Identity

Exploring consciousness and self-consciousness through the concepts of identity, represented by the words character/personality, and the biological designation of sex and race.

Psychology will be used his as a term indicating the exploration of self, or the human condition, and not in the modern sense as a form of assessing ailments in relation to a social norm, guided by socioeconomic conventions and necessities, so as to maintain internal harmony within a population and a world evolving due to disharmony.  
No medication, or "solutions" needs be provided, since no "problem" will be acknowledged and no ideal will be promoted.  


Ego, from the Greek, meaning self.
The foundation of psychology and its constructs, resulting in social and cultural identities.
The ego, as it will be presented here in its primal form, is a negative assessment. The mind defines itself by what it is not.
The process of distinguishing sameness from differentiation proceeds from this negative assessment.
Identity follows form this first step of negation, resulting in a positive, a positioning of self within the multiplicity.


The Hellenic structure of self applies: the metaphor, symbolic iamge, of horse rider, pulling on the reigns.
Rider (reason), pulls on horse (passion), using the reigns (will), but the rider is also pulled by horse, and the reigns limit his field of choices. They bind him to horse, just as much as horse is bound by rider.
Proceeding with the symbolism, the ground (environment), the horse and rider move upon, is what determines their personae, their personality.


Selfishness/Selflessness

All actions are acts of self, as they express self, as a dynamic towards.
The myth of selflessness resides in the confusion of identify, motive, intention, purpose, with ego, self, emergent unity.
The intent of the thinker is determined by his/her self-awareness, honesty, and how (s)he deintifies ego/self.

The intent of the action, its definition as “well” or “not well”, “good/bad,” is a sidematter – an important one.
What is more important here, at this stage of analysis, is the act itself – the act being an expression of self, as a becoming, where existence is defiend as (inter)active.
The emergent unity acts, as a “towards Being,” a Becoming, and this aggregate of directed energies, self-defines itself as “I”.
The identification is a negation of otherness, creating a preliminary and necessary schism, between the emergent and that from which it emerges. This “schism”, can fragment further, but it represents, in this first stage, a division, creating what is known as the “human condition”, and/or the solitude of being.

An ego, is an amalgamation of organs, (inter)acting, relating.
This internal relationships, held together with a porous, barrier (skin), determines the ego's personae, its personality, as this relates to the outside, of its structures, world of (inter)actions.
The splintering is a towards the singular, the Being being the word that applies here.
Singularity, is the single, the monist, the monos, as in alone.
Detachment from the multiplicity produces a first step towards isolation, which then determines how this emergent unity will (re)act to this state of becoming, as it is determined by its inherited internal relationships, or its organic (organ) hierarchies.


The skeletal structure, whether internal or external, is a supportive tool, and the subsequent evolution of a neurological network, constitutes an internal network of communicating this organ hierarchy, producing a unity, or an emergent one.
This method of structuring produces a frame, which makes the organism, the roganization, possible.



Inherited organ weaknesses/strengths determine the internal hierarchies, the organism's organization, resulting in a personality, a personae, in a very primitive form to begin with.
Specialization, as it is determined by this organism's relationship to what remains outside it's structures/hierarchies, its internal organizations, determines its character, as a direction given to the will, towards an an object/objective.

Therefore, it is possible for a personality different from an other, to share a character with an other, to a greater or lesser degree,, as this is determined by their common object/objective.

Personality will be used as a word referring to the inherited organic hierarchy, the organism, as this has been inherited and nurtured, or not, by environment - society being a manmade environment.
Personality is the outcome of genetic predispositions, as these are nurtured or inhibited by the current conditions, whether natural or artificial.

Character will be used to refer to how this personality is applied pragmatically...and in modern environments, how it is applicable within manmade structures; the internal hierarchy adapting to external hierarchies.


Character is malleable, and yet restricted by personality.

This malleability creates the illusion of freedom, when personality is excluded from the analysis.
Anyone can be any character, become any caricature.
Personality becomes a restriction that may be overcome with the "proper" medication, techniques, technologies.


Social rules (etiquette, morals, rituals, rules of civility, politeness) create a limitation with a high cost for a personality if it were to exceed them.
This, also, creates the illusion of parity.
This parity, in turn, creates the illusion of similarity, of community, of unity.

Shared behavioral rules (limits to actions) create the illusion of shared options in acting.
Mediocrity becomes the standard, with the only acceptable exceptions being those that contribute to the communal rules, or are inert in relation to them.
Those that exceed are criminals, ill, or sociopaths. They are abnormal, as in not normal, not in deference to the norm, the mediocre.

Psychology, as a medical discipline, is the field related to defining, recognizing (reaffirming, remembering, familiarizing) the abnormal, and quarantining (secluding, castrating, shaming, numbing), and/or healing (normalizing, returning to the standard of mediocrity), what exceeds the boundaries of acceptability.



Character = the pragmatic application of personality within a socioeconomic, cultural, or natural environment.

Experience + Knowledge = Consciousness.
One’s own interactions with the world coupled with the inheritance of an other’s experiences, equates to an awareness of the world.
The senses are outwardly focused and so their task is to collect and store patterns in the world, reacting to them intuitively/instinctively, due to an inherited code transmitted to them via natural selection, or more willfully guided by prior experience.

Consciousness + Self-Consciousness = Identity
Awareness of the world and its patterns eventually results in the awareness of self in it as a reflection of it. The first recognition of self in the world is as an element of it the mind relates to intimately.
Here the will comes into play. The perception of self as that element in the world which can be directly willed into action is the first conception of empowerment: the sensation of identity with a corporeal being which acts willfully.




Ego: {o} {O}
Degree of Temporal Involvement
Substantial: {===> }
Insubstantial: {===>}
Spotty/Selective Substantial: {--->}
Spotty/Selective Insubstantial: {--->}
__________________________________________________________________

---===>o===--->

The ego sits at the nexus between past and future.
It's mass, as depicted by the diagram, resides within the spatial and temporal line connecting past with future.
If it is inflated it begins to exit.

=====>O==--->
-====>O===--->
--===>O===--->

In order to inflate itself in this way it must dismiss, part or in whole, the humbling past.
It is the Becoming which never Becomes; never a Being.
It is temporally pressurized between the past and the future.

The more substantially an ego is connected with its past ...----=====>o==--> ... the less it convincingly, with conviction, it projects into the future.
The past creates a determining factor that does not permit the ego to project a future detached from the past.
The past informs the ego as to what is more or less probable, in regards to an unknown coming.
The further back a mind draws data from the more insubstantial the information is. The more into the future it projects the less substantial the projection.
A genius is one who draws from a more clearly and deep, temporally speaking, past, projecting, with caution, and informed wisdom, towards a still undetermined future.

------------==================================>O==============--->

Genius, as a measure of intelligence/awareness/consciousness, is a temporal effect.
Know Thyself is the tail of the temporal Becoming, fading backwards.
To know this past is not only to know what flatters and benefits and feels good, but also what does not.
The past is a challenge of self-acceptance.
It can be a source of pride but also a source of humility.
A modern Nihilist picks and chooses what parts of the past he will associate with ego.
A modern's projections towards future are always more substantial than his awareness of self, of the past (nature).
In fact, to be Modern is to identify with the coming, the future, and to be free of the past; it is to be in the current, in the moment, in the coming (fashionable, popular, progressive).

--=---=-->o=========----->

The past is also a restriction to what can be projected forth.
For a modern nihilist who rejects the past or accepts it selectively, this restriction decreases according to the degree of his self-denial, his selectively constructed self.
This makes his projections uninhibited. He is free form the past and so his projections into the future become fantastic, extraordinary, supernatural, increasingly detached from reality.

-----==>o=======----------------------------------->
---==>o========----------------------------------->
-==>o==========---------------------------------->
=>o=============------------------------------->

As the nihilist's attachment to his past decreases his commitment to the future increases proportionally.
At an extreme the ego is almost totally detached from the humbling past it is overtaken by the sensation that it is a beginning with no past, perhaps a Being.

-=o========----->

In order to compensate for this loss of identification, from the past, it draws sustenance of substantiality from the most immediate.
He becomes what he owns, what group he belongs to, what he finds pleasing, what car he drives, his personal experiences, his commitment to fashion and popularity or what is 'cool' etc.
He becomes narcissistic, expressing his disdain for everything else in his cynicism, sense of self-importance and self-entitlement, his superficiality, his charming infantile psyche forever involved in distractions.
He is the beginning, the clean slate, and the future belongs to him, unrestricted by anything from the past.
The ego inflates...
-=O========------->
… and Inflates...
-=O========------->
… and inflates…
-=O==========-------->
… until it begins to exit from the temporal event horizon of the past and future paradigm.
The ego now enters the absurd, and if sheltered and having nothing from its past which can humble it, because he's dismissed the past, forgotten it, denied its relevance, he is free to project into the future which becomes increasingly detached from the past (nature).
Denial, ignorance, ignoring, forgetting does not make the past go away, it simply frees the mind from having to deal with it, and adjust itself to its unalterable determinations.

