Zero identity
- Thread starter fudgefactorfive
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fudgefactorfive
New Member
but there ARE pieces
they're not permanent pieces, they may in fact even alter themselves depending on where they are in the jigsaw, or be discarded as waste (for some other jigsaw to use), but they exist
still the question remains: is consciousness (self-awareness) something that the human brain HAS to do, or is it something it CAN do / is encouraged to do by the abstract cultural environment it finds itself in
they're not permanent pieces, they may in fact even alter themselves depending on where they are in the jigsaw, or be discarded as waste (for some other jigsaw to use), but they exist
still the question remains: is consciousness (self-awareness) something that the human brain HAS to do, or is it something it CAN do / is encouraged to do by the abstract cultural environment it finds itself in
weltweit
Well-Known Member
FFF can you define "self-awareness" because I am not at all sure that all humans are self aware.
I know some people, doers rather than thinkers, that just get on with their busy lives and never seem to give any thought to who they might be or what that might mean. And they are some of the happiest people I know, no incessant questioning, no doubts, no angst at all.
I know some people, doers rather than thinkers, that just get on with their busy lives and never seem to give any thought to who they might be or what that might mean. And they are some of the happiest people I know, no incessant questioning, no doubts, no angst at all.
fudgefactorfive
New Member
weltweit said:
see post #77 - the difference between minds which know, and minds which know that they know - the difference between minds which just react to the environment in a "flow state", and minds which are constantly second-guessing based on predictions formulated by their own models of themselves
- do alpha meerkats know they are alpha meerkats? hard to say, probably, in a sense, or they wouldn't behave as such
- do alpha meerkats know that they know they are alpha meerkats? i doubt it very much
once you know that you know, can you just ... forget?
you can't deliberately forget something like that
Lix Tetrax
A godsdamn gentleman
As a Buddhist, here's my take on things:fudgefactorfive said:
Traditionally, Buddhism always prescribed to the idea of anatman or 'Not-Self'. The argument runs: anything subject to change, anything not autonomous and totally controllable by its own wishes, anything subject to disharmony of suffering, could not be such a perfect true self. To take anything which was not such a self as if it were one, is to lay the basis for much suffering. This arises when what one fondly takes as one's permanent, essential self changes in undesired ways. It is because of the fact that things are impermanent that they are dukkha: potentially painful and frustrating. Because they are impermanent and unsatisfactory, they are seen to be as not-Self: not a permanent, self-secure, happy, independent self or I. They are 'empty' of such a self, or anything pertaining to such a Self.
So, to say, for example, "Buddhism is about destroying ego" is untrue because there is no true, independent ego in the first place. You cannot destroy that which isn't there. The idea of the Self, the Ego or 'I' is seen as illusionary and only through deep samadhi (deep, single-pointed concentration) in meditation can one "cut the roots" of all conditions that give rise to suffering. Once you remove all conditions that give rise to suffering, there exists only true, blissful happiness and direct, real insight into the true nature of reality. This is nibbana. In nibbana, all thoughts, actions and words occur 'spontaneously', as it were, which is a rather Taoist way of putting things. You act totally in accordance with the dharma, the true reality or way of all things, you are freed from samsara, the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth, and there exists only the 'perfect' mind -- the dharma mind.
It is interesting to speculate how enlightenment could turn someone into, as it has been suggested, a 'zombie'. Using the word zombie connotates a certain imagery: emotionless, personality-less, thoughtlessness and so on. But this sort of thinking only holds true if you think that enlightenment results in "the complete annihilation of the personality, the ego, the self", which, has I've attempted to demonstrate from a Buddhist perspective, is not true. Enlightenment is not the annihilation of the ego, because there is no ego. Enlightenment is the direct insight into the nature of reality, the removing of all karmically-created conditions that give rise to suffering. The word buddha comes from the Sanskrit bud -- to awake. The buddha, therefore, is "the Awakened One" -- words that connotate, not destruction of ego, but of 'awaking' from the 'dream of illusions'.
By all means, feel free to pick at this post, call me an idiot, or ask more questions.
Lix Tetrax
A godsdamn gentleman
As you type on the keyboard, you are aware, even though this may not be at the forefront of your consciousness, of the sensation of your fingers tapping at regular, shaped lumps of plastic (or rubber, as it may be). As you are tapping at this oblong thing, you will be thinking of what to post, you may backtrack your thoughts, re-analyse them, alter, or let them flow. You are aware that you are thinking. You are aware that you are thinking whilst tapping away at your keyboard. You may also become aware of other sensations of your body: hunger, for example.weltweit said:
Ergo: you are self-aware.
