4 ms·

Alternatively: my possessions, hobbies, tools are extensions of my real self. I do not NEED them, but I am more actualized when I have them. Do you identify you

by abakker 10y ago

Alternatively: my possessions, hobbies, tools are extensions of my real self. I do not NEED them, but I am more actualized when I have them. Do you identify yourself as a software engineer? Do you continue to be one when someone takes your access to all computers away? The computer actualizes part of how you identify yourself. It is hard to think of yourself as a mechanic when you have no ability to act on your talents or skills because of a lack of tools. Consider that maybe instead of 99% of people being consumerist sheep, you do not possess the knowledge or authority to judge accurately when the actions of others are impulsive, or in service to a different ideal. I believe that maybe stripped of all my possessions, socializations, and thought patterns you might indeed find some foundational, unformed version of me. However, in finding that thing, you would have stripped away many of the structures and artifices that I have constructed myself out of. You would find something that was more like an alpha-version, in potentia, stateless. That may be what you want, but it would be incomplete compared to the version of me you would meet in real life.

hosh 10y ago
>Alternatively: my possessions, hobbies, tools are extensions of my real self. I do not NEED them, but I am more actualized when I have them. Do you identify yourself as a software engineer? Do you continue to be one when someone takes your access to all computers away? The computer actualizes part of how you identify yourself. It is hard to think of yourself as a mechanic when you have no ability to act on your talents or skills because of a lack of tools. You are confusing your actualization with your identity. What you think of as your "real self" isn't. What you are saying here is the mainstream view of what someone's authentic self is. If you and I make a bet to talk to 100 random strangers in an arbitrary city, likely, all of those 100 people will agree with you and not with me. That's fine with with me. I do not identify myself as a software engineer. Software engineering is a skill I have (for now), and it is a role I adopt. It is a profession I presently have. But this is not me. Skills fade, roles will retire, professions will disappear. I remain. When the time comes, the time comes. That time will come for you as well as everyone else. This is something that meditators and mystics have been saying consistently for a while. I am not the first to say this and I won't be the last. This is something discovered anew for each person that dives into it. Not everyone is exploring this and I don't expect people to. This does not have anything to do with knowledge, authority, or judgement. People are more impulsive than they think they are, and so long as someone is owned their possessions, socialization, and thought patterns, that person is not acting freely. Stripped of all your possessions, socializations, and thought patterns is something far more amazing. This doesn't have to do with what "I want", but has to do with your natural self. No one is making you strip yourself of possessions, socializations, or thought patterns right now, or ever. You are welcomed to think like this and act like you are, and neither require mine's or anyone else's judgement or approval.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  Do you believe in materialism? If so, how can the self be anything but the collection of patterns, behaviors, and memories, as seen at a particular moment, that, starting with the initial genetics, have accumulated thus far during a person's life? Through continual interaction with the universe, the accumulation (the "self") constantly changes, as each moment passes by. Occasionally, these changes result in new behaviors that others might describe as "becoming a new person" -- this does not mean that some hidden potential self was finally activated. If you are speaking highly metaphorically, then that is a different matter, of course.
  - hosh 10y ago
    Thanks for bringing this up. Rational materialism is a powerful frame, but it is not complete in and of itself. "How can the self be anything but the collection of patterns, behaviors and memories" -- all those things, patterns, behaviors, and memories arises, and will eventually passes. Only awareness remains. You can test this empirically for yourself (though not necessarily for other people). It isn't that there is a hidden potential self is finally activated. That true self was already present before the conditioning started, and is still present. I am not speaking metaphorically.
    - dwaltrip 10y ago
      Thanks for the response. As someone who generally relies on a materialistic framework, I can't fathom where this true self resides or is coming from, but it is interesting to read about.
hosh 10y ago
By the way, I think you are onto something when you say: "You would find something that was more like an alpha-version, in potentia, stateless." and in relation to what you were talking about with actualization. This is addressed in medieval, classical Tantra, specifically the philosophy (the View) of transcendental non-dual Shaiva Tantra. Before encountering that, I was struck with that paradox of seeking that "stateless, in potentia". Yet the little bit of reading I did (via Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated) shows that classical Tantra has powerful answers to the concerns you raise. Despite being hundreds of years old, the classical Tantra View addresses ills we have yet to resolve from modernity and post-modernity. And it does it in a way _without_ advocating extreme austerity and asceticism that seems to be the trend in Western Buddhism these days. It favors beauty, passion, and yeah, very much so self-actualization, stuff that your typical Vipassana practitioner will attempt to eject from their life. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how accessible that philosophy is. I have difficulty talking about insight meditation and mindfulness to people (and your response is very typical) much less something like Tantra which requires a sufficiently clear mind, or at least some sort of experiences to really start grokking it.
- abakker 10y ago
  Interesting. I suppose it is possible that my concerns are somewhat orthogonal to minimalism <-> stuff axis, which is what you do with it. My things aren't really anti minimalism, but in service of something more akin to Persig's quality. I do things with my stuff that favors craft, creativity, and a general building/progress goal. My desire to serve these needs pushes me away from minimalism, but not in pursuit of things, things are a consequence, not a goal.
  - hosh 10y ago
    I love Pirsig's book, though I read it when I was younger and now I'm interested in revisiting it with this perspective. In Tantra, you're not just talking about object-subject duality. One of the concepts is object-process-subject with a transcendental ground. So "seen", "seeing", and "seer", all of which arising and dissolving back into that transcendental ground. Pirsig's "quality" and "arete" which he talks about as being prior to object-subject maps well to that frame. I totally get the idea of curating the ideas, beliefs, and things in your life. I also think that a minimalist practice can reveal some of those things, but if it is minimalism for it's own sake ... I also thought of something else -- I read this article: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2016/09/philosophy-sartre-blend-uncovering-birth-existentialism http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2016/09/philosophy... I only superficially read on existentialism in high school, via one of Albert Camus's book. I did not like it :-) Part of that was a bias where my mother accused me of being an existentialist (at least, it felt accusatory at the time). Reading that review made me realize, there may be something in Western philosophy that has a similar base with the medieval Tantra I was reading six months ago. That idea that existentialism is a search for meaning (I'm not explaining this from first principles and I'm explaining this badly), and being able to develop a philosophy from a cup of coffee is appealing. So maybe there are aspects of Tantra that are not as inaccessible as I thought, and existentialism has a lot of interesting things to say. Lastly, another bit of Western philosophy I'd like to deep-dive into is Rene Girad's mimetic philosophy. From the superficial reading, it seems the central idea is that our desires are not intrinsic, but instead are mimicked from other people. That can paradoxically lead to mimetic rivalry (where the mimicked desire becomes an object to contend over) and from there, mimetic violence. So far, in my reading, I don't find it complete in and of itself. From the Tantric perspective, it explains a lot about the workings of the conditioned or acquired self. Non-dual Tantra also offers an explanation of will that arises from the transcendental ground. I'm not sure how this all maps to each other. I do wonder, though I think, minimalism, when taken as _mimetic_, leads to the things criticized in that NY Times article. But so can another other philosophy or view.