The ego can also identify with anything immediate, and abstract, because there is nothing, from its past(nature) which can stand in its way from identifying with anything.
Ego can identify with God, or nation, or Tribe, or Idea, or the sexual category of Human projected as a transcendental, divine nebulous Being.
The seemingly diminishment of ego is accompanied by a projected inflation.
In this case the go deflates…
-=o========-------> O
… and deflates…
-=o========------->O
… and deflates…
-=O==========--------> O
…and as it does it inflates the projected, future, identifier; redirected egotism, using a pretentious self-diminishment to draw attention away from self, placing it upon an otherness which is always on its way, and all-inclusive.
The degree of this projected Super-Ego's size and all-inclusivity is inversely proportional to the ego's deflation.
The ego, self, begins to vanish, leaving behind an idea(l), a hope, an abstraction which must assimilate all egos, all individuality, so as to make the sacrifice less shameful.
Humility finding comfort in this projection of pride, as hope.


The Honest/Pure Nihilist

>O>
He is the ultimate solipsist.
No past, no future.
He resides as pure ego. He is IN the moment.
This ego uninformed by the past and having no interests in the future, is the total narcissist, and schizophrenic vehicle.
His internal schism is how he unburdens himself from time. He lets that part remain temporal while he associates with the other part, which is now freed to be anything it wishes to identify with.
This division allows him to discard reality while claiming the status of a higher reality.
This is also what explains the mind/body dichotomy which is denied yet underlies Nihilism in all its forms.
The body becomes this garment, this attachment to time/space which it uses as a scapegoat, a target, to permit the mind to escape in the ethereal, unreality where nothing can restrict it but its own limitations - ironically inherited from the past. Education (proper training, morals, etiquette, behavior) is the connection of mental limitations, which are denies power.
All is nurturing, the now, the correctable, the malleable ...the future remains free from the past.
Nothing will keep it from attaining its unlimited height.
He may even diminish his ego to the point of nothingness so as to incorporate it within something larger, which is then projected into the future.

o=====--------------->O
This projection into the future resides outside the space/time continuum, as some fantastic, beyond, which is partially connected to reality as a coming future.

Anti-Natalists are part of this group.
Having annulled the past, they now annul the future, through their denial of self-propagation.
This seemingly humble position is accompanied by an egotism and arrogance few can match.
It is narcissism, using schizophrenia to detach, to shed one's temporal baggage, associating, identifying with something Fantastic, like Humanity, as an excuse.
Humanity, and his concern for it, is what offers the excuse to remain self-involved and completely detached from time, both past and future.


The Dishonest/Duplicitous Nihilist

In this group we can include the majority of modern nihilists such as anarchists, secular humanists, transhumanists, liberals, Marxists etc.

------=o===========------------>O
---=o=============------------>O
-o================------------>O

As the past is dismissed the future can be projected as anything. There is nothing which can humble, or inform, or contain, this projection.
It is liberated from the past, making the future an infinite source of possibilities(hope).
Pride becomes a vice, a sin, for it is ego relating to self or to the past(nature), which would inhibit this towards the coming future.
Hope replaces pride.
Humility, humiliation, continues to participate.
In the case of pride it is always that which must be dealt with, overcome, corrected, and in the case of hope it is always what destroys self so as to bring about the circumstances for this coming Hope.

In most cases not even the ego can be permitted to stand in the way of this coming Utopia/Paradise, for it still remains attached to a past which is forgotten, being its manifestation, and so it is another temporal "garment" to be ripped to shreds, allowing part of it (schizophrenia) to attach to this coming Super-Ego, Super-Self.
Herein lies the inherit contradiction which characterizes all forms of nihilism.
It is the ego which is denied which is then incorporated into a fantastic super-ego. Both the undesirable and the desirable must be taken for granted in order for the movement towards the Utopian, to make sense.
The ego which is an illusion, finds pride/humility in the super-ego which is an acceptable form of the undesirable, and always coming, always immanent, never here to be tested and face the attrition of space/time. It remains unblemished by reality because it is never completely in reality.


The only way an ego, a self, can come about is by distancing itself from the world.
It creates a shell, a filtering system, to break-off from the Flux, creating the possibility, within its boundaries to establish a degree of ordering.
Only when it has achieved a certain level of consciousness, and developed a certain level of self-consciousness, self-knowledge, can it re-engage, (re)cognize, its nature as part of that which it stands against.
This is the root of antagonism, the thymotic, (re)action, the reason why the sensation of existing can only be one of need/suffering, and why life is an agon, a struggle, a war, against the flow of time; an antithesis to the increasing entropy.
The ego, still trying to discover itself, know itself, maintain itself, feels vulnerable and isolated.
It relates to the past with a sense of nostalgia, of loss.
The past is all that was and never will be; a higher state of order, most of the time, recalled with a sense of vulnerability, or possibilities lost.
The self, the ego, compensates by finding refuge in otherness, in the created other.
Otherness takes the form of a procreative act: the part of self detaching from the parent and acquiring, in a combination with another, a renewed source of possibilities.
With nihilism this otherness can be an abstraction, an idea(l) which attempts to detach from the past, altogether, and to rise to a different plane of existence; willing to sacrifice this past, and the self, as a manifestation of it in the immediate, and free itself from its determinations and its rigidity.
Having, so, detached form the past, it may or may not, attempt to detach itself from self, the ego, as the source of its misery, and the ongoing past being constructed.

Time/Space becomes an enemy, the agon against.
It is at war with itself, and with anything and anyone (any idea and ideal) which reaffirms that which it wishes to cleanse away, to throw back, and rise above.
This other becomes the representation of self (ego) which is despised.
It assaults it as it would assault itself, if it were before it.
Schizophrenia, aided by narcissism, picks what aspects of self are to be cast in the role of the evil ones, and which are to be considered the holy, the divine, the pure goodness.
Those parts it attacks, the others it accept unconditionally.
The condition is sacrificing of self, as a unity. It unconditionally loves that which saves it from those parts of itself it cannot tolerate, cannot accept, and cannot correct.
It find help in this selectively abstracted otherness, and accept it without question; it abandons itself to its saving grace, because no price, no cost, can compare to what it seeks to save itself from.

A personality, a personae, can structure itself into in relation to the otherness, the environment.
The personality is rigid, as it inherits a predisposition which is immutable, but it is forces to adapt, to shape itself, to express itself, within the Flux: the fluidity of time/space, and the (inter)activity of otherness.
This disparity creates friction.
The personalty must suppress and enhance parts of itself (compartmentalization), so as to continue to exist.
This necessity creates a disparity between real and ideal, or a schism, if the disparity is severe, or completely contradictory, such as between nature and nihilism.
The personality must divide itself into sections.
Some will be applicable some of the time, or within certain spaces - within particular contexts.  
Other will be applicable in others.

When the two, or three, or multiple, are internally in-cohesive, then a personality splintering will become necessary.
This splintering, I call socially induced schizophrenia, creates the need for multiple characters - multiple caricatures, or social personae, based on the one but divided to preserve themselves intact – “intact” as in true to their shared cohesion but separate to shelter this cohesion from external threats.


The previously mentioned creates the basis within which materialism and hedonism grow; both becoming detached from any goal, or principle, beyond itself - the culture of immediacy, the immanence of the coming, yet, indefinable.
This indefiniteness corresponds, in degree, to the absence of order, or the absence of an absolute.
The sense of freedom is accompanied with a price - the cost of disillusionment, cynicism, lack of focus, primal concerns with no purpose (or a purpose in and of itself - cyclical/cynical reasoning), a solipsistic judgment ending the causal chain in an aphoristic declaration.  


Denial of self, leads to a rejection or an ignorance of an internal organic hierarchy.
It is replaces, or contained and inhibited, by an external, to it, hierarchy.
It adapts, or is suppressed and enhanced in degree and selectively, so as to fit into the environmental conditions present - in the case of modernity this involves adapting to nihilistic, manmade, idealistic, chimeras.


Most people think that a character is either totally in harmony with a personality, or it is completely in conflict with it.

This is the either/or reasoning typical in Modern dualistic thinking.
In fact character, the social persona, is based and restricted by personality, as this is determined by the past – the meme contained by the gene, even when it rejects it or denies it, or forget it – in fact more so when it does so.

When the environment establishes a limit to how much of a personae can be revealed, the world becomes pretentious in its mediocrity.
The extremes are eliminated, forbidden, threatened, or given the tools to reach the lowest rung towards averageness.
Blind eyes, turn away from the method, and the illusion of parity finds a foothold.

Information highways, libraries of data, knowledge at a price, accentuate the impression that all have similar potentials.



For the sake of clarity we've manipulated words to serve a purpose, just as we did when exploring the facets of existence, through the sensation of need, by using desire, in reference to its libidinal manifestation, and want in reference to its socioeconomic manifestation.

In this case personality and character , were used to differentiate between internal hierarchies, organic (inter)actions, resulting in a demeanor, and external hierarchies, environmental (inter)actions.
The separation, as with that between artificial and natural environments, cannot be anything but tenuous, and ambiguous, in a fluid, environments where nothing is absolute...because it is this noumenon, this abstraction which is absent - the phenomenon noumenon relationship being this ideal/real, juxtaposition, and this internal/external hierarchy of ordering/disordering.  

