We could say the same about any group of people that have turned cruel and downright evil.

Such cases represent group ethic at its worse. Knowing one's true self removes that ability to be programmed to accept such things, or to become a victim to such group ethic. An individuated person no longer feels the need to conform, nor do they fall victim to the follies of their own personas.

There is nothing stupid about that question.

 

I don't think anyone thought her question was stupid. I can't speak for everyone but I believe a large portion of us just wanted to know exactly what she meant and when she kept saying she knows who she really is but didn't want to tell us... it just seemed like she didn't want to even explain the question.

MVW, after reading all your (recent anyways) posts in this thread I can say.... that assuming she was referring to the same thing as you?--- that it makes a lot more sense. I'd like to think I am a truly authentic person. There are always instances... you know, around authority or people you don't know too well, or one's parents (depending on the parents) that a person may "hide" a part of theirself... but I don't think that's really hiding, just using discretion. In any case, I do not believe I have a persona or a façade type thing going on much. But I do agree that the true self can go very deep and it can be hard to tell certain things.

So, assuming the OP was referring to any of the same things that you (MVW) were.... then, I would like to answer that yes, I know who I truly am. I say this because I can look at my "core"---- my SELF at any point and not have to cut through bullshit or search to find the core of true self.
(I think we just wanted ginalee to explain at least part of what you explained.)

 

If we are truly anything, we are what we've been taught, in relation to other things and other people. Transcending societal programming, one's upbringing, life circumstance (to name a few) might be a step in the right direction, it might even save you from participating in an evil group ethic, but there's no guarantee one will ever really know who they truely are, except in relation to something or someone else. It's part of being social animals. Even if you can define the self only in relation to the self then what about the world? You can't fight the ocean. We 'are' as in relation to our world, as were those Germans.
How can we let atrocity's like environmental pollution on a grand scale by mining, oil and gas, coal fired power generation to happen? Not to mention the kinds of atrocity's our government has been responsible for on foreign soil? Conditioning, programming.

 

There is some thing more true, more pure, about each individual that, if we don't seek after it and don't look for it, we can be lost to the conformity, or to the ego-state.

Consider this, from my dream last night. I saw Hillary Clinton. In my dream, there were two of her. One that was hunched over, like she was crippled. The other was her EGO self, the persona she has lived her life in. She's not the EGO self but because she lived in that ego self, her TRUE self suffered for it. Her true self, in my dream of her, is the hunched over crippled one. In other words, her true self suffered a devastation because she pursued a false self. Not uncommon, a lot of people make that mistake.

Of course, it's just a dream. Doesn't necessarily mean I've dreamed the actual Hillary Clinton. I've been reading a lot about her lately, and it seems clear to me that she is one Hell of a sore, sore woman right now.

 

I know who i really am. Pensfan.

The 13 is just a made up number to disguise myself.

 

Come on Gongshaman----we all know that in my previous post before the last two, you didn't even watch the Japanese commercial I was referring to----you just jumped straight to the bra commercial... ;-)

All joking aside, you make a good point. But Jungian psychology, for example, would emphasize that most of what you are talking about refers to the development of the personas and the ego-shadow complex, not the true self. I certainly think that what we learn, our life experiences, and the environment, affect and shape who we truly are, but I am inclined to follow Jung on this one.

Take the idea of incest for example. Tell a joke about incest, or suggest something incestual to a group of teenagers, especially those with siblings, and notice the sharp reactions and embarrassment---I do it for fun, but also as an experiment to see the reactions. Why is it that teenagers can joke about all kinds of sexual topics and even dead babies, but the minute it turns to incest, the subject becomes taboo. Clearly we are touching a shadow element here. This doesn't mean that teenagers are all secretly having sex with their brothers and sisters, or constantly fantasizing about it.

But more than likely, it points to a time when brothers and sisters were showing an innocent and natural affection towards one another (such as a manual stimulation of the siblings genital region---I'm joking! I'm joking! Did it make you uncomfortable?)---such as holding hands, or hugging, or something like that----or seriously, even that game of curiosity between 3 year olds, you show me yours and I'll show you mine. Somewhere they picked up a disapproval, and the ego, in its attempt to fit in, and be a good little boy or girl, repressed that innocence. It determined right then and there that 'I am not a person that does that.' But the truth is, the truth the ego has determined to deny, moments before, he or she was that kind of person, because up until then, they did not see anything wrong with what they were doing.