by abakker 10y ago

hosh 10y ago

>Alternatively: my possessions, hobbies, tools are extensions of my real self. I do not NEED them, but I am more actualized when I have them. Do you identify yourself as a software engineer? Do you continue to be one when someone takes your access to all computers away? The computer actualizes part of how you identify yourself. It is hard to think of yourself as a mechanic when you have no ability to act on your talents or skills because of a lack of tools. You are confusing your actualization with your identity. What you think of as your "real self" isn't. What you are saying here is the mainstream view of what someone's authentic self is. If you and I make a bet to talk to 100 random strangers in an arbitrary city, likely, all of those 100 people will agree with you and not with me. That's fine with with me. I do not identify myself as a software engineer. Software engineering is a skill I have (for now), and it is a role I adopt. It is a profession I presently have. But this is not me. Skills fade, roles will retire, professions will disappear. I remain. When the time comes, the time comes. That time will come for you as well as everyone else. This is something that meditators and mystics have been saying consistently for a while. I am not the first to say this and I won't be the last. This is something discovered anew for each person that dives into it. Not everyone is exploring this and I don't expect people to. This does not have anything to do with knowledge, authority, or judgement. People are more impulsive than they think they are, and so long as someone is owned their possessions, socialization, and thought patterns, that person is not acting freely. Stripped of all your possessions, socializations, and thought patterns is something far more amazing. This doesn't have to do with what "I want", but has to do with your natural self. No one is making you strip yourself of possessions, socializations, or thought patterns right now, or ever. You are welcomed to think like this and act like you are, and neither require mine's or anyone else's judgement or approval.

