Temporary Me

From a post around the concept of the self as more of a process than a concrete thing:

It would be absurd of me to deny that there is continuity of self throughout my life. And I see no adverse impacts on health stemming from that realization. It is only when I try to imagine an unchanging core or to freeze a representative moment of time and label it Me that I begin to have issues. Reality continues to change, but my imaginary snapshot doesn't. It would seem sensible to alter the model when this becomes noticeable, but, pathologically, it seems we often try to ignore or explain away the changes instead.

I have traits I can trace back to childhood in addition to things that arose only recently. My arachnophobia history, for instance, includes incidents at an early childhood home as well as more recent conditioning reinforcement aimed at change. So, I could blithely say that it is an unchanging part of me that was added early in life. Yet the quality of the condition has passed through many phases, the reinforcement has been increased or decreased according to my developing knowledge of psychology, the effect have varied according to situation, the social implications have changed as my own social development has evolved. So, what appears on the surface to be a constant becomes with closer inspection more of an ongoing story.

I remember reading a short interview of myself in a small local paper. It was done while I was on leave after completing boot camp, I believe. I was described as intense, poised in my seat for action - something like that. Yet I would have characterized myself as completely relaxed at that time. Nowadays, in similar situations, I have been described as calm. My self-view throughout was of calmness, but apparently my presentation has changed. Certainly my inner peace has grown - I no longer am subjected to dysregulated anger at intervals or to intense social anxiety. In a process lasting a lifetime, I have adapted, changed and evolved.

I may have mentioned before a kind of childhood epiphany I once had. Frequent drive-ins movies had enamored me of Hollywood cowboys. In play with my sisters, I remember a sense of frustration or longing around the fact that I could only play at cowboy, not jump on a real horse and ride away. Then I had this flash of insight: who says I am not a cowboy? Maybe I don't have a horse yet, but if I am really a cowboy, I will have one someday! In this memory, I see the early stirrings of the realization that my self-view was the biggest limiting factor in my reality model and goal-setting. Too bad I lost that temporarily during my early adult years!

Jump to high school and a student teacher is talking with me briefly during a class break. She mentions that her current hobby is (paraphrased) looking into the concept that happiness is a choice of state of mind rather than being controlled by external factors. Again, a small thing, but one I remember when so much else is lost - it made am impression on me and likely contributed to my ongoing development.

Both these events seem to indicate an internal focus or awareness that allowed me to see my mind as malleable and important. This fundamental perspective is an important factor in the epiphany that led me away from my street life twenty years ago. Yet I see it not as a static and concrete personality trait that saved me all by itself, but rather as a potential for a tendency, perhaps genetic or an random configuration of biology, that was nurtured by other factors such as the moments described above. Things came together just so that they fell within the range of effect necessary for the potential.

So there is the long version: a continuity exists. It could have developed along many paths - it did develop along the one that led me to this post. The combined effects of potential and choice and circumstance. All that is existent today resulted from the accumulated effects of its causes, including you and I. We label and catalog and conceptualize so the rational mind can work with things, but then we forget that all that conceptual work was applied by us to a reality which isn't dependent upon our model for its actions.

Remembering this - realizing this - can be a Big Deal for someone who has labeled a set of effects as distressing. Perhaps the situation has activated nocireceptors or removed something I have mentally identified as "mine" and thus caused me pain. This happens. I should be careful how I frame it, though, because it has no objective requirement that I turn it into torment. The direction my shifting, malleable self flows in next is up to me.

D

An interesting and well-worn question around the implications of moral action. From a discussion list post...

C, I agree with the principle of honesty in reflecting a person's action as I see them. I tend to keep in mind that evil is a subjective label, though, and so I will not mindlessly frame, say, a person from another culture with my own values. I think it is somewhere in this are that we are a bit at odds as I simply can not see my own morals as absolute and applying to all.

In truth, though, I will intervene when I see harm coming down the pipes and I will attempt to show someone the nature of my concern. If the situation is predatory, then I may help the victim by directly removing him from harm or by blocking or diverting the harm. I think we are alike on this point.

Yet I realize I may be interfering with the shark's dinner or otherwise forcing my own perspective onto the situation. In saving a child from a sexual predator, I am making a decision that the predator will suffer while the child will be protected. Many would say this is justified and obviously I would as well since I did it, but I also must carry the responsibility for my actions. Is the molester a low-IQ victim of his own history of abuse? Could I have removed the present victim in such a way as to have pointed the molester at a healthier lifestyle? Did I really handle the situation as skillfully as possible? Did I really apply compassion to all concerned? If I beat him and loudly and piously berate him, am I serving the victim or Good or my own ego? What would Jesus do?

Endless questions. Yet, as you, C, and others have intimated, at times action is indicated and not all the answers may be available. At least one value of discussions like this is that we might be better equipped to make more skillful decisions because of what we learn here!

Perhaps life was easier when I could subscribe to the delusion of absolute good and evil. But, I guess 'easy' isn't the point of life...:).

D