Monday, March 13, 2006
who indeed
Can I blame you for disappointing me? You failed to meet my standard, perhaps the fault is in my standard. Perhaps I should not project my desires onto you and then sulk when you fail to fulfill. I often wonder if I can even know you. I know you are here in the world, but you are to me not what you are to yourself, you are my perception, my interpretation. I objectify you, classify you, I ascribe traits and tendencies, aversions and affinities, so many concepts to define you. But are you more than my categories, can you transcend my adjectives? If you can, then how might you describe yourself? What are you that I cannot reduce to a concept or tendency? Some days I am afraid you might not be anything more than the sum of your actions and proclivities, perhaps nothing more than a collection of memories. I like to think thatÂ’s not true. But all you can ever be is a memory to me; you are never present without me projecting memories mixed with expectations onto you. I am going to pretend there is an essential you and an essential me, but who are we essentially? Can you have a personality without me? Are you only nice because I am mean and only funny because I laugh, only artistic because I am not? Maybe our only relation is relativity. Arbitrary? Sartre and Heidegger have ruined me. I will pretend anyway, because I like you, or the you you are to me. This is only foolishness anyway because what happens when one considers such ideas? If I subtract your humor from you, are you still you? what if I take away yourintelligencee? or your happy disposition? Are you still you? Where do we end and our unessential qualities begin? Tell me you are an individual and I will tell you 'so what'. You are only an individual because you are somehow different from everybody else, your individuality is dependent on everyone else, it's only relative. What is worse than not knowing who you are? Not knowing if you are.
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8 comments:
you dont think everyone puts on a mask at one point or another and caters to what people want to hear? I find it very ironic for someone who doesnt voice their emotions to write about someone masking themselves... and wasn't it you that said sunday night... "I pretend." ... whatif we took all the sarcasm away from you? what would we be left with?... my mind wonders
This has nothing to do with masks or any specific person, the more fundamental question I am asking is whether anyone has any real identity beyond others' conceptions and descriptions of them. To say we wear masks assumes there is a real 'you' to be covered. Is anybody anything more than the relative words we use to describe them and the sum of their memories? As soon as you try to describe your real self you objectify and classify yourself, any appeal to trancending those catagories cannot be expressed or even known, and that which cannot be percieved or understood is the same thing as not existing at all.
I think that God sees us, and it is the fact that He fully knows us - that he holds a perfect picture of who we are in his head - that gives us an identity.
I agree with you Jesse.
We seldom see ourselves the way God sees us.
If I lived in total seclusion, never meeting another human, how would I view myself? How could I view myself? I could not say I was funny, because there would be no standard for funny. I could not say I am intellegent because there is not standard for that either.
And if our identities are what people want them to be what would it matter if we wore a mask or not? If my boss pretended to act nice, would I see her as nice or would I follow the opinion that she is mean? If I want to believe someone is smart are they smart?
I thought of the 'God' answer too but it still doesn’t answer any of my questions. Even if your identity exists in the mind of God, that doesn't mean your identity has any essential or necessary qualities; you might still only be a product of your historical-geographical-cultural position in this world. That doesn’t answer the question of if I can know you, if there is a you and I to be known, if everything we are is contingent upon time, place and personal history. Does he know your character qualities are essential to you, or only products of accidental influences, accidental in that they were not necessary. Even if he does know everything that describes you, that doesn’t necessitate that what he knows about you is essential, it is still descriptive not prescriptive.
If we took all the character traits of Bill and stripped them away, what would be left? If we replaced those traits with new and different traits who would we see? He would not be the Bill we all know, he would not fit the character we project onto him, but he is still Bill. So what is the essence of Bill, what is his Billness? Perhaps personal identity is only a fluid construct created to describe individuals tendencies and to distinguishing people. Historically some people found their identity in a group or family and never really developed any sense of personal identity, so whose to say there even is such a thing? I am not entirely certain that I am conveying my idea adequately, but this has nothing to do with people acting differently around others or 'wearing masks,' nothing to do with me having a false conception of who you are, it's about having a false conception about whether anybody really is anything.
I get what you are saying... i think it's our framing....it all has to do with how we were raised and what we believe in...what we find humorous.... why we believe in the things we do, why we like the things we do, why find certain things funny i think all has to do with faith, intelect, our parents, our friends, what things were installed within our minds early on... like i can tell probably the reason you are so sarcastic is because your mother is... I am passive because that's how my dad was with me. you can't really take away personally traits...thats a what if that can't really be done. But for arguements sake if it were to be done...we would be left with people who are all the same... which ((the God thing again)) God did not intend to happen. That's it that's all I got.
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