haven't read Weber but I learned a little about Calvinism in history. One aspect which I do think comes into play is the context of values related to the basic economic structure of social life. — Jack Cummins

As you mention social life, there is also the whole competing sociological traditions of Rousseau and Hobbes to consider in this context. Society as separating man from his fundamental goodness versus society as the source of order, controlling man's destructive and selfish urges.

it has to be informed by overall goals_ those of becoming free from dependence and achieving fulfilment'. — Jack Cummins

(quoting Giddens)

Hey Jack, those are terrible goals to set, and impossible to achieve. "If you wish to be independent, first create your own universe." - (or was is if you wish to be an apple pie?) I suggest you should turn right around and set your goals in the opposite direction. Maximise your dependencies and aim for void-emptiness instead of fulfilment. A rock is pretty independent and fulfilled, but a human should be vulnerable and sensitive, responsive to every nuance, social and environmental. Relationships are dependencies - of exploitation and/or care. The more one is engaged with the world and others, and the less one is concerned with oneself, the happier and the sadder one will be, and that sensitivity is what it is to be in touch with one's feelings.

What Does it Mean to Find One's 'True' Self?

It means one has lost it.

One loses it early; total dependency is the first relationship, and to the extent that that relationship is insecure, one is forced into the division of not being oneself.

Don't cry. Be good for Mummy. Go to sleep. Eat up. Go to the toilet. Work hard. Do as I say.

Deny your body and your impulses, not because you wish to control them, but because your life depends on meeting your carer's wishes.

What on Earth would you do if you were not doing what you have been told all your life? Who would you be if you were not being good for Mummy? Some outrageous monster, no doubt.

To find one's true self is to confront that monster, and set it free from the prison of the unconscious. It is to face the fear and shame of oneself.

Relationships are dependencies - of exploitation and/or care. The more one is engaged with the world and others, and the less one is concerned [obsessed] with oneself ... — unenlightened

:fire:

Dependency or independence is a conflict. As a teenager I used to be extremely close to my parents and trying to please them. I was an only child and my parents had me when they were almost 40. I left home to study when I was 19 and I think that my parents expected that I would return home after studying and they were rather disappointed that I wished to stay in London. One aspect which I chose not to have shared with my parents was my questioning of religion and Catholism. I have been unsure whether this is cowardice on my part or protecting them. However, it has always felt the best way on an intuitive level.

Dependency and co-dependency in relationships and friendships can be problematic for most people. It can be that or a less social life which can go as far as isolation. It is hard to get the right balance. I haven't had many long term relationships but have found that it can be difficult if a partner is jealous about all other social interactions. I do have friends who have fairly serious mental health problems and phone me late at night often. It can be difficult to negotiate boundaries in friendships, and it can also be hard to find the right places to even find friends, and knowing who to trust, as one of the aspects of finding an authentic place in an upside down world.

There is the issue of egoism versus altruism and how this relates to human nature. Getting the balance between one's own needs and other beings, moving towards the larger spheres of humanity can be an ongoing conflict. The basic needs can be difficult to meet at times and knowing how much to give and take is difficult and determining one's own genuine needs. It is hard not to swing to extremes and the Buddhist idea of the middle way can be useful but it has to be negotiated in all the lopsided aspects of living as a member within various overlapping subgroups of other people.

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Bottom line, when we get all of our ducks in row, at least temporarily, there can be a “feeling” of being ‘without any kind of internal or external deception or equivocation’. That is a very powerful incentive not to delve further and most people do not. — ArielAssante

So our ducks can never really be in a row?

It is a good question whether it is one's lesser self or not which is seeking ways of coping. It make involve reasoning but also deeper, less conscious aspects of motivation. This is where the issue of will and the unconscious come in. I sometimes find that I get illnesses, like infections and viruses when I am stressed and it is like my deeper sense of self is trying to slow me down and allow rest. Even accidents can be seen in that way but, of course, it is all about interpretations of experience. It is almost like the unhelpful defense mechanisms have a place, or the aspects of false self are an important opposition in the ongoing journey of becoming, especially as mistakes can be important lessons in life.

Perhaps, the notions of God and the devil serve as guiding ideas about the heights and the depths of the possibilities for becoming, and individuation is about weaving through these extremes. Some may gravitate more towards the devil figure and some more to God, even without necessarily believing in these literally as metaphysical beings. It may be that the human quest is mythical and life experiences are narrative stories in the creation of narrative identity subjectively.

