We don't need a room. We have the References header:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html >8^D
Well, it was more a tongue-in-cheek reference to "you two are having too
much fun!" than "you need some privacy for this".
I wonder if it's coherent to ask this question? As we've seen in "the arc" thread, the
boundaries of "I" are not very crisp.
I do think the lack of crisp boundaries on "self" is a key point and in
fact, maybe the one I'm trying to make. While my ego responds
positively to Marcus' answer to "who are we becoming" as "whoever the
hell we want", it begs a few questions, maybe most acutely the one you
bring up. What means "we" or "I" in fact?
I recently tried (and failed) to digest the argument made here:
Wiener and Luhmann on feedback: from complexity to sustainability
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/K-11-2016-0317
at a journal club meeting. The essence of the article is, I think, the
distinction between two types of feedback: that which preserves order locally
vs. that which helps organize the local order in response to the environment.
In either case, our identity is coupled to the environment (more for some than
others, perhaps). And to strive for an ideal decoupling sounds like suicide --
killing one's self.
I do agree that "no man is an Island" though I do tend to prefer to
think of myself as more of an "Archipelago". We are co-evolved with
our landscape and to the extent that we (radically) modify our
landscape, it is not that simple. Marcus' "we become whoever the hell
we want" gets modified (in my mind) to "we become whoever the hell we
do, based on the niches in the landscape we generate by *trying* to be
whoever the hell we think we want to be".
In the example at hand of the Sugar Tax, we have already become
unhealthy, obese (well some of us) refined-sugar addicts partly because
our genome evolved to be greedy for rich sources of energy and partly
because we evolved a consumerist economy which seeks to exploit any and
every significant "weakness" such as this. We have also become
knee-jerk voters who hear a thin but opaque "good idea" and vote for
(Sugar is evil, it is the next Tobacco!) or against ("the legislation is
poorly written/formed/executed" or "I don't want to live in a nanny
state" or ...)
I suppose what saves the monk/hermit from the accusation of suicide is the concept of "being present", in the
news a lot lately with Pirsig's death. The monk chooses one environment and the "networking entrepreneurial
catalyst" chooses another. In this sense, it's less about "who will I become" and more about "what
environment defines me".
And as (poorly?) illustrated above: "what environment do we choose?"
and/or "how do we modify our environment?"
- Steve
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