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Lately I've been working on the whole internal/external forces concept, particularly where personality interacts with other personalities and (sub)cultures. Gestern abend, in a conversation with a distant neighbor the question of self-in-itself came up, and I commented that I wasn't sure if such a thing existed. While I am pretty sure I meant it in a more general sense, all I can clearly say it that I don't think I believe in it, in a personal sense.
I've used the atomic model before to explain the visual metaphor that I use to describe my experience of my own personality. Various personae in varying orbit shells, all drawn together by mutual gravitational forces such that they give the appearance of circling a suggested center, only there is nothing truly there: the illusory center is created by the action of the personae in movement.
I remember specifically in undergrad the zeal with which I encountered literary theory, specifically semiotics. The idea of an entire system that never really touched that which it purported to describe seems, I don't know, inherently obvious, immediately graspable to me. Sure, I'd had some previous fertilization (Socrates' being/becoming, for instance), but the sheer impossibility of language to touch things other than itself really clicked with me. I think this system model partially describes my view of personality from the inside; that which does the work touches nothing. I'm feeling somewhat inarticulate on this point right now, but I also think there's something here for me. I'll likely revisit it until I get a good grip (and yes, I got the irony in that).
I tend to look at the forces that attempt to shape me (all external, I think), and it makes me wonder what forces, if any, originate internally. But then I stop, and realize that something must be internally generative; where else would the recurrent rejection of those external forces come from? Every 'no, that's not right' could be a knot where other external forces take shape just enough to resist another external vector, but that seems... inacurate somehow. Maybe I'm just desperate for the cult of true self, and refuse to see it any other way, but I have a hard time thinking I'd pass on a chance to be harsh, and possibly unkind, to myself (and thinking I'm nothing more than a collection of external forces localized into a node that appears to be individual seems kind of harsh, to me, though that won't necessarily stop it from being accurate).
Slow going on this; it's probably more like a postcard from the road, if even that.
I've used the atomic model before to explain the visual metaphor that I use to describe my experience of my own personality. Various personae in varying orbit shells, all drawn together by mutual gravitational forces such that they give the appearance of circling a suggested center, only there is nothing truly there: the illusory center is created by the action of the personae in movement.
I remember specifically in undergrad the zeal with which I encountered literary theory, specifically semiotics. The idea of an entire system that never really touched that which it purported to describe seems, I don't know, inherently obvious, immediately graspable to me. Sure, I'd had some previous fertilization (Socrates' being/becoming, for instance), but the sheer impossibility of language to touch things other than itself really clicked with me. I think this system model partially describes my view of personality from the inside; that which does the work touches nothing. I'm feeling somewhat inarticulate on this point right now, but I also think there's something here for me. I'll likely revisit it until I get a good grip (and yes, I got the irony in that).
I tend to look at the forces that attempt to shape me (all external, I think), and it makes me wonder what forces, if any, originate internally. But then I stop, and realize that something must be internally generative; where else would the recurrent rejection of those external forces come from? Every 'no, that's not right' could be a knot where other external forces take shape just enough to resist another external vector, but that seems... inacurate somehow. Maybe I'm just desperate for the cult of true self, and refuse to see it any other way, but I have a hard time thinking I'd pass on a chance to be harsh, and possibly unkind, to myself (and thinking I'm nothing more than a collection of external forces localized into a node that appears to be individual seems kind of harsh, to me, though that won't necessarily stop it from being accurate).
Slow going on this; it's probably more like a postcard from the road, if even that.
