LS Soul and self (continued)

From: Denis Poisson (Denis.Poisson@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Jul 11 1999 - 00:58:21 BST


Hi, Squad,

Re-reading my last post left me (and probably you too) a bit
disatisfied. I seem to have fallen in the same trap Pirsig warns against
in 'Lila' : "It's all right to condemn somebody else's bad metaphysics
but you can't replace it with a metaphysics that consist of just one
word". Well, that's exactly what I did : replace self with " illusion "
(or intellectual pattern) and soul with "Quality". That's a good start,
but not enough. So let me explain things a bit further.

First, the soul. If it is understood as the animating principle of life
and thought, the mystic principle behind consciousness, and our *real*
self, then it ultimately beyond intellect ability to grasp. It is a
flux, a process that can be equated with the general flux of the
universe. When John Beasley asks :

> What attends? Attending is a dialogue. Our experience is not just a flow of
> sensory impressions. It is the interaction of a mind, an order
> making entity, with its environment. "What attends"? What is the
> order-making entity....etc

the answer is to say that nothing "attends", but everything interact. As
I said, static patterns aren't static, that's just an intellectual
simplification for pragmatic purpose.

It's the same reason why in linguistics we talk about a "synchronic
analysis" of language. Languages evolve all the time, but if we are to
study them we must decide to consider language as a fixed structure such
as it was at moment T.

So, the inorganic, biological, social and intellectual patterns change
and evolve according to the dance of Lila, the never-ending dance of
creation and destruction. This principle, that I've equated with the
mystic reality itself, is our "soul", ultimately unknowable and
undefinable, Quality itself in other words. It is something we'll never
understand, only briefly experience in Zen moments of "action without
acting" (like my driving example, or Pirsig's indian ceremony).

The "consciousness" nature is one of evolution of the patterns. Nothing
makes order from Quality, the patterns (all four levels) only evolve
through time, sometime brutally (Dynamic Quality perception), but most
often in a slow continuous way. The inorganic level evolution is almost
imperceptible to us, the biological is our "primary" patterning process,
then education brings about the first social patterning (often using
biological tools like fear and conditioned reflexes, like not shitting
in yours pants), that evolves in turn into language, culture, which then
gives rise to the intellectual patterning process. This one in turn
takes leave of its parent and starts evolving on its own.

So, the soul is beyond our grasp. The self, on the other hand, seems
like an easier subject to catch in our intellectual nets, because the
notion is back on the static side of Pirsig's initial division.

But first, a warning : the self wants to exist, it isn't an easy notion
to give up, and is probably the hardest opponent to any mystic view of
the universe. Huge forces of ego are supporting its reality, and they'll
find their first allies in ourselves. We don't really want to be egoless
: we want to feel proud of what we are, what we did, what we thought, as
if it belonged to us the way a car belong to its owner. To say that it
is not really so, that these are only useful concepts for everyday life,
and that holding too much on them lessen the capacity for dynamic
change, is a classic example of the static/dynamic battle that occurs
daily in our lives.

My first inkling into the subject is that the "thing that attends to
experience", isn't unified. To quote a french poet, Rimbaud, in a poetic
essay tittled "La lettre au voyant" (Letter to the Seer) : "Je est un
autre" = "I is someone else". Kant implied the same thing when he said,
criticising the "cogito ergo sum", that the first "I" in "I think,
therefore I am", isn't the same as the second.

The "Me" that writes this letter isn't the person you might one day
encounter (for example, if this ever happens, I'll try to be on my best
behaviour. But after a few beers, I might turn out to be a very
different person... ;)). For example, have you ever read some of your
writing and get the feeling that it couldn't have been what you wanted
to say, and that somebody else must have written this ? Writers often
talk about this 'disconnection' process, saying that their characters
seem to "come to life".

In a less trivial way, in seven years from now, my opinions will
probably have changed, my memory will have altered, my behaviour and
social status will be different, my body will have grown older and since
we totally renew every atom in our bodies every seven years, what,
exactly, will be left of the person I am now ?