It has been suggested that the human mind differs from the animal in one subtle way:
Animal Mind
Stimuli -------> Response
Human Mind
Stimuli -------> Pause (involving consideration, prediction, evaluation etc.) ------> Response
Curiously, a Zen Buddhist monk's days in a sangha are usually filled with duties: sweeping, cleaning, cooking, gardening, meditation and so on. It serves to focus the mind on "the now", on existing in the moment and seeing things "as they are", in their true thusness. The meditation merely allows the monk to cut deeper into their mind, through the vines of illusion to the pure gold of Buddhanature.weltweit said:
One Zen monk concluded:
"Today: enlightenment, tomorrow: the dishes", in an attempt to show that enlightenment was "nothing special", in the sense that it is seeing things as they really are.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
How about a précis in 50 words? For example:
...looks to me like you're saying 'Identity is an illusion, and pain and suffering come about because we change brings alterations to that illusion, but by removing the idea of personal identity we therefore remove the artificially induced pain and suffering'
I'm not too sure about agreeing with the idea of removing the ego, but I certainly agree with the idea of living in the 'now' - I used to get worried and very down because I would attempt to imagine many outcomes to a given scenario, be that work, money, relationship etc Following some discussions on here that chimed with some (don't hate me) sci-fi I was reading at the time I took up the idea that focussing on keeping my mind on what I was doing instead of thinking about what might happen would allow the 'future' to take care of itself. IYSWIM...
weltweit
Well-Known Member
fudgefactorfive Ok #77 interesting, you are better read than I am . I recall you arguing in another thread that language was not what we thought in, rather what we communicate in, you appear to argue in #77 that those you have read believe language = thought, but I see you kind of abandon that at the end.
What is it "I think therefore I am" or something springs to mind. Flowers do not think, how do they know when to grow?
"negotiating on how to act next with another creature requires you to know that that other creature is a thinking thing like yourself"
That makes me think about guide dogs for the blind, horse riders, Indian elephant handlers, hunting with dogs, hunting with birds of prey, snake charmers, lion tamers putting their heads into the lions mouth etc etc.
Your response re Meercats was that they may know they are the alpha meercat but not that they know that they know IIRC. But there is considerable human animal negotiated interaction in the examples I just listed yet according to your view they cannot human animal & animal animal be thinking like each other, perhaps you are right. Perhaps thinking like each other is not required for physical cooperation, affection or shared emotion even, but is perhaps not enough for the more abstract things which only human animals appear visibly to be interested in.
"the difference between minds which know, and minds which know that they know"
Donald Rumsfeld speaking about Iraq: "we know what we know we know, and we know what we know we don't know, we don't know what we don't know we don't know". That was about the most intelligent thing I think I heard an American politican say in ages.
To my mind human self-awareness comes with a level of maturity and perhaps life complexity. When we are born we emerge with some natural programming, to wail for food etc. Then comes a protracted period of us learning and being told who we are, what to do, how to behave, how to think, how to do maths, what gods to believe in, seeing where we come from, learning from those in our immediate vicinity etc. Both nature and nurture are valid.
To my mind a thinking adult is responsible for programming themselves, continuously examining beliefs, values and identity, and questioning their validity. Not all enjoy this. In my experience many find it unsettling to have their beliefs or values questioned, especially to question a core belief.
Traditional carrer orientated men often have mental breakdowns and die early on retirement because they cannot cope with the shift from identifying and having self worth as a career person / breadwinner, to identifying as a retired person which they find somehow lacking in self worth. Yet they are still the exact same male human the only change is to their mental sense of identity. Traditional stay home housewives never go through this and they live longer.
A minor identity crisis can occur if we challenge how we see and hear ourselves. We think we know what we look like as we see our faces in the mirror and hear ourselves when we speak. However, we see a mirror image of just our faces, and others see our complete body language which we do not see in the mirror. How we sound to ourselves is also different to how we sound to others. We hear our voices through the bones of our faces, others hear us via voice transmission through the air.
I have watched people being videoed for the first time and then seen their reactions as the video of them is played back. Many of them say the same thing, "everybody else in the video looks and sounds normal but me, do I really look like that and do I really sound like that?". To others this, the image and sound in the video, is how you actually appear and it is significantly different from your own self perceptions.
