Vulnerability and Nietzsche

Essentially, the recognition of one’s own vulnerability in the face of a hostile, natural world allows the individual to access themselves deeply and internally where the expression of power is an act which allows the individual to valuate themselves with the external result. Even though Nietzsche claims that the autonomous, aristocratic and supremely powerful individual values themselves in relation to nothing outside their own action, it is necessary that they are still looking only into the external world to see the result of their action for their appraisal of value in themselves. There is an inward, vulnerable nature of the human which loving only the external products of physical action grossly and dangerously ignores. The path to understanding one’s own inward vulnerabilities, and the value of this knowledge, precipitates into a community of individuals who know what is best for each other because they deeply and personally know each other and themselves. Typically, we see our own manifestations of strength played out in our own lives and communities where the human being has the choice to take on, or not, the education of being informed by the objects of their own external valuation which can lead into an awareness of the value of another’s, and their own, vulnerability.

In primitive mental youth, we love the physical as its own end and chase it with all the strength we have. There is much joy and happiness in this the success of this, as Nietzsche indicates, but once you have loved enough physical things for their physical ends, the saturation of physical love begins to feel mundane. This mundane feeling does not satisfy our perennial longing to love and so we are shaken free, by lack of satisfaction in the diminishing marginal utility of entertainment with manifestations of the physical. Our longing causes us to search within the numerous objects of our physical love to discover what it is that we are still missing. We still long because it is in our internal nature that we feel our vulnerability crying out to reach that of another’s. We discover that all the varieties of objects and bodies and the strength we exerted to obtain them had the ability to be accessed and loved simply because they possessed a common vulnerability; All things can be understood and accessed by the natural condition of their existence with a vulnerable nature. The revelation of this fundamental commonality gives birth to a desire to see all things with existence reach their maximized expression of existence. At this point our intellect seeks to believe in, and experiment with, ideas that we think will better all things that exist. To bringing these thoughts in meaningful contact with things that exist necessarily requires a preoccupation with the function of corresponding action and “ought” claims, or laws. A preoccupation with the proper role of action and law to better all things in existence eventually makes the individual want to allow for themselves an education with an unlimited scope. Different approaches and styles and values concerning knowledge and human understanding are explored, desired and loved. A society where only force is respected because of its external results cannot sustain a society at all because it only incorporates half of human nature. The potential society of individuals, which go through the process I describe above, is not characterized by an individual’s selfish state of bliss for the satisfaction of themselves. It is the experiential truth that somehow the individual’s personal, selfish interest is transformed—and forever marked—by being encompassing of the whole of existence for the sake of a better, specific and more transparent experience with the individual. This is the process that cannot help but to emerge to shape our society once Nietzsche’s credible critique of modern morality is blended with the proper and more full understanding of our nature as also containing vulnerability.

General Reflections on Emotional Responses to Idea Exchange (II)

As I am trying to dedicate the appropriate time to compose an exhaustive entry concerning fear, vulnerability and other emotional responses to being within the threshold of transparent idea-exchange, I thought I would edit and post this stream-of-consciousness diary entry of mine from when I was struggling within myself . . . with certain things. Sorry to be vague, but given this and the other diary entries I have posted-- I want them to paint an impression and stand for themselves while also giving context to the discussion of what really is present in the phenomena of Emotional Reactions to Conversation. These diaries might be unorthodox to some, but I invite all impressions and feedback even if it is not strictly philosophical (point-for-point argument, etc). I have risked a bit of my personal self in sharing these, and hope that you will want to do the same.

18 October, 2007 8:57p

Think of your closest friend....Have you ever intensified your trained gaze into their stare and not asked, but earned their

trust with only your eyes-- an ethereal pact forged in the electrical storm of two minds?