Well yeah, any human can with the greatest ease out-Devil the Devil; as for being better than God, dream on!

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I think mindfulness is the optimum state of mind.

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mindfulness is the optimum state of mind. — ArielAssante

I must beg to differ unless someone's managed to find a solution for the amount of stress involved in being mindful 24×7.

Trust the gods of evolution (Charles Darwin & Alfred Russell Wallace) - if our natural state is to be not mindful then there's a very good reason why. Don't want my brain to explode.

Yeah, but "optimum" for what?

Living mindfully. :rofl:

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It was attributed to me by Pantagruel. — ArielAssante

It was never attributed to you, it was made by me, Agent Smith misread the post, which was clear enough.

And, FYI, mindfulness is not a new idea but is, in fact, one of the core principles and techniques of Buddhism.

Accuracy is so important, isn't it? In fact....mindfulness. Wow.

I think mindfulness is the optimum state of mind.

Agreed. Mindfulness is the source of peace that so many struggle to find otherwise.

:up:

This is an area which I have been thinking about, especially in relation to modernity and postmodernism, and reading, 'Modernity and Self-Identity in the Late Modern Age', by Anthony Giddens. He argues that this involves self-knowledge and that,
'To be true to oneself means finding oneself, but since as an active process of self-constuction it has to be informed by overall goals_ those of becoming free from dependence and achieving fulfilment'. He points to the rites of passage in social life and the sense of meaning, including honesty and integrity. He looks at the way in which identity became mobilised through modernity and how bodily appearance became more significant, including lifestyle regimes. — Jack Cummins

I didn't expect to come across a post riffing off Giddens. For context: I have a degree in sociology, but I haven't been keeping up with the subject matte, and it's been about 20 years since I last read sociology. I did a little linguistics on the side, and did keep up with that a little better over the years, so as a result I'm more confident with my linguistic knowledge now than I am with my sociologogical knowledge. However, I do remember Anthony Giddens fairly well. I've found him fascinating; among system theories and hermeneutic theories he stood out by proposing a theory based on an ongoing process of structuration, and his methodology involves (among other things) a focus on time and space, something that was rarely as central to sociology at the time as it was to his approach.

I haven't read Modernity and Self-Identity, but I do own his Constitution of Society. A short summery of his theory of structuration might read like this (if my memory serves well): Knowledgable agents skillfully reproduce social structures through their daily activity, but due to unacknowledged conditions of action and unintended consequences of action, there's no guarantee that you end up reproducing structures perfectly, and thus every instance of reproduction of any social structure comes with the potential for change. In effect, that means that any social structure is best viewed as an ongoing process of structuration. Things like self-identy are (at least partly?) social structures, so it makes perfect sense to me that he'd say that to be true to oneself/find oneself is an active process of self-construction. I doubt Giddens would see the "true self" as something there, something to be discovered. You have a person who moves through time-space, interacts with others, and uses the concept of self in the process, and as a by-product reproduces self. I sort of think of the true self (as seen through a Giddens-lense) as the carrot dangling from the stick that keeps the donkey going. (The donkey might eat the carrot at the end of the day, but it turns to shit, and there's a new one the next day... maybe I'm taking my metaphors too far?)

I haven't read the text in question, but I'd guess that for the question of the "true self" to arise you'd need a life-style that... fragments your social contacts? I mean, before the industrial revolution you often lived where you worked. You were part of the village you lived in. You were the village blacksmith, or the milkmaid on Mr. Brown's farm. There's a typical (but not universal) time-space unity here. You move through your biography fairly linearly. With the industrial revolution, you start to get things like opening and closing times of fabrics, a typical (but not universal) distinction between where you live and where you work, and as time goes on, there'd also be the places where you spend your spare time. There will be transitional spaces (roads in your own car; mass transport...). And you behave differently everywhere, you meet different people everywhere... etc. So you're this social vortex who accumulates different practises, but you're also the only you to move through your biography; so there's now an increased need to integrate disparate skill sets into one personal package. What is it that ties all those disparate patterns together? Who are you? Basically, the more fragmented your social space becomes, the more important such questions tend to become.

I'm not sure that's what Giddens says here; I might have gotten it totally wrong. But I'd imagine it'd have been something like that. This post was mostly just an excersise for myself, and I hope there's something interesting in it. I'll probably look up the text some time in the future.