. I recall you arguing in another thread that language was not what we thought in, rather what we communicate in, you appear to argue in #77 that those you have read believe language = thought, but I see you kind of abandon that at the end. What is it "I think therefore I am" or something springs to mind. Flowers do not think, how do they know when to grow?
"negotiating on how to act next with another creature requires you to know that that other creature is a thinking thing like yourself"
That makes me think about guide dogs for the blind, horse riders, Indian elephant handlers, hunting with dogs, hunting with birds of prey, snake charmers, lion tamers putting their heads into the lions mouth etc etc.
Your response re Meercats was that they may know they are the alpha meercat but not that they know that they know IIRC. But there is considerable human animal negotiated interaction in the examples I just listed yet according to your view they cannot human animal & animal animal be thinking like each other, perhaps you are right. Perhaps thinking like each other is not required for physical cooperation, affection or shared emotion even, but is perhaps not enough for the more abstract things which only human animals appear visibly to be interested in.
"the difference between minds which know, and minds which know that they know"
Donald Rumsfeld speaking about Iraq: "we know what we know we know, and we know what we know we don't know, we don't know what we don't know we don't know". That was about the most intelligent thing I think I heard an American politican say in ages.
To my mind human self-awareness comes with a level of maturity and perhaps life complexity. When we are born we emerge with some natural programming, to wail for food etc. Then comes a protracted period of us learning and being told who we are, what to do, how to behave, how to think, how to do maths, what gods to believe in, seeing where we come from, learning from those in our immediate vicinity etc. Both nature and nurture are valid.
To my mind a thinking adult is responsible for programming themselves, continuously examining beliefs, values and identity, and questioning their validity. Not all enjoy this. In my experience many find it unsettling to have their beliefs or values questioned, especially to question a core belief.
Traditional carrer orientated men often have mental breakdowns and die early on retirement because they cannot cope with the shift from identifying and having self worth as a career person / breadwinner, to identifying as a retired person which they find somehow lacking in self worth. Yet they are still the exact same male human the only change is to their mental sense of identity. Traditional stay home housewives never go through this and they live longer.
A minor identity crisis can occur if we challenge how we see and hear ourselves. We think we know what we look like as we see our faces in the mirror and hear ourselves when we speak. However, we see a mirror image of just our faces, and others see our complete body language which we do not see in the mirror. How we sound to ourselves is also different to how we sound to others. We hear our voices through the bones of our faces, others hear us via voice transmission through the air.
I have watched people being videoed for the first time and then seen their reactions as the video of them is played back. Many of them say the same thing, "everybody else in the video looks and sounds normal but me, do I really look like that and do I really sound like that?". To others this, the image and sound in the video, is how you actually appear and it is significantly different from your own self perceptions.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Lix Tetrax said:
I am afraid I just do not buy that.
I am an "animal", species "human". Humans are ingenious and are a user of tools. Humans currently seem to assume that they are the dominant species on earth.
Prove please that humans are dominant or superior? are humans superior to anything? even the smallest ant or the smallest grain of sand in the centre of the Gobi dessert.
Ants are organised, they have populated the earth, they fight wars with other ants or with termites, they build on their environment, if their environment becomes denuded in the resources they need they travel to find new resources, ants construct roads, if they find they have lived unsustainably on a local environment which cannot any more support them, they either die or they relocate the whole colony to a better location.
Rather similar to humans but with only very tiny brains.
Imagine you were an alien on another planet examining earth through the prism of a large telescope, how would you describe ant societies? how would you describe human societies?
Human cities resemble ant colonies, large areas denuded of natural life requiring resources to be brought in from other areas by workers. A societal structure in which each individual animal knows its place.
A guy called Maslow generated something he called a "hierarchy of needs" in that he suggested that the first and lowest need is food water and shelter. If food water and shelter are scarce then most of an animal's time is spent on acquiring them and they will never be able to rise up the hierarchy to higher level needs, which eventually include love affection and behaving morally and something called "self actualisation" which is something like feeling good about your sense of self identity.
Human animals by being ingenious have managed to ensure, in the west at least, that food water and shelter are plentiful and thus humans can rise up the hierarchy start pontificating about morality culture etc etc. But of course not all humans have achieved this, some human hunter gatherer type societies are still locked into working hard daily for food water and shelter.
Interestingly your argument about doers, monks that also do dishes, and that enlightenment is no more significant than doing the dishes is also what I believe.