A silent, trusted bond. And some say that you cannot

see into the soul of a man using his eyes as windows. No? Shut the fuck up, wait out the grins and chuckles and awkward postures, auditory starts and involuntary gestures. Tell me this doesn’t exhibit all the signs of a security system breaking down. Dare to look deeper and longer and tell me that once both

have overcome the fear of being seen, that the mood does gravitate into an intensity, a gravity right beyond the awkward, just past the tickle of fear. The first time, the raw experience is driven on by emotion; revisit the experience and there is time to reflect, investigate and dwell on the nature—that origin—of the fear, or whatever emotion seems most compelling to dissect as you notice its rise within yourself. :::EXPAND::::::

We build minds on top of minds. As I sit here I think through everything I have made myself to know in order to draw

credible suppositions, stories, fictions and facts-- and I realize that my knowledge is only and can only be that

of the planks (I will choose here to stop this route characterization of how intl. works in place of my own imagery.

this may seem excessive to some- and a concept all together foreign to others)--- the sum absorptions of the words of others....

whether oral, written, performed.....not until we have performed the macerations for ourselves can we begin to complete

the symbiot. And so we build our minds on top of the phrases and comments and impressions of those iconic or familial or

academic. Of this component- and as it concerns the infancy of beliefs- there exists no human control. For this to stand

though it must prove true that the process by which one absorbs, consumes, retains, then fuses with information (the process

that changes our relationship to the world and ourselves, quite literally) requires that we are receiving more than just

biographical, statistical blah blah. We retain (maybe for a large amount- subconsciously) other people's markers: inflected

meanings, a tendency to break eye contact; can we not always be holding the gaze of another’s….what is this?? infinity? A piece of it?? Sometimes yes to both and more, I suppose…

:::EXPAND::::::

my point is: Create. you cannot know who you really are until you have feasted on life with the ferocity it takes to become

gorged with experiences; there is no gene scripting our decisions. There are things which must be explored beyond their

easy snag of fear. What about pushing ourselves to extremes?? Aren’t we incomplete still if we don’t travel to these places? Aren’t I talking about the mental extremes in thought experiment? Afraid we won’t find our way back? There is our fear again, present at the very decision of a journey, born as the twin of Human Aspiration.

12:12am Ed. 20 April 12, 2010

Abbreviated Response to Britt

Britt....

Because I think it is just as valuable to have the access to trace the origins and associations of the thoughts that produce an individual's certain conclusions, I guess I do tend to have an unfinished style with "multiple intersections of ideas." My education is "incomplete," concerning this topic especially-- As education, in general, is not a goal to be reached but a constant journey. So yes, thanks for the feedback there.

. . . Some commonality with Kant . . . oh my . . .

In the sense where I conceive of the individual's selfish interest becoming synonymous with that of the whole, yes I see that there are some Kantian parallels. Though I don't see him holding any value of a precondition of vulnerability (for accessing the self and others) for establishing his moral society. Kant will say that "we are ends in ourselves" when he declares us as having free wills (sovereign autonomy) to be lawgivers. Kant, it seems, only wants to call us "ends unto ourselves"-- and to appear to treat others as such-- to satisfy his underlying assumption that we need, and should want, a law that we could simultaneously want for ourselves and for others. Kant assumes that lawmaking/morality-making is our nature, and to this end we should be treated as we can extrapolate our own will into a conception of what would be good for everyone.

I assume nothing of this nature of the human being-- I do not claim to know this much about our nature-- except to say that when we access each other completely, personally and transparently, whatever community precipitates from this experience will reflect the healthiest relationship of individuals I can imagine. I see treating another as an end unto themselves as only being achieved by accessing them personally, vulnerably and transparently, and not by making maxims for them as an abstraction of this access/knowledge of them.

I am responding without exhausting all the arguments I feel compel this social arrangement, but briefly onto vulnerability in truth-seeking as it relates to “media de-sensitivity, homelessness, poverty, social stratification, and all those problems that also make me uncomfortable in my own skin.”

Uncomfortable why? Because there is some sort of an emotional barrier present to prohibit access to these individuals and phenomena?

I see media sensitivity and de-sensitivity as just the pulse of a particular culture. What scares you in movies, what is funny, what pictures cause within you an emotional response to cringe or to be repulsed . . . what can be emotionally represented, or counter-designed, in the news/media to evoke emotion, a numb response or a rational attachment . . . the sum of all these things should not be measured in comparison to some fabricated moral sentiment, but should be seen as they are. On the micro level, an individual’s emotional responses are just warnings from their internal psychology that they are entering into territory for which they have limited resources—or none at all-- to reason out. In the case where the emotions are dead, maybe it is because the surrogate of copied images (supplied by the culture) has given the individual cause to attach Reason to the phenomenon. Though Reason can be attached through surrogate (shadows on the walls of caves), it is only through vulnerability that I claim that reason can be suspended so that it can be made to experientially inform itself. The sum of a culture's emotional response to particular ideas (Ideas which I will use here to loosely refer to all the information, images, arguments, etc produced within a society) only serve to tell us something of the temperament and strength of that society (relative to its own purpose for existing, not to be compared with whatever extant sentiment of morality it also possesses).