Similarity is what follows divergence, as a (re)action, or a (re)cognition.
We simplify/generalize, in accordance to the patterns we can perceive.
The sophistication of the perceiving brain determining the quality of the patterns being perceived. More refined perceptions perceive divergence where an other only sees convergence.
Ergo, for a more sophisticated mind finding what is similar to itself, is more demanding than for the less sophisticated mind.
And because of this fact it is also more stable, more consistent, predictable, when such a connection happens.

This is also the relationship between the concepts of eros and agape...lust/love.

Lust is fleeting and shallow, an automatic (re)action to stimuli resulting in a behavior, rooted in personality; love includes lust, but, because it is more mind than body, it exceeds its time/space boundaries, resulting in character.

Character is the expression of personality within a particular contingency.
If personality exceeds character in the organism's hierarchy, we have the emergence of the charismatic boy, the seductive girl.
If character dominates personality, we have the emergence of the mature man/woman. In combination they become the pair-bond, the mate (soul-mate) bond.


Character is a caricature forced upon a personalty, as part of its need to adapt to the social environment.
A character is a role played out, as this ha been established by the (re)action to the individual by otherness.
The individual accepts this role, imposed upon it, so as to be integrated into the social network.  

When a great disparity between personalty and character is present then a schism is created between the natural and the social self, the ideal and the real, the noumenon and the phenomenon...the private and the public man.

The more developed, self-aware, a personality is, the more problematic this relationship becomes.
The schism causes psychological frictions.

A simpler mind, faces a lower level of this friction, because its personality is so weak, so retarded in development, that it is completely subsumed within its social character. There is no depth to the individual because its outward expression hides no internal conflicts, no secret personality it is aware of.
Its social self is the only self it knows.
The otherness, of humanity, becomes the only source of its identification.

Because of this simplicity in awareness, and/or because of an undeveloped weak personality, the individual cannot comprehend beyond surfaces.
There is no subtext to words, to behaviors, to appearances.

The mind exists within presence - it is in the moment.

A man of character: an individual who remains steadfast, loyal, to an idea(l).
A man of his word.


Man, as the animal with logos.
Animal as αλογο (a-logo – horse), the creature with no-logos.  

Logos, the word, referring to the binary structures of conceptualizing, taking on subtle nuances to represent the the absent absolute, as a variation is hue, of texture, sensual quality.
Logos, the words of grooming, become the webs encompassing the time/spaces of humanity – human as historical, as social, as world-creator.
This linguistic cocoon, spun by using code, lettering/numbers, is both what expands human understanding and contains it.

When man speaks of "world" he means this world of man, and each variation represents a human relationship to what is excluded form its linguistic premises.
Modernity, as a Nihilistic (re)action creating a man-made, memetic, contextual sphere, relates with what it excludes as a negation. The words use, refer to sensations/emotions, reflecting a distaste, a disapproval with what is to remain external to the acceptable premises permitted within.
When they cannot be denied, they will be forgotten, redefined, so as to erase them from the linguistically possible.

The inversion of the term Nihilism, being a representative example.
Nihilism as the description of reality: the state of absence, now posited as a negative, when it is the positivity of the possible.
To be "negative", now, is to accept this absence of an absolute as a starting premise... a necessary one for the projection of human potential.

When shared language is established the reference point is taken for granted.
Nihilism must be solipsistic, as in God's mind, because, otherwise, it has nothing to stand on.
The word turned back upon the source, referring to another word, neither of which has any connection outside of the agreed upon premises, to the indifferent, "outside" world.
A nihilistic linguistic meme excludes references that contradict its negations.
Its negations are the new positive, and that which negates them is Nihilistic.

The binary relationship having been constructed permits for internal explorations... within the context never to be exceeded.
The mind feels "free" within this protective linguistic sphere, forcing a normalcy of (inter)activity, of behavior, called normal or civility, or etiquette, or morality.
It is free, because it is protected from what might contradict its self-evident, self-referential, premises.  
It can not play with words, with no anxiety, no threat beyond the predictable, the usual.
Within this protective sphere identities are malleable. As easy as naming one's self, putting on a uniform, deciding to adopt a new character from the multiple finite ones available and considered permissible.

Character replaces personality, allowing it only to express itself through its contexts, and never beyond them. The character is charismatic, when it imitates a popular caricature, adopting a particular manifestation of personality which is integrable within the acceptable premises.

Intimacy functions within these premises.
Personality is exposed only as far as the otherness, towards which one is exposing, can tolerate it, in relation to the acceptable characters it has become familiar with over its lifetime.
When simplicity is present, or mental stunting has not produced a personality which comes into conflict with characters, there is not much to explore.
Intimacy becomes a trivial sharing of particularities, experiential details with an obvious outcome.


Mind/Body, the noumenon/phenomenon, creating a disparity between the word/action.
The self, being discovered as another part of existence, as an otherness, requires this slow, methodical, exploration, self-consciousness, which is never completed - Know Thyself.
The individual adopts social characters, burying personality in the process, so as to adapt to the social, economic, cultural, the memetic environment.

If the personality is feeble, to begin with - not much there to bury - or if it is fragile, it will be retarded by this imposition of a ritualized, behavioral, role by the comforting, confronting otherness.
The individual's qualities will be suppressed by an external pressure of quantities.
The individual will begin living a double-life, if the personalty is strong enough, or has developed beyond the level where it can be easily repressed and denied.
For the fragile, feeble, retarded one the process is easier. It will live-out an entire life as if tits character is its personality.

The character, the social caricature, will dominate its psyche.
Whatever conflicts rise to the surface will come across as psychosomatic ailments, as anxieties, as dreams dealing with the internal struggle, as a mystifying dissatisfaction when all is going well and happiness should be present...but more than that, a continuing disappointment with the achieved will become a norm.
The character, projecting the ideals it is supposed to value, as goals, ambitions, objectives, ends, will always be dissatisfied with what should have been more than what it is.

The hidden persona will despair at its inability to find the contentment it was supposed to feel by its surrender to its character.
The public-man going through the motions, as the private-man goes through its silent desperation.
Fake smiles, faked interest, fake intimacy; living is ritualized, making it automatic (automated) - something the character can imitate thoughtlessly.
Techniques/Technologies contribute to this automatization, separating the action from the thought.
Ideas flow out of the mouth which are not understood, and cannot be justified.
Words trigger appropriate responses, shared goals, shared ambitions, appreciated to varying degree, which is what individuality is defined as - the individuation of the caricature, permitting a finite choice of appropriateness.

See Zombies in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] thread.

The personality remains hidden, or allowed to expose itself indirectly: humor, sporting events permitting controlled violence, sexual polymorphism, fantasy, fetishism, art...
In modern art we see this internal turmoil of the hidden breaking through the external shells; in music this pressure coming out as anger.
All nonthreatening pressure releasing actions, that can then be dismissed, or denied honesty - as with the joke that hurts but remains always a harmless joke.
In Nihilism the lie becomes the truth, and the truth another lie.
We laugh because the hypocrisy creates friction needing to be released as nervous hyperventilation.

The expression of personality through character restrictions.
The term usually refers to a personality that offers the other joy (χαρα).
Χαρισμα – to be christened with joy; to possess grace, free flowing, requiring no payment (gifting).

A gift received from another: from nature/past, implying ancestry, genetics.
An innate talent.
In modern times charisma refers to the gift received by the otherness, as in the community of others.
The gifted, is the gift-giver: he who has something to offer the other.
He is "charismatic" in that he gives to the other what the other needs: flattery, inspiration, good humor, hope, relief from reality and so on.

As such Christ was the one christened with the charisma, the grace.
He was the bringer of gifts, of good tidings.

Identity, a personality shaped into a character is exposed by the focus need takes.
The nature of the object/objective, its essence, exposes the identity of the one in need.

Because a need may take any form in the object/objective, the form it does take is an indication of the organism's becoming.
Appearance is the manifestation of the past, displaying itself in subtlety, if not in an obvious presence.
Need is also expressed in subtlety or in immediate presence.

An organism may hunger for the same salts and fats, as another organism, but the environment within which this need was molded and given direction, determines the source from which it will seek to satisfy this need.
The need has shaped its organic hierarchy, its internal organ relationships, and the degree to which it needs one or another element.

The need of organic life, on this planet, is the same, varying only in degree.
The focus towards an object/objective, for satisfying this need varies, not only determined by the degree each need is present, but also shaped by the environment within which this need developed a methodology for satisfying itself.

Specialization is this strategy of focus upon a very specific source for satiation.
In time this specialization denies all other sources as potential sources for satisfying need. Efficiency and effectiveness in acquiring satisfaction is accompanied by a slow deterioration in efficiency and effectiveness in acquiring the same elements form other sources.