dwaltrip 10y ago
Do you believe in materialism? If so, how can the self be anything but the collection of patterns, behaviors, and memories, as seen at a particular moment, that, starting with the initial genetics, have accumulated thus far during a person's life? Through continual interaction with the universe, the accumulation (the "self") constantly changes, as each moment passes by. Occasionally, these changes result in new behaviors that others might describe as "becoming a new person" -- this does not mean that some hidden potential self was finally activated. If you are speaking highly metaphorically, then that is a different matter, of course.
- hosh 10y ago
  Thanks for bringing this up. Rational materialism is a powerful frame, but it is not complete in and of itself. "How can the self be anything but the collection of patterns, behaviors and memories" -- all those things, patterns, behaviors, and memories arises, and will eventually passes. Only awareness remains. You can test this empirically for yourself (though not necessarily for other people). It isn't that there is a hidden potential self is finally activated. That true self was already present before the conditioning started, and is still present. I am not speaking metaphorically.
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    Thanks for the response. As someone who generally relies on a materialistic framework, I can't fathom where this true self resides or is coming from, but it is interesting to read about.

hosh 10y ago

By the way, I think you are onto something when you say: "You would find something that was more like an alpha-version, in potentia, stateless." and in relation to what you were talking about with actualization. This is addressed in medieval, classical Tantra, specifically the philosophy (the View) of transcendental non-dual Shaiva Tantra. Before encountering that, I was struck with that paradox of seeking that "stateless, in potentia". Yet the little bit of reading I did (via Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated) shows that classical Tantra has powerful answers to the concerns you raise. Despite being hundreds of years old, the classical Tantra View addresses ills we have yet to resolve from modernity and post-modernity. And it does it in a way _without_ advocating extreme austerity and asceticism that seems to be the trend in Western Buddhism these days. It favors beauty, passion, and yeah, very much so self-actualization, stuff that your typical Vipassana practitioner will attempt to eject from their life. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how accessible that philosophy is. I have difficulty talking about insight meditation and mindfulness to people (and your response is very typical) much less something like Tantra which requires a sufficiently clear mind, or at least some sort of experiences to really start grokking it.

abakker 10y ago
Interesting. I suppose it is possible that my concerns are somewhat orthogonal to minimalism <-> stuff axis, which is what you do with it. My things aren't really anti minimalism, but in service of something more akin to Persig's quality. I do things with my stuff that favors craft, creativity, and a general building/progress goal. My desire to serve these needs pushes me away from minimalism, but not in pursuit of things, things are a consequence, not a goal.
- hosh 10y ago
  I love Pirsig's book, though I read it when I was younger and now I'm interested in revisiting it with this perspective. In Tantra, you're not just talking about object-subject duality. One of the concepts is object-process-subject with a transcendental ground. So "seen", "seeing", and "seer", all of which arising and dissolving back into that transcendental ground. Pirsig's "quality" and "arete" which he talks about as being prior to object-subject maps well to that frame. I totally get the idea of curating the ideas, beliefs, and things in your life. I also think that a minimalist practice can reveal some of those things, but if it is minimalism for it's own sake ... I also thought of something else -- I read this article: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2016/09/philosophy-sartre-blend-uncovering-birth-existentialism http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2016/09/philosophy... I only superficially read on existentialism in high school, via one of Albert Camus's book. I did not like it :-) Part of that was a bias where my mother accused me of being an existentialist (at least, it felt accusatory at the time). Reading that review made me realize, there may be something in Western philosophy that has a similar base with the medieval Tantra I was reading six months ago. That idea that existentialism is a search for meaning (I'm not explaining this from first principles and I'm explaining this badly), and being able to develop a philosophy from a cup of coffee is appealing. So maybe there are aspects of Tantra that are not as inaccessible as I thought, and existentialism has a lot of interesting things to say. Lastly, another bit of Western philosophy I'd like to deep-dive into is Rene Girad's mimetic philosophy. From the superficial reading, it seems the central idea is that our desires are not intrinsic, but instead are mimicked from other people. That can paradoxically lead to mimetic rivalry (where the mimicked desire becomes an object to contend over) and from there, mimetic violence. So far, in my reading, I don't find it complete in and of itself. From the Tantric perspective, it explains a lot about the workings of the conditioned or acquired self. Non-dual Tantra also offers an explanation of will that arises from the transcendental ground. I'm not sure how this all maps to each other. I do wonder, though I think, minimalism, when taken as _mimetic_, leads to the things criticized in that NY Times article. But so can another other philosophy or view.