If the best definition of the emotion fear is that it is always in response to some manifestation, or embodiment, of “the unknown,” then emotional responses to these social conditions only tell us where we have yet to let our vulnerability lead us in order to bridge into an experiential, authentic and transparent relationship with the truth of the phenomenon or a particular person. A relationship with truth does not equate to having truth, but it may be the best we can do in certain situations.

General Reflections on Emotional Responses to Idea Exchange (I)

A general reflection on emotional responses to conversation, or on a class of conversations which I refer to as genuine opportunities for “idea exchange” . . .

I was caused to reflect on my latent conception of this phenomenon when Dr. Marina Berzins McCoy came to campus and presented her notion of Vulnerability both in the context of her philosophy of community/society and as she interprets the function of vulnerability in two specific works by Sophocles. Though I plan to directly respond to both her in-class and out-of-class lectures in a later blog (objecting specifically to her polis-centric valuation of catharsis and vulnerability), here I will post some entries from my diary from when I first started grappling at this idea of vulnerability. Also, traveling with Plato through his delineated “love assent” in Symposium, immediately made my latent experiences resonate at the frequency of pure truth-- as best as I can recognize it in a feeling. In my diary, I like to let my mind flow with minimal restrictions, so following I will try to update these entries with a more structured commentary. ***It is not necessary to read the diary entries to join what I am getting at . . . this posting is long enough without them, so feel free to skip if you find yourself in a rush . . . though a life that is always rushing tends to be incapable of absorbing the finer disposition of vulnerability . . .

25 Dec, 2007 7:54am

genuine expression creates a vulnerable moment between author and reader. the will to dawn another's vulnerability and to share that with them can only happen in a person who has first had some sort of a model for self-honesty. The result being that the seekers and practitioners of honest accounts find themselves oneday magically in the business of inspiring others. still others become convinced that happiness will come once they are living squarely, and untouchably, within the stackings of their own inhibitions to risk knowing themselves, much less another. This is only an honest way to sustain a taste for dishonesty. There can be no other human endeavor that produces such a knowledgeable symbiot than two hearts made vulnerable by a receptiveness to truth . . . try it. And actually, I know of no other profession that even makes sense being that- from scientist to poet- our best conclusions in, of, and about life will always hinge where understandings between hearts and minds are made. 7:59am

5 July, 2008 11:04pm

Someone has stopped living when they are at a stand-still with how to express the resonant truth of their own story— has stopped telling their story as a truth— has represented themselves to others as copies of a copy. These types live in and for results. Abstractions have no value to these, and they can only value you for your tangible products. These value themselves as a copy with identities composed only by relationships with the apparent status of other lives, value of another's store, other's words. A person who knows that they only demonstrate what they are unaware of by speaking a truth they have lived-- and has the courage to speak anyway-- this is a person who is at peace with the questions that are still open in their heart. These living persons love the value of abstractions and will hold you open and suspended with them always because of this. You may go on to learn something more from this person, but these things you may know of them for certain: they realize that the answer is having a question, that there is no fear worth certainty and that certainty itself is an illusion which worships ignorance. Someone has truly stopped living when they f e e l to have more answers than they can s e e questions. Here there is seen a real difference between the identity built around a need for answers and those who have found an indefatigable delight in the daily surprise of assailing questions leading to a journey. And here some want to assume a destination, or the expectation of a discovery, and they ask the question: To discover "what?" The need of a known destination before movement can be authorized is for those who suffer journeys. Absorbing the journey imparts a crucial, emotional, vulnerable relationship with a destination/stopping-point; A fixed cognitive eye wanders nowhere, rushes past surprise, undervalues the great education to be discovered behind simplicity, learns very little that is new, chases after and practices only the most extant variety of inheritance, migrates from one indoctrination to the next. We are interested in the earnest journey-woman who is lost and can never arrive whose movements take her up and around and through all of the entrenched identities of the stale and dead; we want her ability to sustain life, how she came to choose this existence, why?, and how such a life can succeed in making the best of all possible contributions to this world.