Culture, socioeconomic environment, is a form of specialization.
Habituation, rituals, repetition, establishes a comfort, an ease, produced by the efficiency and effectiveness, niche behavior cultivates.
Similar to thinking where repetition creates a behavioral ease, the brain finds difficulty breaking free of.
Only severe stress, need, a loss of this effectiveness/efficiency, can alter the behavioral pattern.

Ergo, "no pain no gain" and/or the path-of-lest-resistance holds true.
Will can compensate for the absence of need, but only for so long and only to the level it can dominate the passions, the emotions, the instincts, or the automatic predispositions the organism falls into naturally, and due to natural selection.

Identity is this structure combining predispositions to niche environmental conditioning, establishing an internal organic hierarchy, how this relates to otherness or the environment present, producing a character, and the will which can control, and divert these processes towards desirable object/objectives.

Within these contexts, desires become the inherited natural, the innate passions, wants become the socioeconomic character directing these desires, and need remains the same: the insatiable absence seeking absolution.
The way out of this paradigm is an awareness and the acceptance that need will never be satisfied, the agon never ended. The embracing of this fact as a necessary precondition to consciousness of existing.
What Nietzsche called the overman, free from resentiment.

Once accomplished, even if as a "towards," an object/objective, then the possibility of directing the Will towards a lucid (conscious, self-conscious, rational) object/objective, becomes more probable. This is the beginning of what is called "free-will".

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Once "free" from nature/past, identity can morph into any caricature the brain can imagine.
Organs lose their natural utility and become accessories to be used creatively, or to be chopped-up and replaced.

I gave my own take on narcissism in this essay:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Modernity (secular Nihilism), Americanism (cultural Nihilism), Judeo-Christianity (spiritual nihilism), Marxism (political Nihilism), all begin with a schism, a psychological fragmentation where past/nature is cut-away, in segments (compartmentalization) or in whole (disillusionment, alienation), which refocuses mind upon body as thing (the beginning of narcissism).
The shallow perception of self as beginning at birth and ending at death, dismissing what preceded it as inconsequential and inapplicable, so as to project this caricature (character) into a fantastic (supernatural) future, is the epitome of narcissistic self-indulgent, masturbation.
It's only pride is now through exhibition, and being seen, acknowledged, appreciated by all - a popularity contest, reaching the obscene extremes of mental asylums where the inmates indulge in excessive symbolic displays to show their dissatisfaction, begging to be taken seriously.

Lys,

Come on, you know full well [from ILP] that the sort of mental masturbation that S. indulges has little relevance once we come down to earth -- and plug the words into the existential reality of the world we live in.

A world where conflicting value judgments revolve over and again around conflicting goods that can easily be rationalized simply by embracing one set of premises/assumptions over another.

Why on earth do you suppose philosophers have been futilely debating these same issues now for literally thousands of years?

If you wish to construe what lies behind the value judgments of any particular individual you should start here:


a man amidst mankind...

That is the paradox, right? I am an individual....a man; yet, in turn, I am but one of 6,500,000,000 additional men and women that constitutes what is commonly called "mankind". So, in what sense can I, as an individual, grasp my identity as separate and distinct from mankind? How do I make intelligent distinctions between my personal, psychological "self" [the me "I" know intimately from day to day], my persona [the me "I" project -- often as a chameleon -- in conflicting interactions with others], and my historical and ethnological self as a white male who happened adventitiously to be born and raised to view reality from the perspective of a 20th century United States citizen?

How does all of this coalesce into who I think I am? And how does this description contrast with how others grasp who they think I am? Is there a way to derive an objective rendering of my true self? Can I know objectively who I am?

No, I don't think so.

Identity is ever constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables---some of which we had/have no choice/control regarding. We really are "thrown" into a fortuitous smorgasbord of demographic factors at birth and then molded and manipulated as children into whatever configuration of "reality" suits the cultural [and political] institutions of our time.

On the other hand:

In my view, one crucial difference between people is the extent to which they become more or less self-conscious of this. Why? Because, obviously, to the extent that they do, they can attempt to deconstruct the past and then reconstruct the future into one of their own more autonomous making.

But then what does this really mean? That is the question that has always fascinated me the most. Once I become cognizant of how profoundly problematic my "self" is, what can "I" do about it? And what are the philosophical implications of acknowledging that identity is, by and large, an existential contraption that is always subject to change without notice? What can we "anchor" our identity to so as to make this prefabricated...fabricated...refabricated world seem less vertiginous? And, thus, more certain.

Is it any wonder that so many invent foundationalist anchors like Gods and Reason and Truth? Scriptures from one vantage point or another. Anything to keep from acknowledging just how contingent, precarious, uncertain and ultimately meaningless our lives really are.

Or, of course, is that just my foundation?

camus666 wrote:

Lys,

Is there a way to derive an objective rendering of my true self? Can I know objectively who I am?

No, I don't think so.

Identity is ever constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables---some of which we had/have no choice/control regarding. We really are "thrown" into a fortuitous smorgasbord of demographic factors at birth and then molded and manipulated as children into whatever configuration of "reality" suits the cultural [and political] institutions of our time.

Scriptures from one vantage point or another. Anything to keep from acknowledging just how contingent, precarious, uncertain and ultimately meaningless our lives really are.

Or, of course, is that just my foundation?[/b]

Satyr wrote:

"Self-Consciousness, as the sophistication of consciousness, is a turning inward, towards the internal processes, when the external has been effectively dealt with to the point where an excess of consciousness remains.
Self-Consciousness discovers self as it would an alien otherness in the outer world.
This first discovery creates this dichotomy of psychological fragmentation that results in the Bicameral Mind and to the concept of spirits, and gods.

Know Thyself is this exploration of self – it is an overabundance of self-consciousness seeking intimacy with itself, but because self-consciousness is always a part of consciousness turned inward, and because all is dynamic, this intimacy is always incomplete.
Man studies his own behavior, within particular circumstances, to discover who he is, and why.
Man is his own mystery, and through self, as a part of existence reflecting itself, the world remains mystifying."

Satyr wrote:

"Excess in available energies, when self-maintenance has been dealt with in the immediate, can be directed towards increasing order in self and towards increasing it in otherness, upon which self is contingent.
This decreases the energies required to self-maintain, resulting in larger excesses.

These excesses can become detrimental to the organism if it cannot discharge them.
Need stresses the organism, by demanding satisfaction, and if it succeeds the accumulated excess in energies begin to stress it as a pressure requiring a direction to discharge.

The brain, and the subsequent mind it manifests as, is the product of such a discharging growth, due to excess
Excess in consciousness, results in self-consciousness, and then to a better understanding of self within otherness.
It also results in an expansion of the mind's perceptual-event-horizon, leading to its awareness of patterns beyond the immediate - increasing stress, as a projection of possibilities, and increasing pleasure, as the projection of possible discharge of excess energies and as a byproduct of alleviating this heightened stress/suffering.

The projection of an object/objective, in the form of an idea(l) or goal (purpose, meaning, ambition, direction), is a method of discharging excess energies, particularly the libidinal type which are continuously accumulating in a young, virile, organism, due to automatic genetic processes.

The more sophisticated mind will have a broader and deeper perceptual-event-horizon to find patterns within - to be stressed and to seek fulfillment within.
A less sophisticated mind with its more narrow and shallow perceptual-event-horizon will be less stressed and also experience less gratification by alleviating these heightened stress levels.
Its inability to perceive beyond a certain point in space/time will preserve it in the blissfully ignorant state of carelessness, where its simple needs lead to simple gratifications.


From less to more sophistication lies the gradation of potentials we call intelligence.
The direction these excess energies are discharged towards is dependent on the organism's organ hierarchies, its inherited internal dynamics, as these (inter)act with external dynamics, and hierarchies, resulting in the presence and quantity of excess.
Within manmade structures these excesses are directed towards utilitarian object/objectives, often providing the organism with the impression of free choice, making it more manageable.



Those with a less developed and formidable personality, settle for more character."

Satyr wrote:

"The Jerry Springer phrase "you don't know me" is now the Modern's last line of defense.
It is expressed in many ways but its theme is easy to spot.
What it implies is that no matter if you are apparent, or no matter how you appear, and no matter how you act, behave, as part of this appearing, that you still remain a mystery nobody can pass judgment upon.

It is the insinuation of a Kantian thing-in-itself, or the purified christian soul hiding beneath all this "superficial" satanic corporeality.

And if judgment is dared then reciprocity implies that all judgments are objective and lucid - of the same quality:
Do not judge, lest you wish to be judged, in turn.
Because if it is not God's judgment then all judgments are equally imperfect, and sinful as a result of this inherited primordial imperfection all are guilty of.
In its place the secular humanist places the institutionalized decree, through the judge.

A judge who passes judgment in accordance with a communally agreed upon standard of conduct; not he, in fact, judging but the people he represents, and in whose name he judges.
Judge becomes a secular priest, dress and all, resenting an earthly abstraction (a symbolic power on whose behalf it speaks), by channeling god’s will through the text (the codes) - the word of god, the will of god, becomes the word/will of the people; and if god is a human fabrication so is this communal will.

