Where is the balance of things? How do we equilibriate between a projection and transference of ourselves into and onto the world--in an attempt to shape the ever-dynamic world to reflect the one that wrought us, in order to be consonant with who we are as people--and a genuine absorption of experience that is freedom from this projective pollution?
Is this untainted primary "sensory" experience of life not precisely what is required for change? For maturation? Insofar as we rationalize and confabulate to confirm our biases and reaffirm who we are, is biased experience not simply an effort to distance us from this process of development as beings, and by extension an effort to distance ourselves from ourselves? This seems evinced in how we frame descriptions of who we are and what we are going through, as a society. "It's just a phase." "He's just a free spirit. "She's just witty and charismatic, the life of the party; everybody loves her!"
In reality, if we were willing to embrace the reality of who we are as human beings, we'd tell the truth. "I am concerned it's gone beyond phasic, and represents an ingrained feature of who you are." "He's a thrill-seeking drug addict with little to no risk aversion." "She has identity disturbances--able to be chameoleonic because she has no consistent sense of self; she is a narcissist, who ironically and sadly does not love herself enough to have a strong self image, to be comfortable with who she is and who others are."
When we unwittingly promulgate this process of obscuring & muddying reality with biases in order to feel comfortable in our own skin, in order to keep ourselves from changing, is it not a tainted assessment to think this is a volitional matter of free will, of "choice", instead being a natural consequence of neuropsychological malnourishment? A malnourishment that results in mitigating access to who we are, to our own emotional inner workings that drive us to act in particular, predisposed ways that we, as primates, actually have little volitional control over? We reify so much of nature (and if it's unclear, I will add that by reify I mean we anthropomorphize and oversimplify things into the idea of being 'intended', 'chosen', and/or a matter of cognitive will) that the idea of humans reifying the biological reality of our epigenesis--how we relate to and integrate the environment we experience--seems irrefutable at this point.
In life, there are no answers; at least not simple, 'ultimate' answers. Just realities.
The reality that, try as we might, we cannot hide from ourselves, nor hide ourselves from others. We betray who we are in how we carry ourselves, how we are conditioned by our experiences to reflect said experiences. It is evident in our rate of speech, our tone, our prosody. It is evident in what we produce, beit pain or compassion in others. The strange corollary to this reality is that we cannot force the world to be a glorified image of what we desire it to be, given that we, ourselves, cannot be the glorified self-concept we've put forth.
Conscious of the fact that we are not who we think we are, nor is the world exactly as we experience it--an understanding of these basic, fundamental inner fallibities restores balance when we accept it. If we accept it.
We are naked. Best to be comfortable in our own skin.
I am not who I think I am.
Your turn.
Monday, July 21, 2008
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