It is true that the most genuine, and paradoxically complex, of ways that a person can offer themselves to you is by beginning with questions which hold only the promise of an uncommon transparency. Such an uncommon transparency, to this day, remains so uncommon in any host or potential counterpart due to the fact that a low natured identity is so commonly preferred, imparted, inherited and practiced. Our tiny details, given time, become strange again-- an education we lose, or synonymously, habitually revisit-- delivering us to mimicries of strength. They must be mimicries, for those distasteful of abstractions and lovers of destinations can only tell you where they are and not how or why they got there. The journey is erased in the mind’s relevance, and so integral pieces of the destination are removed. The destination/truth/etc. becomes warped this way. So, it is BOTH conversationalists who must be able to recognize/want/exhibit the signs of self-ease/transparency/maneuvered vulnerability to share their respective journeys, to whatever degree their respective educations allow, in order to plunge through this rare window of unabashed wisdom-exchange when it has the opportunity to exist. 12:12am

12 August, 2008 7:37pm

. . . We throw out nothing. We keep everything. We trade in acts; that is all. We re-familiarize and switch our practices when we are seeking comfort. Lies or truths, either could be our composition now. This is how the truth of our multiple faces is revealed to be so funny and so horrible and so strange and so familiar. This is how an act, when practiced enough, becomes a life and a life an act. Dear Truth! Let me be alone with you to act and to live; to scream when struggling with discovery and not with familiarities. I am becoming too full wishing I were somewhere I could be emptier.

7:43pm

Sept 9 2008 8:08pm

I am going to bed tonight dulled. Unsettled, unfulfilled and without perspective. And my comfort is unquestionable. There is no dis-ease in my life. There may be a disease setting though. I didn’t even want to write this, but here I am, and now I am off. I do not wrestle with abstracts or their implications, validities, plausible truths or tangential destinations/syntheses. I am comfortable. Just like those who surround me and those I work with and work for and be-friend and talk to and hike with and—But then there are those IIII engage to know. Those who want to be known, and in the grocery store for seven minutes and fifty-seconds while she scans my groceries I get to reach deep and mean something I say. Unleash me in the other chamber, hoping it hasn’t been too long since and that the compression, in relation to this other societal me that I practice most, hasn’t done a swell damage or loss to those vulnerabilities and logics and abstractions and unquenchable questions to be shown a ever-evolving synthesis in the constructs of my perspective and my heart. And I see there is no fear of this. I know the road—have traveled it to slavery and numb repetition before—for 6 years or more—and found my way here. Should I need more time in the box and more writing like this to spring me from it, I know I will succeed. Maybe I have waxed and rubbed on just enough tonight to make shine some of that inward-facing, perennially-dreaming skin. Press on. Write on. It all turns to what you practice of it. Unfortunately, for tonight, my practice is over and I must go to bed. And this will have to be enough. It is terrible, as well, that I have so much energy and just a waning perspective and the majority mood of a slave’s acquiescence to life and whatever comfort-scraps are thrown my way. Tonight, the one putting us to bed barely hears or feels the one who is sad. And this will have to be enough for now; I have never tired of dreams or dreaming. But I will only grow more uncomfortable being this comfortable, this dulled, this uninspired, this unremarkably justified and Good. Or the alarms, such as the one which put me to this, will soften, and I will have to find it all over again. And what I will have left at that point will have to be enough. Love. I love too many things to forget that Love knows how to show me the way. I will strip myself to nothing but Love if those things I practice now are all I can see when I wake from this night and all nights like this.. Then I will have my vulnerability back, my sight, and my next step will be a real unknown again, a real education.

8:31pm

With this sort of vague and prosy framework, I would like hone in on what I see vulnerability doing in an individual and between two individuals. If the entries above hold any value to you, hopefully they allow access to my style of thought, or at least convey a mood conducive for the philosophical discussion of vulnerability’s role in the exchange of ideas.