Two and three year olds have a natural affection and skinship towards their siblings. Most teenagers have a distinct aversion towards even holding hands with their siblings, especially those of the opposite sex. Many have argued that this is natural human nature to prevent the unwanted and genetically problematic results of incestual relations. But the fact that such traits are not universal, that there are families, and more importantly cultures, where such an aversion between older siblings does not exist, demonstrates that such is not human nature, but instead a cultural trait stemming from repressed feelings. The love and affection we show as 2 and 3 year olds, is actually natural and more true to ourselves.

Your comments also hint towards the long outdated concept of tabla rasa, that we are born with a blank slate----but we are born with much more than a blank slate.

Likewise, the idea that the self can only be understood in differentiation from the society and social environment outside of it, is a very Marxist concept. Marx has shaped much of philosophy with his ideas towards the individual, including outside of the realm of Marxist philosophy. Such ideas fit in nicely with the objectivistic concepts of many schools of modern philosophy. It especially seems appropriate based on the assumption that physical reality (objective reality) is the only truth, and the conscious mind is therefore the only aspect of the human psyche that is capable of perceiving truth. The true self, it is then reasoned, must be that which can be compared to objective truth.

I disagree, and feel that it is time for a renewed Dionysian understanding of subjective reality. The true self must be holistic, and include not only the conscious mind but the subconscious as well. It reflects true human nature, Nietzsche's satyr, for example. There is nothing new in this idea of the true self. But I then add that it is the individual consciousness that penetrates into the physical dimensions and thereby manifests as 'I' the subjective individual. This aspect of the self is more a part of the subconscious than it is of the conscious mind. This is the level of the self that is not subject to social context, yet may very well reflect elements of the collective unconscious.

This is the self that, if you read into Dr. Stanislav Grof's research, LSD uncovers. In fact, this is where the tremendous therapeutic value of the clinical use of LSD resides---it peels away the layers of the fake self, forcing the patient to work through various complexes. It does this through the language of the subconscious so the message is not always readily apparent. But once the complex is resolved the patient has healed that aspect of their emotional problems.

Anyway, whenever we move deeper into the subconscious we move into motifs and themes that are often archaic in nature, but certainly disengaged to varying degrees from social context. I guess it takes the experience of such deeper levels to understand how they go beyond a comparison to something physical or someone else. Drugs are certainly one way of experiencing this, but there are plenty of other methods from hypnosis or breathing exercises to spiritual experiences and so forth. Dreams can, but do not always tap into these deeper levels. Mental illness can be another way. I imagine autism is the same, autistic states certainly involve a disconnect with the social environment, and the people within it.

Therefore in my opinion, I think the true differentiation between oneself and others occurs naturally after having found oneself. Did Mahatma Gandhi (a highly individuated individual) find himself by means of an objectivistic examination of himself as a citizen of Colonial India, or was there a deeper internal experience wherein he found himself, and thereafter stood out naturally as a leader and a creator of social change? I think it was the latter myself. Perhaps this is why so few people achieve such levels of individuation.

Two reasons----first and foremost, because most people are not authentic individuals (those who have truly found themselves), they are the faceless crowds of Joe Public, motivated and manipulated at will by the powers that be.

Second, most individuals who find themselves are not meant to lead----to quote Nietzsche, "In this sense, the Dionysian man resembles Hamlet; both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that they should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint."
(From, The Birth of Tragedy).

To refer back to Nazi Germany, such individuals may not have sought to stop the Nazis, but they certainly would have left Germany or quietly refrained from participating, if not even perhaps hid a Jewish family in their attic...

(If only there had been such a family. They could have given the daughter a diary, where she could have recorded the experiences... Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk...)

 

I am still working on it myself. Though I have always been a nonconformist and somewhat in touch with a deeper self.

I have taken it upon myself to try to find, and then face my own shadow, piece by piece.

I carry a chanunpa---a sacred pipe----and that has shown me aspects of my own personality that I should not have----for example, a bad habit of carrying grudges (especially bad if you are going to carry a pipe).

I have been shown a very deep side of myself, I have worked with motifs and archetypical elements of my own subconscious (but not with hallucinogens, I only had some recreational experiences there and that was long ago as a teenager).

But I would say I have a ways to go before I am individuated to any significant extent...

 

Can i order the audiobook version

 

My mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like.