This is not my quote, Agent Smith:

'mindfulness is the optimum state of mind'

It was attributed to me by Pantagruel.

Mindfulness is a new age idea grasped by sheep and apparently embraced by Pantagruel. — ArielAssante

Oh!

A thousand apologies. — Ranjeet

I simply relate this to Jungian Individuation.

This is (very bascially) broken down into four stages where the outward social projection is pretty much nullified - Persona - followed by exploring and accepting your inner ‘dark side’ - incorporating your Shadow - then coming to terms with the feminine/masculine opposite - anima/animus - which then leads the individual to a fuller sense of self by realising they are in fact multifaceted and more complex than they ever first imagined.

This is something akin to realising the ‘ego’ and not exactly kicking it out, but more or less realising the necessity of the ‘ego’ whilst not placing it on a pedestal.

The process of Individuation is likely to be traumatic and at the very least a large mental/‘spiritual’ feat to take on. For some it happens accidentally (like it did mostly for myself) but I guess it can happen through a pure wilful pursuit (although I cannot fathom how this would work).

realising the necessity of the ‘ego’ whilst not placing it on a pedestal. — I like sushi

Oh! :up: I can't live ... with or without you!

:ok:

It may be that the issue of authenticity is related to Jungian individuation more than any other approach. It does seem that some people go down this path accidentally and like you, I did and found Jung's writings helpful on the way through many of the difficulties.

The shadow is the most difficult part of the process of knowing oneself because it can be a form of destructiveness on many levels, including selfdestructiveness and may include addiction or even suicidal ideas. Alternatively, it may be about bringing up anger and not in a destructive way towards self or other but as a way of positive energy as empowerment. My own experience of the shadow involved a time of listening to nu metal music and going to see live metal and punk music. It felt as if through doing this I was seizing a raw energy, as a way of transmuting it positively.

I hadn't read Giddens until I came across the book in a charity shop a few months ago. I found it worth reading and, a little later, I came across Laing's 'The Divided Self' which was along a similar line of thinking.

The idea of the self is often seen as an aspect of psychology and as one of philosophy to some extent. However, the aspects of sociology are also important too, especially the the idea of the social construction of reality. This includes social life, including gender construction, ideas of deviance and the sociology of religion. When I did study sociology the sociology of knowledge went into aspects of epistemology too. Some writers within the tradition of sociology do explore the nature of subjectivity in relation to a sense of otherness, such as GH Mead. Also, Erving Goffman's understanding of the social presentation of self in everyday life do explore the social construction of human identity.

What do you make of the Buddhist idea of anattā^^?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81 ^^

I am asking the question of what it means to find the "true" self. It is a fairly complex question because it involves the social and existential sense of selfhood? How important is the idea of a 'true' self? To what extent is the self bound up with relationships with others, or as being, alone, in relation to the wider cosmos, and making sense of this? — Jack Cummins

For an uneducated opinion, based in intuition, I offer you this.

The first step toward understanding a 'true self' would be to move beyond assigning importance to thoughts about how others perceive you. You would have to assign no significance at all to any thoughts about what others might think about you, and how they might view you, completely freeing your mind from such influence.

After realizing the value of freeing one's thinking from such external influences, the next step would be to extend this freedom toward a more absolute level. This would require the effort of freeing oneself from the idea that any external influences have any importance. In classical terms, this is to completely deny any importance of any material goods, for the sake of spirituality. The external is not a part of the 'true self', so it cannot be allowed to have any influence over any thoughts developed by the authentic self. These thoughts are the source of anxiety, stress, and suffering.

If this could be obtained, one might find the 'true self', the real inner being, free from external dependence. The true self would be free to assess the aspects of internal dependence, where one would find a 'true' dependence, and ultimately develop principles of 'true dependence' to establish a navigable relationship between the internal and the external.

I am fairly impressed by the Buddhist idea of anatta, or no self, and Buddhist philosophy of mind in general. I have just begun reading a book called 'The Mind Illuminated', by John Yates, Matthew Immercut and Jeremy Graves (2017). It is an exploration of Buddhist understanding of consciousness alongside the ideas of cognitive neuroscience. It is a large hefty volume to read but I do see this area as an important one for understanding the mind, body problem, especially subjective experience.