Essentially, vulnerability positions the individual to commune with truth. To relate Plato, when we reflect on the journey which delivered us to the euphoric state where we were completely dissolved in truth, we do typically see this pattern:

We love the physical as its own end; Love enough physical things for their physical ends and the saturation of physical love begins to feel mundane; This mundane feeling does not satisfy our perennial longing to love and so we are shaken free, by lack of satisfaction/entertainment/fulfillment, of the physical; Our longing causes us to search within the numerous objects of our physical love; We discover that all the varieties of objects/bodies to which we attached the fixation of our love had the ability to be loved simply because they possessed the common nature of existing; All things can be loved by the nature of existence (Plato will say b/c of the discovery of their soul); The revelation of this fundamental commonality gives birth to a desire to see all things with existence reach their maximized expression of existence; (Plato says we now become concerned with the development of the young, but his scope is limited/biased) We begin to believe in, and experiment with, ideas that we think will better all things that exist; Bringing these thoughts in meaningful contact with things that exist necessarily requires a preoccupation with the function of corresponding action and “ought” claims (laws for Plato); A preoccupation with the proper role of action and law to better all things in existence eventually makes the individual want to allow for themselves an education with an unlimited scope; Different approaches and styles and values concerning knowledge and human understanding are explored, desired, loved; The Philosopher King is born; We are dissolved within the fullness of beauty which informs all existence. This is not a selfish state of bliss for the satisfaction of the individual . . . somehow the individual’s personal, selfish interest is transformed—and forever marked—by being encompassing of the whole of existence (and I do mean existence in the sense and implications of empirical existentialism).

There is a personal story I would like to share about how this process and idea exploded with meaning into my life, and the discussion can also go further when the specific precondition of vulnerability is analyzed in this context. Ill stop for now and invite everyone's comments . . .

Response to Doug: Society, Morality and the Military

Doug/Sir . . . first of all, I want you to know that you are missed in class. Your perspective was always so thoughtfully rendered from your experiences and was refreshing and genuine. You always made me think. I hope all is well.

Now, as one military vet to another (if a Marine can grant such to a fly-boy), I question that the homosexual prohibition within our ranks has its most effective argument on the grounds of morality. I stress that this argument has no effect WITHIN the ranks. I will agree that the issue has moral relevance on the civilian side. I do not object just for what could be seen as the fun of drawing up a hair-splitting argument. I think this distinction is very important and it consequentially strikes at the notion you present that our military "should be a reflection of society, not a reflection of itself."

I feel the need to address the latter idea of what the military reflects, or "should reflect," in order to clear up our main issue of homosexuality. To begin, the UCMJ (Universal Code of Military Justice) does not follow, and in fact directly contradicts, the Constitution of our United States where it extends deeply into regulating human behavior and infringes upon those enumerated "certain unalienable rights" of its military members. The UCMJ regulates, well basically everything possible in human conduct, as you know: Article 125 prohibits the act of sodomy, even with a consensual spouse; Article 101 prohibits the "improper use of countersign" (a password used in the relief of sentries/guards on post); Article 134 is the famous "General Article," or the "catch all" article, which is phrased intentionally vague so as to afford superior ranks, and military prosecutors, an almost infinite, though discretionary, power to punitively enforce the "good order and discipline [of] the armed forces, [and] all conduct of a nature [that could] bring discredit upon the armed forces."

THE UCMJ IN ITS ENTIRETY:

http://www.constitution.org/mil/ucmj19970615.htm

Stringent? Yes. Necessary? There is no other way to conduct the serious task of disciplining and training a force, to the unimaginable degree that is necessary, in order to protect the citizens of our modern nation. The protectors of such a nation must be held accountable to an absolute and swift power, and a law, that reflects the nature of the war they must always anticipate. Military members necessarily stand outside the jewel of society that they protect; They are not civilians, and their ranks should not, as they necessarily do not, reflect the society of civilians that they protect.

Now for a fellow Marine, the scenario to follow would evoke an easy and immediate response-- I would think that someone who has never served would also easily be able to see the result of the following hypothetical(s). But, just to make sure I wasn't engaging in Jar-Headish thinking, I just got off the phone with my brother (who is a Captain in the Airforce) and he raised every objection I had to this idea of the military before I even got to raise them to him myself.

Imagine first: that "our military" were an actual "reflection of its society" where, it were composed of some approximation (to be fair) of an accurate socio-economic cross-section of its peoples. Would we force, or just permit, certain people unable to accomplish Marine training, etc., through the process just to have an accurate representation of the populace? Say, more reasonably, that the military were an accurate reflection of our society where its members could engage their superiors with rational free speech. What would happen to the "instant willingness for obedience to orders?" The necessary, instant, unquestioning obedience to orders? Ok, to be fair and charitable, what if all that was meant is that our military should reflect our society in that our society should have input on the values upheld within our military? Or maybe that our military should honorably reflect the moral justification for its existence and that of the nation it represents. To both of the last suggestions, in this context, I say: "Why ‘should’ one be made to reflect the other?" The polis, even if it found itself sufficiently equipped and educated to usefully inform its military, ought not ever even flirt with the idea that the practice of its own moral sentiment and liberty should find a like use when applied to understand the operations of the military or when installed into the actual operations of the military.