Like a watch little hand, we change so gradually we hardly notice it,
but we are also a processus, not a thing. When after 10 years you meet
somebody you once knew, you often have to rediscover him/her again.
He/She might have changed very little, or so much you have to build a
brand new relation (or none, we don't always change for the best). This
happened to me more than once, and I sometimes heard people telling me
that when they knew me then, they didn't really like me at all and were
glad I did change (this always makes encounters interesting). I'm not
really offended, because I know I'm not *exactly* the same person (but
then, I might be schizophrenic). ;)

If I was more attached (gave more value) to my sense of self, this might
distress me more, but a lack of strong ego (which has nothing to do with
being a whimpering spineless idiot) can be a great advantage. Pirsig's
talk about people being mirrors is one of my favorites. If you attach
value to your image(s), you're bound to suffer one day or another. As
one of my friends put it : "We're always someone's idiot." So don't pay
attention, don't give any of the images you encounter value (but be
careful, no value doesn't mean a *negative* value ! Being selfless is
not the same as being self-loathing), and you'll escape from many Zen
hells.

So why the "subject", you might ask, what is the evolutionary value of
it ? Well, the intellectual value of it is, pragmatically, one of
denomination and economy : it is easier to refer to myself as an object
(a person) than as a processus. It solves the problem of refering to
"the amalgate of evolving patterns that existed at space X, time Y" ->
just call this "Denis" and forget the space-time coordinates. It is the
same reason why physicists still talk about "particles", while knowing
that this doesn't really describe what sub-atomic forces are. It's a
mental crutch, a model, a map with polar coordinates ; in short, it is
an intellectual pattern.

It's also a very useful way to make people behave correctly : I they
don't, you trash their self-image. So many people identify so much with
their own self-reflection (talk about paradox !) that they will do
almost anything to preserve it from attacks. First rule of any social
interaction : protecting other people's face goes a long way toward
protecting yours. If I start calling the LS a bunch of
pseudo-mystico-sunday morning philosophers, I'm pretty sure the social
image I've been building in this group will be destroyed while you start
flaming me.

E. Goffman (a sociologue) has posited a theory about our "faces". He
states that our social self has got two sides : a positive and a
negative face (this term must be understood in the asian sense of
"keeping your face"). The negative face represents the need to defend
the territory of the self - its autonomy and cohesion. The positive one
is akin to narcissism, it tends to the quality of the image we project
for others. In theory, it is in everyone's interest to maintain others
people face in order not to endanger theirs. In any dialogue there is a
subtle game of transactions and equilibrium, in which some rules must be
followed.

Four types of "face agression" can be defined :
1. agression of the other's negative face : orders, requests, offers,
suggestions, advices, threats, and generally everything that tend to
restrain his autonomy.

2. agression of the other's positive face : criticisms, insults,
reprimands, and generally everything that inflict a narcissistic wound.

3. agression of one's negative face : promises, proposals, vows, oaths,
and everything restraining one's own autonomy.

4. agression of one's positive face : confessions, excuses,
autocriticism...

>From there, we deduce four main rules to preserve the social interaction
:

1. protecting as much as possible the positive and negatives faces of
others.

2. not exalting the positive face of others, because it might be
construed as an attack on their negative face by forcing them to express
gratitude.

3. keeping up a minimum of friendly intrusions into the negative face of
others, so that you're not perceived as indifferent. In some difficult
situations, the compassionate attitudes must be very careful balanced,
to avoid infringing too much upon the other negative face.

4. to valorize the positive face of others. This is commonly done in
certain social situations, like meeting someone ("Nice to meet you"), or
ending a social interaction ("It was a pleasure").

Some priorities can be distinguished, some rules are easier to
transgress than others. You must not be threatening, or
"anti-threatening", but the first attitude is more severely repressed
than the second. Dissuasion plays an important role in this, if the
positive face is attacked, people generally attack in turn.
In the same way, any boasting generally attracts a lot of hostility from
your public. Exalting one's own positive face degrades other's. Any
transgression of this rule is generally coupled with a mark that the
boast shouldn't be taken seriously (like our emoticons => :) or ;) ), or
by saying something to devalue the assertion ("I don't say this to
boast, but..."). In the same way, degrading one's own positive face
forces the other to react (which is an attack on his negative face),
unless it is done in such a way that the statement isn't taken
seriously. That can also be a parade against such whimpering, just joke
about it like the other person didn't really mean it. But if the
situation lingers, the social interaction runs the risk of being broken.

So, mainly, we have two sides to the self, a social and an intellectual
one. I'd like to go on with the intellectual value of self, but quite
frankly, I have no further ideas just now. So, if anyone feels
inspired...

They are still questions that need to be answered : at what stage of
evolution did the self appear ? While the concept itself (the word if
you prefer) is an intellectual pattern, it has a social side, and
perhaps even a biological one (I heard some mammals seem to have such a
sense of self, in some post or another). Let's see what we can find...

Denis

"Maybe mirrors are all you ever get", 'Lila', p. 291

MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org



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