A modern western human who has plentiful food water and shelter and is therefore moralising and working on self actualisation is no more superior to a native australian aboriginal than they are to a single ant.
imho
Lix Tetrax
A godsdamn gentleman
Broadly, yes I'd go with that.kyser_soze said:
Well, as explained, you're not removing the ego, because there isn't one. What we commonly take as a, somehow, permanent personality and sense of self-identity has changed throughout the course of your life. If it changes, it's not permanent. If your personality changes without you willing it and in undesirable ways, it is not a true, happy, independent Self.kyser_soze said:
All we do is meditate, so that we may one day see all things as they really are.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Ah, now that's interesting, cos I've never felt like there is an essential 'me-ness' that limits what I'll do - I think there are bits of my personality that have been with me since I was a kid and will be there when I'm about to die, but how those bits interact with the world and respond to things I've always felt not just can change, but MUST change so that you can deal with the world - for example, I've long had a negative tendency toward being selfish. That hasn't gone away as I've got older, but I've learned to recognise when I'm behaving in that way and adjusting to suit. A more positive one is that I'm still capable of approaching beauty with at least some of the wonder of a child but with an adult's sensibilty and appreciation - it's about being conscious of yourself (but not self-conscious IYSWIM). So I don't agree about there not being an ego - for me ego and the basic sense of 'I' are indivisible, but it's an ongoing work in progress.
I'm an atheist BTW, so for me this is an interesting subject to discuss cos I went through a very long period of loosing my faith (about 4-8 years) and it was at times quite traumatic, and through a combination of self and external analysis I've come to know me quite well and am generally quite happy with
Indeed, to précis myself; the self exists, but it's only by resisting change to it that you cause yourself pain.
a zen koan
Everything Is Best
When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer.
"Give me the best piece of meat you have," said the customer.
"Everything in my shop is the best," replied the butcher. "You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best."
At these words Banzan became enlightened.
weltweit said:
Everything Is Best
When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer.
"Give me the best piece of meat you have," said the customer.
"Everything in my shop is the best," replied the butcher. "You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best."
At these words Banzan became enlightened.
rhys gethin
New Member
Well, zen works for some people. I think Lix has explained the general position beautifully though, and distrust what sound like short cuts.
Kyser, do you meditate?
Kyser, do you meditate?
fudgefactorfive said:
Are there? If you have a jug, and it falls on the floor and breaks, but you are able to successfully repair it what do you have? A jug, no?
As long as you see pieces, you cannot see the finished jigsaw.
This is a matter of your perception!
fudgefactorfive
New Member
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I once had a minor epiphany about identity when sitting on the top of a large hill in Yorkshire.
I looked down at a busy town and a couple of trunk roads. It occurred to me that from such an elevated distance I could see patterns in the behaviour of the humans which I had not recognised when I was down there amongst them.
On the trunk roads were lots of traffic, but all the junior sales people drove the same sorts of cars and wore the same sorts of clothes. Senior sales people and managers could be seen in slightly more superior clothes and smarter cars, very occasionally there was a Mercedes S classe or a Rolls Royce driven by an owner or a proper capitalist, then there were HGV and van drivers who again could be grouped as they seemed to be wearing the same clothes and driving vehicles of the same type. People on holiday towing children and caravans or boats etc etc ..
Everybody stayed on the roads, on the path, no one ventured off the beaten track, everybody knew their place, their role, their identity.
As I eventually walked down the hill I realised that I was about to re occupy my group which at that time was "student" and that I had compatible clothes, transport and other habits to suit that, my then role and my then identity.
I knew my place
I looked down at a busy town and a couple of trunk roads. It occurred to me that from such an elevated distance I could see patterns in the behaviour of the humans which I had not recognised when I was down there amongst them.
On the trunk roads were lots of traffic, but all the junior sales people drove the same sorts of cars and wore the same sorts of clothes. Senior sales people and managers could be seen in slightly more superior clothes and smarter cars, very occasionally there was a Mercedes S classe or a Rolls Royce driven by an owner or a proper capitalist, then there were HGV and van drivers who again could be grouped as they seemed to be wearing the same clothes and driving vehicles of the same type. People on holiday towing children and caravans or boats etc etc ..
Everybody stayed on the roads, on the path, no one ventured off the beaten track, everybody knew their place, their role, their identity.
As I eventually walked down the hill I realised that I was about to re occupy my group which at that time was "student" and that I had compatible clothes, transport and other habits to suit that, my then role and my then identity.