The moral liberties exercised within society, especially those of moral opining, do not make sense when applied to describe the nature of the military and would only serve to bog the efficient function of a properly constructed military. A moral code lacks empirical specificity. The definite (very Kantian) structure of an ethical demand points to a simple and singular source for its authority: the law/orders are to be immediately executed without interpretation or variation. All deviations have exact, known, and usually extreme consequences as a deterrent. A moral cannot perform the same function. A moral, at some point—and definitely at the point where the pressure to act or not has peaked, begs the question: “From where does this moral imperative gain its authority over me and my action?” An ethic points only to its authority in the law and ends consideration where punishment is sufficient. That a military “ought to” reflect anything outside the consideration of what composition is most necessary for it to serve in the defense of its nation, is an extraneous, irrelevant and dangerous moral add-on to a military system that would fail if its operations were made to have something to do with the vacillations inherent in moral interpretation.

Even though the values of a society may, indeed, end up being reflected in its military, this is the sum result of the values expressed of its military members in the performance of their black and white adherence to military duty. There is no moral component to consider. The Roman armies who openly celebrated the practice of homosexuality in their ranks, and who enjoyed successes on the battlefield, can be seen as successfully constructed militaries composed of a majority who valued “man-man” love. And though it may not be a pure comparison of armies and cultures, it is clear that no metaphysical moral proclamation is needed from any society so that it may impose its own reflection for some supposed betterment of its armed force. The question: Should homosexuals be allowed in the modern American military? Is answered in the playing out of the following, morally neutral, questions: Will the American military community be able accommodate open homosexuality into the necessity of its purpose? and Will the open admission of homosexuals into the American military add to or detract from its overall efficiency of purpose? Neither civilian society, nor any imposition of its morality will be able to answer these questions.

To everyone in our class: Comments/counter-arguements/points of clarification/general thoughts? Though I do argue this separation, I am a civilian now and do not wish to appear as saying that I only invite, or see as relevant, comments and ideas from those who have served, etc. I am interested, as I pull heavy from my experiences in the Marine Corps, to have input from those with different (hopefully very different) experiences and perspectives. Thanks.

Definition and Empirical Emphasis

Lets begin by better defining “perimeter.” Necessarily, the perimeter of an identity (paradigm/Psub1) is the demarcation line of what the brain can comprehend primarily by the use of language; Where, everything inside the perimeter, the brain can at least associate (rightly or wrongly, as the “true/” actual empirical world is concerned) with a known construct. Here, allow construct to mean everything from the most quantum unit to the entire lattice of quantum units hierarchically combined and associated within the mind. However this lattice is composed, whether in a well organized or in an extremely gapped arrangement, it’s most minute quantum constituent is allowed to remain/become a constituent due to its intelligibility. Our most primary mode of making our experiences (new and old) intelligible is association with foundational and inherited bundles of constituents (ex: we inherit language and it’s connotations and tones, which underlie a subconscious impartation to the brain . . . and other passively imparted quantum units exist as well). So, whatever can be (even passively/subconsciously) allowed to stick to the lattice of the mind, can only be allowed to do so through its intelligibility, whether it be by mode of language-inheritance or by some other more scientifically precise understanding of the brain’s operations. The perimeter defines the frontier of this intelligibility, per identity, so that the open ends of complex concepts, or quantum units, at the tips and tops and brand-new bases of the lattice begin to bleed off and fade into the unintelligible. This bleeding-off, or fading, is the foggy corners of certain thoughts which send us wanting for new information to round-out a theory, thought, etc or have us desperately craving for an association with already extant constructs. Anything conceived to have the possibility of being actualized (as an action, I assume you mean) within this perimeter is necessarily intelligible, and therefore it resides within the perimeter.

