Zero identity

[fudgefactorfive]

ego is not self: that is the illusion.

i still think i get that though, and recognise it

the self is me, literally, ie. my body and all the squidgy bits in it. it's a process. it's a little whirlwind of matter - if you could see yourself throughout all 4D spacetime at once, you'd have a 4D blob that pinches off from its two parent blobs (turkey basters notwithstanding), grows and whirls and eddies and gyres around for threescore years and ten, incorporating and shedding particles like curving rays through 4D space, and then one day it all spectacularly goes fizzzz! and releases everything outwards, all the rays becoming entangled with parts of everything else, other kinds of little helix-whirlwinds in the greater whirlwind of universal unconsciousness.

ego is what the self creates when it tries to have cognition about itself. it's also a process - a more local one, that only has indirect (second hand?) structural coupling with the outside world. it's part of a wider process. but so is everything else that isn't absolutely everything.

but, these "two" things have the same nature. it's just a frame of reference thing, a locality thing.

what I'm looking for is the argument missing from the end of the Santiago Theory - the bit that actually proves (or at least provides a sound case for) ego leads automatically to suffering. and i'm convinced that this argument that language and internal processes of mind are interdependent is at the heart of it. but where is the link? where is the proof that language = culture = inevitable development of ego that must be guarded against by mindfulness? it's just been stated, not actually described.

and even if true, is abandoning suffering actually worth it. I thought it was generally agreed that we need lows for highs to mean anything. not wanting to get all Mother Theresa on anyone's arse, though.

simultaneously believing two contradictory things is a pain. i still get that "walking over a grave" feeling when I try and sort it out. i thought i believed that the best identity is no identity. but when it comes down to it, I just can't imagine it. I don't want to let go.

do Buddhists "identify" as Buddhist, with Buddha?

did Tarzan have an ego?

i think this is why we idolise heroes who have lives of pure action.

 

[nosos]

Have you read about the Buddhist notion of the 12 step chain of condition co-dependence? I'm way too hungover to relate it (or even be sure I've got the name right) but it's probably what you're looking for: the account (in 12 steps!) of how very basic conscious reaction to phenomena is self-sustaining and binds us into the cycle of rebirth.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

pratitya-samutpada?

uhhh i'm also incredibly hungover and somewhat tetchy

each of the following apparently gives rise to the next to form 12 "links" that result in suffering:

Former Life

* ignorance
* activities which produce karma

Current Life

* consciousness
* name and form (personality or identity)
* the twelve domains (5 physical senses + the mind + forms, sounds, ..., thoughts)
* contact (between objects and the senses)
* sensation (registering the contact)
* desire (for continued contact)
* attachment

Future Life

* becoming (conception of a new life)
* birth
* old age and death.

i have numerous problems with this - briefly, i don't believe in karma; even if I did, I don't see how karma-producing activities give rise to consciousness (ie. that "link" is completely obscure); nor do I see how the senses are dependent on names, you don't even need to be conscious to have senses.

what is interesting though is that in this system, it is arguing that consciousness gives rise to language ("name and form"), not the other way round, in stark contradiction to Capra's summary of the alleged agreement between the Santiago Theory and Buddhist thought.

 

[gorski]

yes, I know I bang on about this. not interested? tough.

given that we agree on what identity is and where it came from, is it

a) possible
b) desirable

to have no identity at all?

i favour the idea on a political level. but practically, the closest thing I can imagine it being like is what my partner describes to me when he talks about "Buddhist" meditation, being totally in the moment, total erasure of self etc. To be honest I always totally recoil in horror from the idea. It's like walking over a grave, or teetering on the edge of an abyss.

people often say stuff like "we will always needs labels/categories", "it's HUMAN NATURE to categorise" etc. i say, bollocks is it. it doesn't arise from language - humans have got nothing to do with it. chimps, dogs and fish know their place. it is about power, and pain, and starvation, and co-operation. a society totally at equilibrium with itself and its environment - one that doesn't depend on massive power imbalances to keep most people happy most of the time - wouldn't have an identity. identity issues do not arise in equitable situations, whether that's an entire planet or down the pub with mates.

so why is the idea also so scary?

is someone with no identity a psychopath - a walking undead - or a really happy person?

Not possible, not desirable, unless we're talking from a Big Business and Gov perspective, who would, no doubt, be very happy te entertain the idea...

And that, indeed, is scary: that sociopaths running big businesses are in need of "completely maleable personalities" to "happily work with one another" the way they imagined it and not being challenged in any way...

Why? Because those without an identity or working towards ridding themselves of "Self" by definition would keep their mouths shut.

Really a "happy person" and a "happy option"... for an arch-conformist!!!

Fromm analysed those options, too [amongst other stuff of importance]... I suggest a good read might turn you off the idea of giving up on the world...

Such "Eastern" ideas are also a product of their time and place, not just the "Western" ones... But at such a moment we are doing the "Western" type of analysis in order to make all analysis unneccessary... Ahem...