The judges share in the primordial guilt is cleansed away, by becoming an expression of the abstracted judgment, through the code.
He is only the mouthpiece, the agency, through which judgment is passed, and not really the judging will.
This is how will is deferred and referred, and what is called individuality is nothing more than a shell which can then be dismissed as superficial and only appearance.


Judgment is forbidden to all others."

More later.

Lyssa wrote:

camus666 wrote:

Lys,

Is there a way to derive an objective rendering of my true self? Can I know objectively who I am?

No, I don't think so.

Identity is ever constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables---some of which we had/have no choice/control regarding. We really are "thrown" into a fortuitous smorgasbord of demographic factors at birth and then molded and manipulated as children into whatever configuration of "reality" suits the cultural [and political] institutions of our time.  

Scriptures from one vantage point or another. Anything to keep from acknowledging just how contingent, precarious, uncertain and ultimately meaningless our lives really are.

Or, of course, is that just my foundation?[/b]

Satyr wrote:

"Self-Consciousness, as the sophistication of consciousness, is a turning inward, towards the internal processes, when the external has been effectively dealt with to the point where an excess of consciousness remains.
Self-Consciousness discovers self as it would an alien otherness in the outer world.
This first discovery creates this dichotomy of psychological fragmentation that results in the Bicameral Mind and to the concept of spirits, and gods.

Know Thyself is this exploration of self – it is an overabundance of self-consciousness seeking intimacy with itself, but because self-consciousness is always a part of consciousness turned inward, and because all is dynamic, this intimacy is always incomplete.
Man studies his own behavior, within particular circumstances, to discover who he is, and why.
Man is his own mystery, and through self, as a part of existence reflecting itself, the world remains mystifying."

Satyr wrote:

"Excess in available energies, when self-maintenance has been dealt with in the immediate, can be directed towards increasing order in self and towards increasing it in otherness, upon which self is contingent.
This decreases the energies required to self-maintain, resulting in larger excesses.

These excesses can become detrimental to the organism if it cannot discharge them.
Need stresses the organism, by demanding satisfaction, and if it succeeds the accumulated excess in energies begin to stress it as a pressure requiring a direction to discharge.

The brain, and the subsequent mind it manifests as, is the product of such a discharging growth, due to excess
Excess in consciousness, results in self-consciousness, and then to a better understanding of self within otherness.
It also results in an expansion of the mind's perceptual-event-horizon, leading to its awareness of patterns beyond the immediate - increasing stress, as a projection of possibilities, and increasing pleasure, as the projection of possible discharge of excess energies and as a byproduct of alleviating this heightened stress/suffering.

The projection of an object/objective, in the form of an idea(l) or goal (purpose, meaning, ambition, direction), is a method of discharging excess energies, particularly the libidinal type which are continuously accumulating in a young, virile, organism, due to automatic genetic processes.

The more sophisticated mind will have a broader and deeper perceptual-event-horizon to find patterns within - to be stressed and to seek fulfillment within.
A less sophisticated mind with its more narrow and shallow perceptual-event-horizon will be less stressed and also experience less gratification by alleviating these heightened stress levels.
Its inability to perceive beyond a certain point in space/time will preserve it in the blissfully ignorant state of carelessness, where its simple needs lead to simple gratifications.


From less to more sophistication lies the gradation of potentials we call intelligence.
The direction these excess energies are discharged towards is dependent on the organism's organ hierarchies, its inherited internal dynamics, as these (inter)act with external dynamics, and hierarchies, resulting in the presence and quantity of excess.
Within manmade structures these excesses are directed towards utilitarian object/objectives, often providing the organism with the impression of free choice, making it more manageable.



Those with a less developed and formidable personality, settle for more character."

Satyr wrote:

"The Jerry Springer phrase "you don't know me" is now the Modern's last line of defense.
It is expressed in many ways but its theme is easy to spot.  
What it implies is that no matter if you are apparent, or no matter how you appear, and no matter how you act, behave, as part of this appearing, that you still remain a mystery nobody can pass judgment upon.

It is the insinuation of a Kantian thing-in-itself, or the purified christian soul hiding beneath all this "superficial" satanic corporeality.

And if judgment is dared then reciprocity implies that all judgments are objective and lucid - of the same quality:
Do not judge, lest you wish to be judged, in turn.
Because if it is not God's judgment then all judgments are equally imperfect, and sinful as a result of this inherited primordial imperfection all are guilty of.
In its place the secular humanist places the institutionalized decree, through the judge.

A judge who passes judgment in accordance with a communally agreed upon standard of conduct; not he, in fact, judging but the people he represents, and in whose name he judges.
Judge becomes a secular priest, dress and all, resenting an earthly abstraction (a symbolic power on whose behalf it speaks), by channeling god’s will through the text (the codes) - the word of god, the will of god, becomes the word/will of the people; and if god is a human fabrication so is this communal will.

The judges share in the primordial guilt is cleansed away, by becoming an expression of the abstracted judgment, through the code.
He is only the mouthpiece, the agency, through which judgment is passed, and not really the judging will.
This is how will is deferred and referred, and what is called individuality is nothing more than a shell which can then be dismissed as superficial and only appearance.


Judgment is forbidden to all others."

More later.

More of the same you mean.

camus666 wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

camus666 wrote:

Lys,

Is there a way to derive an objective rendering of my true self? Can I know objectively who I am?

No, I don't think so.

Identity is ever constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables---some of which we had/have no choice/control regarding. We really are "thrown" into a fortuitous smorgasbord of demographic factors at birth and then molded and manipulated as children into whatever configuration of "reality" suits the cultural [and political] institutions of our time.  

Scriptures from one vantage point or another. Anything to keep from acknowledging just how contingent, precarious, uncertain and ultimately meaningless our lives really are.

Or, of course, is that just my foundation?[/b]

Satyr wrote:

"Self-Consciousness, as the sophistication of consciousness, is a turning inward, towards the internal processes, when the external has been effectively dealt with to the point where an excess of consciousness remains.
Self-Consciousness discovers self as it would an alien otherness in the outer world.
This first discovery creates this dichotomy of psychological fragmentation that results in the Bicameral Mind and to the concept of spirits, and gods.

Know Thyself is this exploration of self – it is an overabundance of self-consciousness seeking intimacy with itself, but because self-consciousness is always a part of consciousness turned inward, and because all is dynamic, this intimacy is always incomplete.
Man studies his own behavior, within particular circumstances, to discover who he is, and why.
Man is his own mystery, and through self, as a part of existence reflecting itself, the world remains mystifying."

Satyr wrote:

"Excess in available energies, when self-maintenance has been dealt with in the immediate, can be directed towards increasing order in self and towards increasing it in otherness, upon which self is contingent.
This decreases the energies required to self-maintain, resulting in larger excesses.

These excesses can become detrimental to the organism if it cannot discharge them.
Need stresses the organism, by demanding satisfaction, and if it succeeds the accumulated excess in energies begin to stress it as a pressure requiring a direction to discharge.

The brain, and the subsequent mind it manifests as, is the product of such a discharging growth, due to excess
Excess in consciousness, results in self-consciousness, and then to a better understanding of self within otherness.
It also results in an expansion of the mind's perceptual-event-horizon, leading to its awareness of patterns beyond the immediate - increasing stress, as a projection of possibilities, and increasing pleasure, as the projection of possible discharge of excess energies and as a byproduct of alleviating this heightened stress/suffering.

The projection of an object/objective, in the form of an idea(l) or goal (purpose, meaning, ambition, direction), is a method of discharging excess energies, particularly the libidinal type which are continuously accumulating in a young, virile, organism, due to automatic genetic processes.

The more sophisticated mind will have a broader and deeper perceptual-event-horizon to find patterns within - to be stressed and to seek fulfillment within.
A less sophisticated mind with its more narrow and shallow perceptual-event-horizon will be less stressed and also experience less gratification by alleviating these heightened stress levels.
Its inability to perceive beyond a certain point in space/time will preserve it in the blissfully ignorant state of carelessness, where its simple needs lead to simple gratifications.


From less to more sophistication lies the gradation of potentials we call intelligence.
The direction these excess energies are discharged towards is dependent on the organism's organ hierarchies, its inherited internal dynamics, as these (inter)act with external dynamics, and hierarchies, resulting in the presence and quantity of excess.
Within manmade structures these excesses are directed towards utilitarian object/objectives, often providing the organism with the impression of free choice, making it more manageable.



Those with a less developed and formidable personality, settle for more character."

Satyr wrote:

"The Jerry Springer phrase "you don't know me" is now the Modern's last line of defense.
It is expressed in many ways but its theme is easy to spot.  
What it implies is that no matter if you are apparent, or no matter how you appear, and no matter how you act, behave, as part of this appearing, that you still remain a mystery nobody can pass judgment upon.

It is the insinuation of a Kantian thing-in-itself, or the purified christian soul hiding beneath all this "superficial" satanic corporeality.