Outside the perimeter are those things at which our “open-ends” are pointing. Gaining new constructs augments, and or warps, the lattice (paradigm) as it as assimilates these new constructs and rearranges existing quantum units to other locations, redefines them in light of the new constructs, or counts them as redundant in light of the new, etc. Therefore, there is a distinction to be made between the processes of associating and rearranging constructs already intelligible (re-associating/organizing the mind) and that of incorporating something which was never intelligible before (migration).

An argument, you ask? We have evidence of our own migrations. We have carried these with us all our lives in memories of our differently composed identities, or phases of a person, we remember ourselves being (as in childhood) in the actions we performed on the convictions we had due to the perimeter of our identities relative to a period of time and to the size and shape of our paradigm at that particular moment. (I use 'phase' for the first time here as a more popular and palatable term for how a modern person might understand themselves as being composed of different identities throughout their life. The term palatability I use to mean exactly that . . . What tastes good to the individual . . . What is easy and agreeable to a particular macro-paradigm . . . What are each most likely to ingest when the requirement to think is diminished or removed?

It is not that there are false identities in the sense that, due to the constant motion of our mind’s migration, we must be static to have authentic identity. Quite to the contrary, an awareness of this migration may just allow an identity to become a more active participant within their own ongoing change (whether for the better or personal/communal harm it is very difficult to anticipate with limited, finite minds). The term “suspicion,” I will suppose was introduced in response to a reflection that certain processes composing who you are may be going on outside of your own awareness. This is an unnecessary and unhelpful term if it contains the element of fear which will permit the identity to accept paralysis or retreat from exploring itself. This analysis will not kill you; it will only tend to challenge the ordered, safe and comfortable perimeter of your paradigm which your self-preservation may interpret to be as threatening as death. If it is meant by “suspicion” that we must be rigorous in our standards as we take active control in guiding our paradigms, then, yes this is a complimentary reaction to such a philosophy.

As for what is meant in light of all this, as being better defined by what we are not, in relationship to what we think we are . . .

We must now know that we fundamentally do not have fixed identities. Why would our identities constantly migrate if we already possessed the power of everything there is to know—if were just the case that all that were needed is to properly arrange/order everything within the present paradigm? Obviously, as Peter Kingsley’s words seem to compliment, there is a longing taking place here. I do not find this some metaphysical longing of a soul . . . the notion of a soul is nothing but a complex of a particular identity’s association of inherited constructs to deal with its own unavoidable dynamic migration. We long because we are incomplete. We are incomplete because our understanding of ourselves in this universe is incomplete. Simply, we long and migrate because there is still room in which to move. We are better defined by what we are not, in view of what the cosmos still promises to tell us, because what we are is still out there. And so it is the shear size that I assume of the “unknown” beyond the perimeter of our most augmented macro-paradigm that necessarily defines us in relation to it.

What is to be said about a “metaphysical holding” as a subject of our predicated properties by substance dualists for grappling at the need for some continuity of identity? My current paradigm has no use for such a concept as the particular functions of such a metaphysical essence, should it exist, are completely unintelligible to me. When I/We are able to empirically approach these supposed operations with border-constructs (“open-ends”) founded on intermediate augmentations or great tangential leaps beyond the extant macro-paradigm, then such a concept may prove to be a beneficial pursuit in understanding who we are and why. From this current vantage though, I cannot make intelligible sense of how that would be useful, even if it is our reality within this universe. I acknowledge my perimeter while looking for ways to augment it empirically.

The only way I see there being a “problem” for a notion of self-consciousness being linked to personal identity is if identity is equated with existence. What I think I am, memories/knowledge erased or scrambled, etc . . . does not have bearing on what I am and have always been but do not currently perceive or have never perceived.

A brief hedge: I have just recently been approached about all sorts of Continental readings I am excited to engage. I started about these convictions primarily due to my reflections about myself (before even reading the term “phenomenology”) while attempting to transition from the Marine Corps back into civilian life and an academic environment. I wish for the time/job to research and write and develop these ideas in the best scientific theory and most powerful thinkers on the subject. I think we can make real progress in the pursuit of these truths about ourselves.

Response to Nathan; Particular Abstractions

I agree, Nathan. So let me clarify and expand . . .

Self knowledge is an inextricable precondition for ordering ourselves. And though the dynamics change slightly from the micro(individual paradigm), to the macro(extant cultural/existential)paradigm . . . the fundamentals, we can say are the same . . . .