I knew my place
fudgefactorfive
New Member
Lix Tetrax said:By all means, feel free to pick at this post, call me an idiot, or ask more questions.
I can't, really, it's a good summary. But it still doesn't hold water for me because it is built entirely on the non-existence of ego, which makes no sense.
Here's a probably final stab at rephrasing my argument:
Ego, self, whatever, does exist, and in its fundamental nature it is entirely undifferentiated from the nature of nirvana, living in the now. The processes - which Buddhism doesn't seem to recognise as "existent", because they are not literally physical structures but the processes of change those structures work themselves through - which support self-awareness are of exactly the same character as those which support the "flow state" of being in the now. The single difference is in the nature of the structural coupling which gives rise to the processes - in a self-aware mind, some of the structural coupling is directed inward; in the latter, it is not, and only structurally couples with external things.
If the former process does not exist, then the latter doesn't either, and nothing can think at all, with Buddha-nature or without. Since all living things arguably think, even down to bacteria, the hypothesis must be flawed.
I have a mind. It runs on a physical bedrock. It has a certain form which gives rise to a certain process. That process contains internal approximations of itself just as it contains approximations of "external" things such as cabbages and kings. Those ideas of cabbages exist as process, in exactly the same way that my idea of myself exists as process. Just because something is impermanent and in fact its very existence is built on change, IS change, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Whirlwinds exist. Catalytic cycles exist. Egos exist, or there would be no need for this thread.
The unanswered questions on this thread are:
- does self-awareness HAVE to happen in a human mind, or it just POSSIBLE;
- if the former, why;
- if the latter, what triggers it, and can it be UNDONE;
- if it can be undone, is it any use to politics, to mass movements that desire external change in society, or does it actually collapse it utterly.
The self exists but it's not the concrete entity we take it to be. It's a constant state of becoming rather than a static being. As I've always understood it, the significance of the idea of anatta is not some weird counter-intuitive claim that “you don’t exist” (to which the inevitable reply is “of course I do! you just said ‘you’ don’t exist!”) but rather that our sense of concrete self is a pathological delusion. In each moment of reflexivity, each moment we reflect and make there be more than simply action and lived experience, we cling onto the sense of possession we feel to that action and experience, reifying it into a ‘I’ that persists beyond that ephemeral moment of transitory awareness.
This is what I take to be the convergence between Eastern and Western (continental) philosophy. Everything arises in dependence upon conditions ergo nothing has a self-sustaining permanence. Language, as well the intellectualised thinking it exists in a mutually developing and reinforcing relationship with, functions so as to take a snap-shot of that dynamic reality. The conditioned origins of seemingly concrete existents become obscured by the fact that we can only hold a certain number of things in mind in a certain way: there’s a tendency basic to our intellectual & conceptual thought to simplify, decontextualise and abstract from the unending complexity and interdependence of reality. Thus we come, to use Paul Feyerabend’s snippy phrase, to conquer abundance. In reality, everything is mutually co-constituting but we can’t think this through without reducing it to abstractions.
When the capacity exists to feel a certain way as a result of an experience (no matter how simple that feeling may be) then it's only a matter of time before that capacity spirals downwards (?) into the sort of fully fledged reflexivity that has people sitting round wondering "do I have to be aware of myself?". Every ossification of our lived experienced reinforces our sense of the boundaries of the field within which that experience happens: every time we experience our experience as somehow feeling like it is ‘our’ experience, the sense of it being ‘our’ experience (in contradistinction to ‘their’ experience) solidifies in a feedback loop(ish) manner.fudgefactorfive said:
It stands in opposition to any politics that rests on self-assertion. It certainly collapses the liberal subject: the pre-social autonomous rational chooser of ends who interacts in a mutually disinterested way with other such subjects as they all seek to further their own ends. The liberal subject is a dick though so I doubt anyone will miss him.fudgefactorfive said:
fudgefactorfive
New Member
So if self-awareness is inevitable (for a human in a society of other humans), what is the point in struggling against it?
ego is not self: that is the illusion.
eckhart tolle in his book 'the power of now' has a nice anecdote. He was having a really tough time and found himself saying 'I can't live with myself'. Then he realised that meant there were two hims! And one of them couldn't be who he thought he was.
eckhart tolle in his book 'the power of now' has a nice anecdote. He was having a really tough time and found himself saying 'I can't live with myself'. Then he realised that meant there were two hims! And one of them couldn't be who he thought he was.
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