And if judgment is dared then reciprocity implies that all judgments are objective and lucid - of the same quality:
Do not judge, lest you wish to be judged, in turn.
Because if it is not God's judgment then all judgments are equally imperfect, and sinful as a result of this inherited primordial imperfection all are guilty of.
In its place the secular humanist places the institutionalized decree, through the judge.

A judge who passes judgment in accordance with a communally agreed upon standard of conduct; not he, in fact, judging but the people he represents, and in whose name he judges.
Judge becomes a secular priest, dress and all, resenting an earthly abstraction (a symbolic power on whose behalf it speaks), by channeling god’s will through the text (the codes) - the word of god, the will of god, becomes the word/will of the people; and if god is a human fabrication so is this communal will.

The judges share in the primordial guilt is cleansed away, by becoming an expression of the abstracted judgment, through the code.
He is only the mouthpiece, the agency, through which judgment is passed, and not really the judging will.
This is how will is deferred and referred, and what is called individuality is nothing more than a shell which can then be dismissed as superficial and only appearance.


Judgment is forbidden to all others."

More later.

More of the same you mean.

The groundwork first. You better have read all that and every word.

And this too. I want you to:

Satyr wrote:

"A preliminary sketch.....

---Experience
The consistent repetition of a pattern, and its predictability, establishes it as a rational/logical hypothesis.

All ordering is a pattern of consistent predictability, establishing the different types of elements, divided into types in accordance to shared traits (familiarities).

---Abstraction
Once the mind can refer back to its own abstractions and understand them as representations of phenomena - noetic models constructed by generalizing/simplifying - the next step to pure abstraction, such as represented in mathematics follows.

The mathematical language is a language that has eliminated the phenomenon as a reference point.
A word might refer to a phenomenon, reducing it to a symbol, representing an abstraction - the noetic - but a number need only refer back to its own abstractions.

Word, being static, can refer to the phenomenon, being dynamic, by eliminating the fluidity of existence. This is what is meant by generalization/simplification.

Therefore a particular dog, given he label Rex, is always referred to as Rex, even though it is changing.
The name/symbol Rex is now a representation of a time/space continuum with undisclosed, and/or ambiguous, boundaries.
We may not know at what exact period of space/time Rex, the dog, was born as an emergent, self-organizing, unity, nor know the exact period of space/time when this self-organizing will cease, returning the aggregate energies back tot he flux, nor do you know the subtle alterations in Rex, occurring as we perceive Rex - and only seeing the effects when they accumulate to a discernible, to human sensual acuity, level, but we, nevertheless, encompass all that in the word Rex.

From this particular we can then proceed to the more general.
Rex, with its own particular patterns of interactivity (behavior), appearance, resembles other such phenomena.
It resembles some more than others.
We can now establish a category we can call canine, and place Rex as one instance amongst many.
This category is similar in that it falls within limitations of potentials, in all their shared traits.
We call this a species.

Now Rex is a dog named.
It is A dog.
The "A" now represents a singularity within the general category - a single instance of a general pattern.
The "A" can now be used to refer to all similar patterns, all dogs, where the particularities are not known, and so are not given a specific symbol, as in like "Rex".
The pattern Rex has been further simplified/generalized, eliminating the particularities of the emergent unity, and finding similarities, or a lower-common-denominator, so as to include it within a group/category.

This process can be repeated, generalizing/simplifying our pattern further, so as to place Rex, within Canines, then within mammals, then land animals...and so on.
Each step upwards in simplification/generalization then within reducing our lowest/common/denominator, and/or focusing on the similarities by ignoring the differences.

The same process establishes the concept of HUMAN.

Bob....Human....Male....Mammal.....Primate....and so on.

The "A" is the symbol of simplification/generalization.
It refers to an instance, or all instances of the same pattern.

A=A.
The abstraction is referring to itself.

From here we can now abstract using a different code/language.
either translating it to another verbal code, or to a pure abstracting code: mathematics.

A=1 (one)

One man, one dog.
The name given to this one, is a name replacing the simplifying/generalizing 1, or "a".

Rex, or Bob, are also generalization/simplifications, because they are made up of cells, and are dynamic.
They are not static, but an aggregate of processes, represented by a static symbol = Rex....Bob.

1 now becomes our starting simplification/generalization. Where we feel more comfortable with, or where our sensual acuity, unaided by technologies, has to begin - an evolutionary starting level of abstraction, using a priori methods,a s these have evolved, naturally selected, for being sufficient for the survival of the particular species and its methods of survival - its behavioral niche.

From this starting presupposition of one all mathematical logic follows. Logic being a reference to the self-consistency of the method once a presupposition, has been established, as its starting "self-evident" foundation.

It's negation, alter to develop, is the birth of the nil.
1/0 become binary mutually dependent presuppositions.
The one being the simplification/generalization of the phenomenon- turning it to a noumenon....and nil being its negation.
both ambiguous, but more so the nil since it has no reference point other than back to the brain.

The nil is the purest abstraction.
The one refers to something sensual, or can refer to something sensual....the nil need not refer to anything sensual, nor to anything at all, since it simply negates, rejects, the sensually perceived.

Nihilism is born, as pure nullification of the perceived world.

The one negated the fluidity, the dynamism of existence, morphing into God, Order, Thing, Here, Now...all relieving concepts which arrest, noetically, the Flux - end of need/suffering.
The nil negates further...not in antithesis to the one but as a rejection of even the Abstractions of God, Thing, Now, Here, Order.

One/Nil become two faces of the same simplifying/generalizing coin, one referring back to the abstracted, noumenon, the other negating the necessity of even that.

The phenomenon, as a dynamic, process, is left out of the simplifications/generalizations.
Once the abstraction can refer to increasingly lower and lower common denominators then the mere fact that something can be perceived becomes the all-encompassing similarity - the universe is born.
The same occurs when perceiving towards the minute...infinite regress, exposing the disparity between the noetic and the perceived phenomenon - resulting in linguistically rational/logical paradoxes - precedes downwards finding no static thing to attach the symbol 1 to, once and for all.
The nil fills in the gap, as a representation of this missing Thing.

Completely ambiguous, since it refers to what is presupposed, and then found to be absent.
It labels the absence of this presupposed as the nil.

In fact, it is the presupposition which nullifies the real, since its was presupposed by ignoring reality, or by finding it so distasteful and frightening that it had to be "healed" by the noetic.
The noumenon shifts its role from being a representation, a simplification/generalization, to what fills in the missing in what is desired."

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Lyssa wrote:

camus666 wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

camus666 wrote:

Lys,

Is there a way to derive an objective rendering of my true self? Can I know objectively who I am?

No, I don't think so.

Identity is ever constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables---some of which we had/have no choice/control regarding. We really are "thrown" into a fortuitous smorgasbord of demographic factors at birth and then molded and manipulated as children into whatever configuration of "reality" suits the cultural [and political] institutions of our time.  

Scriptures from one vantage point or another. Anything to keep from acknowledging just how contingent, precarious, uncertain and ultimately meaningless our lives really are.

Or, of course, is that just my foundation?[/b]

Satyr wrote:

"Self-Consciousness, as the sophistication of consciousness, is a turning inward, towards the internal processes, when the external has been effectively dealt with to the point where an excess of consciousness remains.
Self-Consciousness discovers self as it would an alien otherness in the outer world.
This first discovery creates this dichotomy of psychological fragmentation that results in the Bicameral Mind and to the concept of spirits, and gods.

Know Thyself is this exploration of self – it is an overabundance of self-consciousness seeking intimacy with itself, but because self-consciousness is always a part of consciousness turned inward, and because all is dynamic, this intimacy is always incomplete.
Man studies his own behavior, within particular circumstances, to discover who he is, and why.
Man is his own mystery, and through self, as a part of existence reflecting itself, the world remains mystifying."

Satyr wrote:

"Excess in available energies, when self-maintenance has been dealt with in the immediate, can be directed towards increasing order in self and towards increasing it in otherness, upon which self is contingent.
This decreases the energies required to self-maintain, resulting in larger excesses.

These excesses can become detrimental to the organism if it cannot discharge them.
Need stresses the organism, by demanding satisfaction, and if it succeeds the accumulated excess in energies begin to stress it as a pressure requiring a direction to discharge.

The brain, and the subsequent mind it manifests as, is the product of such a discharging growth, due to excess
Excess in consciousness, results in self-consciousness, and then to a better understanding of self within otherness.
It also results in an expansion of the mind's perceptual-event-horizon, leading to its awareness of patterns beyond the immediate - increasing stress, as a projection of possibilities, and increasing pleasure, as the projection of possible discharge of excess energies and as a byproduct of alleviating this heightened stress/suffering.

The projection of an object/objective, in the form of an idea(l) or goal (purpose, meaning, ambition, direction), is a method of discharging excess energies, particularly the libidinal type which are continuously accumulating in a young, virile, organism, due to automatic genetic processes.

The more sophisticated mind will have a broader and deeper perceptual-event-horizon to find patterns within - to be stressed and to seek fulfillment within.
A less sophisticated mind with its more narrow and shallow perceptual-event-horizon will be less stressed and also experience less gratification by alleviating these heightened stress levels.
Its inability to perceive beyond a certain point in space/time will preserve it in the blissfully ignorant state of carelessness, where its simple needs lead to simple gratifications.