The individual experiences "micro-paradigmatic migration" and, as an aggregate of micro-paradigms can be said to reflect the sum of all that is comprehensible for that particular group (ex: all of humanity) we have a theory behind the formation and change (the mechanics) of macro-paradigms:

All individual action is informed by the theory structure relative to each brain. The theory structure, or that which we can allow as “paradigm”, contains all sorts of assumptions, subconscious (passive) associations, complex idea stacking (active-hierarchical construction), and processes about which we have no idea and are beyond our ability to quantify or qualify. However, what does make for useful analysis-- even in the want for an empirical knowledge of the brain's operations-- is that the sum of these processes somehow yields to the individual an identity. Identities, however seemingly self-assured, static or concrete are linked, as functions, to the operating dynamic theories. That is, where we think we come from imparts to us the foundational notion of who we think we are. Who we think we are, at a given paradigmatic moment, outlines the likely actions of the individual. It may be said differently: Should the exact parameters of a particular human identity, in one static moment, be mapped down to every operating theory (exhausting each theory's most fundamental constituents for a more interesting analysis), we would know who and what this individual thinks they are, and we would also know the entire breadth of potential actions for this person given an infinity of situations—this is possible in one momentary snapshot. But actions are always just likely and are not absolutely determined due to their relationship with dynamic Identity. Identity is in constant migration due to the perpetual effects of passive and active processes affecting the mind.

Accepting even the potentiality of micro-paradigmatic migration leads to its macro extrapolation. It follows necessarily that as micro-identities migrate and become socialized by the same/similar idea sets, producing similar theoretical constructs in the hierarchical brain, that some semblance of a group identity gets formed. This can be represented with simple venn diagrams, postulating an infinite arrangement of overlapping/concentrated and mutually exclusive/diffuse idea sets. But even with an infinite combination of the totality of human ideas, our contingent Identity(-ies) shrink in scale with the cosmos. In scale with the cosmos, we are more appropriately defined by what we are not-- than what we think we are.

The perimeter of any given identity, as demonstrated by venn diagram, demonstrates how our finite identities are always defined in relation to their alternatives: If a given finite identity can be represented by a circle, then we can visualize the perimeter of the implications of all of our ideas. We cannot see past the perimeter. What we don't know, or what is not contained within our perimeter (the breadth of all we are able to comprehend) is necessarily incomprehensible to us in such a paradigmatic state. We do not even have the language to describe things completely outside of our reality, our identity. In this sense, passive (or even ineffectual-active) migrations of all sorts occur, and are the common practice of life, until a dangerous risk is taken to penetrate the unknown.

Fear guards the gates leading to revolutionary paradigmatic change. This is a truism that every Identity can demonstrate within themselves by performing their own thought experiment, should this statement find contention. (The human brain still contains the evolutionary mechanism- Fear- for its self-preservation.) Nature, herself, is the most constant and insurmountable threat to the instinct to live. Confrontations with any of the unknowns in nature suggest caution to the self-preserving individual through the emotion Fear. Fear guards the perimeter of Identity and has the effect to turn back/paralyze efforts to shatter and expand the extant paradigm.

A dangerous risk must be made in order to expand-- a leap into something completely unknown. A tangent must be shot from a highly accurate synthesis of ideas at the fringes of paradigm. If it hits its mark, it offers those receptive within the relevant/overlapping paradigm the opportunity to assimilate new truths and to expand their cognition in proportion to the depth of penetration made into the dark.

All this is to participate in the business of finding truth. All this just to have the hope of making a meaningful contribution to the question: what does it mean to be human? I persist: If we do not know what we are as a fixed concept, then it makes no sense to make absolute normative claims about our action(s).

So . . . how is your head ordered? With what ideas do you associate and where are they taking you? Where did you get them? Have you ever really critically explored the borders of your own Identity, that of your larger localities, your World? Has fear ever turned you away and left you paralyzed in place wanting to cling to the same limited ideas? Are you ok with what this says about who and what you are not, but thought that you were? Can you return to the perimeter and make confrontations with Fear your life's work? What does this say about your contribution to the human project?

As a species, we will either see ourselves in scale with the cosmos and invite that as our new religion, or we will go on imbued with cravings for safety and comfort-- synonymous with a subjugation to Fear-- staying swathed in illusions as children while thinking of ourselves as having already broken into a great status.