Today Jared and I were speaking, briefly, about the idea of "Self." We said everything that you can say about it, I think. You can't really ever know yourself. But the only thing you ever know is yourself. You have a self that you are aware of, but everyone else is aware of you in a different way, which is both entirely separate from you but also contributing to the self that you create. ET CETERA.
I made a comment about how maybe my favorite thing is the idea that I am aware of my Self to whatever extent I am aware of it, and that's my business. But people think about me in ways that I will never understand without being myself, and that's none of my business. People own parts of me that I don't even know about. That is my favorite thing.
So.
Then I found myself wandering around the internet for the first time in days. I have been pretty bored with it lately, but one thing (or, two things, I guess) I will never get bored of are FOUND Magazine and PostSecret. Lisa had something on her blog from Post Secret a few days ago and it's been in the back of my mind since then.
Jared and I were also talking about people owning photographs of you that you have never seen. I personally own thousands of photographs from middle school up to the present and they are filled with people that I don't speak to anymore, or have never spoken to in my life... Strangers wind up in the background of your photos all the time. I am in the background of people's vacation slides. So are you.
These things exist.
As a side note, the image that I uploaded from FOUND is something that was found in Philly. That's why I chose it. I am not (aware if I am) infertile. But I am (so far) under 24. And, oh yeah, I'm (not) married.
1 comment:
I have some of the Found magazines (and book) at my place. They, and postSecret, are great.
The latest thing I was thinking about Self was the fallacy of the cohesive mind. We tend to view and treat each other as single-minded agents. But, really, our minds are physical systems, and so we have a lot of processes going in parallel. These processes do not fully communicate with one another and as a result you may do or think things without being fully aware-- or at least not aware of what you're true intentions are. But your mind glosses over a lot of this (similar to how extraneous details are filtered from sensory input) to maintain a consistent picture of yourself for you. I think this phenomonon contributes a lot to how other people's perceptions of you differ from how you perceive yourself (as you said).
Just thought I would throw some more stuff onto your Self discussion.
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