From less to more sophistication lies the gradation of potentials we call intelligence.
The direction these excess energies are discharged towards is dependent on the organism's organ hierarchies, its inherited internal dynamics, as these (inter)act with external dynamics, and hierarchies, resulting in the presence and quantity of excess.
Within manmade structures these excesses are directed towards utilitarian object/objectives, often providing the organism with the impression of free choice, making it more manageable.



Those with a less developed and formidable personality, settle for more character."

Satyr wrote:

"The Jerry Springer phrase "you don't know me" is now the Modern's last line of defense.
It is expressed in many ways but its theme is easy to spot.  
What it implies is that no matter if you are apparent, or no matter how you appear, and no matter how you act, behave, as part of this appearing, that you still remain a mystery nobody can pass judgment upon.

It is the insinuation of a Kantian thing-in-itself, or the purified christian soul hiding beneath all this "superficial" satanic corporeality.

And if judgment is dared then reciprocity implies that all judgments are objective and lucid - of the same quality:
Do not judge, lest you wish to be judged, in turn.
Because if it is not God's judgment then all judgments are equally imperfect, and sinful as a result of this inherited primordial imperfection all are guilty of.
In its place the secular humanist places the institutionalized decree, through the judge.

A judge who passes judgment in accordance with a communally agreed upon standard of conduct; not he, in fact, judging but the people he represents, and in whose name he judges.
Judge becomes a secular priest, dress and all, resenting an earthly abstraction (a symbolic power on whose behalf it speaks), by channeling god’s will through the text (the codes) - the word of god, the will of god, becomes the word/will of the people; and if god is a human fabrication so is this communal will.

The judges share in the primordial guilt is cleansed away, by becoming an expression of the abstracted judgment, through the code.
He is only the mouthpiece, the agency, through which judgment is passed, and not really the judging will.
This is how will is deferred and referred, and what is called individuality is nothing more than a shell which can then be dismissed as superficial and only appearance.


Judgment is forbidden to all others."

More later.

More of the same you mean.

The groundwork first. You better have read all that and every word.

And this too. I want you to.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The groundwork. The abstract, theoretical, didactic groundwork in which human identity [and everything else] is explored academically, scholastically. And then after you are done grappling with the definitions and deductions -- the "analysis" -- you are still as far removed from an actual flesh and blood human being as ever.

That sort of groundwork?

camus666 wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

camus666 wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

camus666 wrote:

Lys,

Is there a way to derive an objective rendering of my true self? Can I know objectively who I am?

No, I don't think so.

Identity is ever constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables---some of which we had/have no choice/control regarding. We really are "thrown" into a fortuitous smorgasbord of demographic factors at birth and then molded and manipulated as children into whatever configuration of "reality" suits the cultural [and political] institutions of our time.  

Scriptures from one vantage point or another. Anything to keep from acknowledging just how contingent, precarious, uncertain and ultimately meaningless our lives really are.

Or, of course, is that just my foundation?[/b]

Satyr wrote:

"Self-Consciousness, as the sophistication of consciousness, is a turning inward, towards the internal processes, when the external has been effectively dealt with to the point where an excess of consciousness remains.
Self-Consciousness discovers self as it would an alien otherness in the outer world.
This first discovery creates this dichotomy of psychological fragmentation that results in the Bicameral Mind and to the concept of spirits, and gods.

Know Thyself is this exploration of self – it is an overabundance of self-consciousness seeking intimacy with itself, but because self-consciousness is always a part of consciousness turned inward, and because all is dynamic, this intimacy is always incomplete.
Man studies his own behavior, within particular circumstances, to discover who he is, and why.
Man is his own mystery, and through self, as a part of existence reflecting itself, the world remains mystifying."

Satyr wrote:

"Excess in available energies, when self-maintenance has been dealt with in the immediate, can be directed towards increasing order in self and towards increasing it in otherness, upon which self is contingent.
This decreases the energies required to self-maintain, resulting in larger excesses.

These excesses can become detrimental to the organism if it cannot discharge them.
Need stresses the organism, by demanding satisfaction, and if it succeeds the accumulated excess in energies begin to stress it as a pressure requiring a direction to discharge.

The brain, and the subsequent mind it manifests as, is the product of such a discharging growth, due to excess
Excess in consciousness, results in self-consciousness, and then to a better understanding of self within otherness.
It also results in an expansion of the mind's perceptual-event-horizon, leading to its awareness of patterns beyond the immediate - increasing stress, as a projection of possibilities, and increasing pleasure, as the projection of possible discharge of excess energies and as a byproduct of alleviating this heightened stress/suffering.

The projection of an object/objective, in the form of an idea(l) or goal (purpose, meaning, ambition, direction), is a method of discharging excess energies, particularly the libidinal type which are continuously accumulating in a young, virile, organism, due to automatic genetic processes.

The more sophisticated mind will have a broader and deeper perceptual-event-horizon to find patterns within - to be stressed and to seek fulfillment within.
A less sophisticated mind with its more narrow and shallow perceptual-event-horizon will be less stressed and also experience less gratification by alleviating these heightened stress levels.
Its inability to perceive beyond a certain point in space/time will preserve it in the blissfully ignorant state of carelessness, where its simple needs lead to simple gratifications.


From less to more sophistication lies the gradation of potentials we call intelligence.
The direction these excess energies are discharged towards is dependent on the organism's organ hierarchies, its inherited internal dynamics, as these (inter)act with external dynamics, and hierarchies, resulting in the presence and quantity of excess.
Within manmade structures these excesses are directed towards utilitarian object/objectives, often providing the organism with the impression of free choice, making it more manageable.



Those with a less developed and formidable personality, settle for more character."

Satyr wrote:

"The Jerry Springer phrase "you don't know me" is now the Modern's last line of defense.
It is expressed in many ways but its theme is easy to spot.  
What it implies is that no matter if you are apparent, or no matter how you appear, and no matter how you act, behave, as part of this appearing, that you still remain a mystery nobody can pass judgment upon.

It is the insinuation of a Kantian thing-in-itself, or the purified christian soul hiding beneath all this "superficial" satanic corporeality.

And if judgment is dared then reciprocity implies that all judgments are objective and lucid - of the same quality:
Do not judge, lest you wish to be judged, in turn.
Because if it is not God's judgment then all judgments are equally imperfect, and sinful as a result of this inherited primordial imperfection all are guilty of.
In its place the secular humanist places the institutionalized decree, through the judge.

A judge who passes judgment in accordance with a communally agreed upon standard of conduct; not he, in fact, judging but the people he represents, and in whose name he judges.
Judge becomes a secular priest, dress and all, resenting an earthly abstraction (a symbolic power on whose behalf it speaks), by channeling god’s will through the text (the codes) - the word of god, the will of god, becomes the word/will of the people; and if god is a human fabrication so is this communal will.

The judges share in the primordial guilt is cleansed away, by becoming an expression of the abstracted judgment, through the code.
He is only the mouthpiece, the agency, through which judgment is passed, and not really the judging will.
This is how will is deferred and referred, and what is called individuality is nothing more than a shell which can then be dismissed as superficial and only appearance.


Judgment is forbidden to all others."

More later.

More of the same you mean.

The groundwork first. You better have read all that and every word.

And this too. I want you to.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The groundwork. The abstract, theoretical, didactic groundwork in which human identity [and everything else] is explored academically, scholastically. And then after you are done grappling with the definitions and deductions --  the "analysis" -- you are still as far removed from an actual flesh and blood human being as ever.

That sort of groundwork?

To see the word as Only a word, Only empty, is You disconnecting it from actual flesh and blood from where some kind of words have their origin. When linkages between the noumenon and phenomenon are severed as in the J.-Xt. nihilistic 'In the beginning was the word', you have a point. But this is not necessarily so.
If words refer to phenomenon, they act as metaphors. They stand for transference (meta-phor), to capture that which reality is - movement. Richer the metaphor, the more objective the perspective is.

Think about that for however long it takes you to realize not all words are ghosts. Language is not a phantasm; it takes birth from Our organic flesh and blood needs. The land one lives in, the climate, the ecology, the soil and the kind of food it supports influences the metabolism of the body and so the spirit of communication. See the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] thread here.

Its only to a hedonist and the kind that puts truth=certainty=pleasure is one, that is disturbed by one's expansive ego and suffers from the max. differentiation of its being.

Others might call it the joy of living.

To be disturbed by whether I'm "more really" a daughter than I'm "more really" a sister or "more really" a mother, a maid, an employee, a wife, a citizen, a music-lover, a sports-fan, a butcher, a thief, Tom's best friend, etc. is the suffering of a hedonist who cannot hold the contradictions and multiplicities in a web of balance. He suffers under the weight of it, the weight of the expansion of the core.

Its the suffering of one who cannot see the logical necessity of the path of life and relations he chose,, as if,, one could have simply taken another route on a whim and discovered some other reality that Too was not also a part of his innate inherited logical possibility...

