At 05:49 PM 9/11/2008, you wrote:
[Joe]
There are three posts I have recently read that confuse me. One by
Ron composed of just symbols. A lot by Arlo: "No more and no less a
role that any of the multiplicity"..
[Arlo]
This slipped past me, Joe, until Bo's post where he (go figure)
paints someone who disagrees with him as "feeble". I'll try to
explain more clearly what I mean.
I start with the idea of what a "self" is with Pirsig in LILA. Two
quotes begin this.
"This Cartesian "Me" is a software reality, not a hardware reality.
This body on the left and this body on the right are running
variations of the same program, the same "Me," which doesn't belong
to either of them. The "Me's" are simply a program format." (LILA)
"This fictitious "man" has many synonyms: "mankind," "people," "the
public," and even such pronouns as "I," "he," and "they." Our
language is so organized around them and they are so convenient to
use it is impossible to get rid of them. There is really no need to.
Like "substance" they can be used as long as it is remembered that
they're terms for collections of patterns and not some independent
primary reality of their own." (LILA)
Arlo,
The operative word is 'fictitious'.
Marsha
The idea of a "self" is a focal marker, a way of organizing
organically bound biological experience as it is assimilated via the
contexts of culture. There is no "body reality" to the self, the
human brain in which it appears to reside is, as Pirsig says,
confusing the hardware with a software program. *Arlo* is no more
his corporeal body than Microsoft Word is my computer. To date, the
idea of the self has served social ends very well. It allows all
sorts of activity that would otherwise be impossible.
But along the way two socially-valued (and socially-enforced)
aspects of the self became confused with an inherent nature of what
the "self is". These are continuity over time and continuity over
contexts. To this end social practices encourage the adoption of
"names" we carry with us over time, so that there is an "Arlo"
tomorrow as there is an "Arlo" right here right now. We also value
what Marsha and Ian point to as "consistency" (I prefer continuity)
across contexts, so that that "Arlo" you meet here is seen as
"more-or-less" the same "Arlo" known by others in any context.
My point is that these two things are social values we conform to
(willingly, and sometimes with some pushing, which I will get to
with ZMM) and not inherent "realities" of the "self". Indeed, my
conjecture is that once we push these illusions aside, we can see
clearly that "we" are in fact a multiplicity of "selves" rather than
a singular "self". Sherry Turkle poses the question we should be
asking about ourselves as "Who am we?" rather than "Who am I?"
In ZMM, Pirsig confronts head on the notion of a singular identity
tied to a physiological form. After his electro-shock, he describes
the view of the emerging self that has no memory of the former
"Bob". And this quote marks a critical point (for me) in thinking
about "the self".
"It was explained to me finally that "You have a new personality
now." But this statement was no explanation at all. It puzzled me
more than ever since I had no awareness at all of any "old"
personality. If they had said, "You are a new personality," it would
have been much clearer. That would have fitted. They had made the
mistake of thinking of a personality as some sort of possession,
like a suit of clothes, which a person wears. But apart from a
personality what is there? Some bones and flesh. A collection of
legal statistics, perhaps, but surely no person. The bones and flesh
and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not
the other way around. ... But who was the old personality whom they
had known and presumed I was a continuation of?" (ZMM)
For everyone else around him, there was some adherence to the notion
of continuity based on the physiological form. Even though his
memories were all "replaced", he had no awareness of "who he was
before", there was a tacit assumption around that this person was
still "the same Bob" in many ways. My question is "in what ways"?
These two identities, who used the same name and shared the same
brain, were about as different and unrelated as "Arlo" and "Joe", weren't they?
Pirsig describes this further. "These EYES! That is the terror of
it. These gloved hands I now look at, steering the motorcycle down
the road, were once his! And if you can understand the feeling that
comes from that, then you can understand real fear...the fear that
comes from knowing there is nowhere you can possibly run." (ZMM)
This eloquently demonstrates the disconnectedness between the
physical form and the "idea of self". I brought up the case of a
young "boy" named "Mark" who believed with all his heart and mind he
was a female trapped inside a male body. His "identity" was "Julia",
and the disconnect he felt looking down at his body must've been the
same disconnect the "new Bob" felt when seeing "old Bob's" hands on
the grips. Conventionally, we'd argue that the "real person" here is
the boy named Mark, and that "Julia" is a pretend identity. I ask
"why?" And, how would our answer to that question change if
"Mark"underwent gender-transformative surgery? Would "Julia"
suddenly become "real"?
These are examples of the problem of tying "identity" to the
physical form. We "are" who we believe ourselves to be. And we take
that "face" or "mask" or "role" into our social engagements and work
to develop a continuity to the identity we value.
Apart from the disconnect issue, however, is also the one of
multiplicity. Pirsig's identities were temporally segmented so that
one followed the other. My contention is that in addition to the
disconnect between body and "self", it has become clear that each of
us actually have many selves that appear in very particular
contexts. The fact that these often carry the same name (contextual
continuity) is a social convention, but not an absolute reality. The
first book I had read that touched on this theme was James Carse's
"Finite and Infinite Games", a wonderful and short book I'd highly recommend.
Into this the online world, and its use of "avatars", has made
transparent the fact that we are always in an "avatar" of some sort.
Some with greater degrees of discontinuity, others very alike, but
all tailored and negotiated as part of contextual and immediately
valuable social worlds. The "Arlo" you know here is an avatar, but
its important to see that there is no "real Arlo" that sits behind
this mask. There are only a plurality of avatars, who's connection
to a bodily form seem to unite them into an amorphous whole, but
this is merely an illusion. For example, the only "Joe" I know is
the Joe-I-know-here, and that online presentation of self has value
and realness for me independent of whatever "other Joe" exists out
there in other contexts, and also independent of the physical body
"Joe" inhabits.
When we think of "SA", we can see more avatarness upfront (our
illusions don't over right away) because this "name" is one crafted
expressly for this context. SA has resisted, mostly, pointing to
bodily realities about his corporeal form, and has resisted attempts
to pin "him/her" to a "real name". Whatever illusions you have about
SA become self-evidently illusions we can see. Some will tell you
that there is a "real person out there somewhere pretending to be
SA". I ask, why is SA not real? What are the characteristics of this
"more real person" who is pretending to be SA? If you think about
this, you'll see yourself coming back to physiological associations
and the need we have for continuity, and not anything about "SA" her/himself.
And that's really the ground from which I am coming from on this
issue. Hope that makes what I say a little clearer.
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Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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