"One only becomes what one is." [N.]

This is why I quoted Satyr above. Only with increasing discriminating self-consciousness, will you attain clarity of the necessary logic of the ego that expands into the different roles it does. This too is only an interpretation, but the very formation of the self itself is such;

Satyr wrote:

"Since consciousness proceeds from an outwardly focused sense to one where it recognizes, among this otherness, self, as the source of its own sensing - as a reflection - this recognition is determined by all the limitations and methods evolved to perceive.
Therefore, one perceives self as an interpretation of (inter)activity, as if it were an other, creating this first delusion which Jaynes expanded upon, of a God, or a consciousness outside our consciousness.
Now, because the mind simplifies/generalizes interactivity using a many sensual methods, as form, color, tone, texture, and these are no more than interpretations of (inter)activity (energy, vibration, flux) the sophistication of the processing organ, the brain, determines the quality of this self-awareness."

Greater the metaphors, richer the interpretation, higher the cost one pays for it, and a hedonist who puts pleasure before all else will suffer to pay the cost of sustaining oneself As the essential web of such and such and more and more discriminate relations. All life seeks to be more.

Lyssa wrote:

If words refer to phenomenon, they act as metaphors. They stand for transference (meta-phor), to capture that which reality is - movement. Richer the metaphor, the more objective the perspective is.

Again: What in the world does this have to do with any one particular individual acquiring and then sustaining any one particular identity given the manner in which I conveyed this as the embodiment of dasein above?

This [to me] is just more of the same didactic intellectual gibberish that Satyr spews out on post after post after post. The only difference being that [so far] you have not resorted to calling me a retard simply for pointing it out.

Now, as I suggested over at ILP:

You choose a moral/political conflict that you are most committed to. And then we can begin a new thread to discuss it. We can discuss the various conflicting narratives that different folks bring to the debate and explore the extent to which we either can [or cannot] narrow it down to the one truly objective frame of mind.

We can simply shift gears here and aim the focus on the manner in which individuals come to acquire a sense of identity pertaining to flesh and blood conflicts like this "out in the world" that we live in. A world in which we must situate our words such that they take into account the enormous complexity of human social, political and economic interaction.

camus666 wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

If words refer to phenomenon, they act as metaphors. They stand for transference (meta-phor), to capture that which reality is - movement. Richer the metaphor, the more objective the perspective is.

Again: What in the world does this have to do with any one particular individual acquiring and then sustaining any one particular identity given the manner in which I conveyed this as the embodiment of dasein above?

Because the self is not other than the world, but a continual differentiation of it - language is how the human finds his dwelling. That language where we can all dwell together in the 'one true truth' is either asking for a cosmopolitan retardation, or a cosmo-polis of free-spirits. In your case, its the former.

Quote :

This [to me] is just more of the same didactic intellectual gibberish that Satyr spews out on post after post after post. The only difference being that [so far] you have not resorted to calling me a retard simply for pointing it out.

Its only gibberish to your head. If I do not call you a retard, its because I cannot be bothered with you personally abt. it. I rather speak of your retardation like the one below than speak at you.

Quote :

Now, as I suggested over at ILP:

You choose a moral/political conflict that you are most committed to. And then we can begin a new thread to discuss it. We can discuss the various conflicting narratives that different folks bring to the debate and explore the extent to which we either can [or cannot] narrow it down to the one truly objective frame of mind.

Yea, thanks for dulling "Objectivity" as the mean average convergence of max. democratic subjectivities. "One true" indeed...

Quote :

We can simply shift gears here and aim the focus on the manner in which individuals come to acquire a sense of identity pertaining to flesh and blood conflicts like this "out in the world" that we live in. A world in which we must situate our words such that they take into account the enormous complexity of human social, political and economic interaction.

You are asking to stop at the extent where my flesh-and-blood word does not mean death for you and where yours, does not mean death for me. Its also called the lowest common denominator. Complexity increases wth sustaining conflicts and contradictions, and not blunting it. When you can sustain it, its called simplifying; when you blunt it, its called being simplistic.

I'm done with you, simpleton.

Lyssa wrote:

camus666 wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

If words refer to phenomenon, they act as metaphors. They stand for transference (meta-phor), to capture that which reality is - movement. Richer the metaphor, the more objective the perspective is.

Again: What in the world does this have to do with any one particular individual acquiring and then sustaining any one particular identity given the manner in which I conveyed this as the embodiment of dasein above?

Because the self is not other than the world, but a continual differentiation of it - language is how the human finds his dwelling. That language where we can all dwell together in the 'one true truth' is either asking for a cosmopolitan retardation, or a cosmo-polis of free-spirits. In your case, its the former.

Again, as with Satyr, you may well now be incapable of addressing the complexities embodied in identity/dasein, other than through ejaculating intellectual gibberish like this.

It is as though you imagine others reading what you write here and then marvelling at just how many books you must have read in order to be this articulate. So scholarly, so academic!

So pedantic?

And it's not really a question of you being "bothered" with me. It's more the extent to which you are able to take these abstractions down off the clouds and situate them out in the world of actual human interactions construed by individuals from conflicting sets of value judgments.

You'll either do this or you will not. Or, rather, you either can do this or you cannot.

Quote :

We can simply shift gears here and aim the focus on the manner in which individuals come to acquire a sense of identity pertaining to flesh and blood conflicts like this "out in the world" that we live in. A world in which we must situate our words such that they take into account the enormous complexity of human social, political and economic interaction.

Lyssa wrote:

You are asking to stop at the extent where my flesh-and-blood word does not mean death for you and where yours, does not mean death for me. Its also called the lowest common denominator. Complexity increases wth sustaining conflicts and contradictions, and not blunting it. When you can sustain it, its called simplifying; when you blunt it, its called being simplistic.

If you let me, I can wean you off intellectual contraptions of this sort. For example, I can show you just how to make that crucial distinction between what you believe is true "in your head" subjectively and that which can be demonstrated to be true objectively for all of us.

And not just with respect to identity either. We can also explore the existential variables embedded in "conflicting goods" --  as it relates to moral and political conflicts.

Real moral and political conflicts. We can rip them right from the headlines.

camus666 wrote:

Again, as with Satyr, you may well now be incapable of addressing the complexities embodied in identity/dasein...
For example, I can show you just how to make that crucial distinction between what you believe is true "in your head" subjectively and that which can be demonstrated to be true objectively for all of us.

Either demonstrate those 'complexities' through someone else, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], or shut up.

You can either do this, or you cannot.

The tree of knowledge is not the same as the tree of life...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]


It is this life and death conflict he really wants to do away with inside himself - "flesh and blood"; knowledge is a detriment to his self-preservation.

He is another one with a saviour complex.

That kind of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] has already been conducted here... and of course it was very very complex...

Objectivity = "the basic flesh-and-blood emotions we can all agree on as humans".

Lyssa wrote:

Objectivity = "the basic flesh-and-blood emotions we can all agree on as humans".

HA!

A flash of an ID card.

How else can he demonstrate the end of a debate on anti- and pro- abortionists, or capital punishments, etc. or whose side is more truthful and more real, unless reduced to the most lowest common emotion...?

The one going on about complexity is the one wanting to eliminate it the most.

And lest we forget, truth is always human truth; if it doesnt favour the human world, the flesh and blood world, it is gibberish.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Reduce it to the human level and then bury it in "let's agree to disagree", and the majority wins.
Let us vote on what is objective.

The collective subjective, as the only possible objective.

I think I get it.

Lyssa wrote:

camus666 wrote:

Again, as with Satyr, you may well now be incapable of addressing the complexities embodied in identity/dasein...
For example, I can show you just how to make that crucial distinction between what you believe is true "in your head" subjectively and that which can be demonstrated to be true objectively for all of us.

Either demonstrate those 'complexities' through someone else, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], or shut up.

You can either do this, or you cannot.

Question: If you saw some child drowning in a pool, and nobody was around to save him or her, would you save the child? The child is not yours, so there is no biological imperative for you to save him or her.


Hmm...

What's the point here? How does this example demonstrate that one's behavior is not embedded in dasein and in conflicting goods? After all, even the "biological imperative" becomes moot when parents choose to kill their own children.

However extreme the context may be, each of us will view it from a particular point of view derived largely from the lives that we have lived.

Indeed, how would someone even go about demonstrating that of necessity one must save the child in order to be seen as a rational and ethical human being?

Basically, what the objectivists will do here is to construct an intellectual edifice said to encompass the manner in which the best and the brightest must behave.

And then it's always the way that they would behave, isn't it?

For the objectivists, what they believe is almost always secondary to the fact that there must be something to believe that allows them to tie everything together into one or another whole truth. They convince themselves that what they think and feel and do is done out of necessity. It is simply what any rational [and noble] man or woman must do. Otherwise they are retards or imbeciles.

In fact, the psychology here is so transparent you'd think they couldn't possibly miss it. But the need to be wholly integrated into the one objective truth/identity [theirs] is simply too powerful for them to resist.


Which is to say that, for some, it is right up there with God. It's a crutch they will simply not dispense with.