[MD] Virulent reality.

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Joe]
There are three posts I have recently read that confuse 
me.  One by Ron composed of just symbols.  A lot by Arlo: "No more 
and no less a role that any of the multiplicity"..

[Arlo]
This slipped past me, Joe, until Bo's post where he (go figure) 
paints someone who disagrees with him as "feeble". I'll try to 
explain more clearly what I mean.

I start with the idea of what a "self" is with Pirsig in LILA. Two 
quotes begin this.

"This Cartesian "Me" is a software reality, not a hardware reality. 
This body on the left and this body on the right are running 
variations of the same program, the same "Me," which doesn't belong 
to either of them. The "Me's" are simply a program format." (LILA)

"This fictitious "man" has many synonyms: "mankind," "people," "the 
public," and even such pronouns as "I," "he," and "they." Our 
language is so organized around them and they are so convenient to 
use it is impossible to get rid of them. There is really no need to. 
Like "substance" they can be used as long as it is remembered that 
they're terms for collections of patterns and not some independent 
primary reality of their own." (LILA)

The idea of a "self" is a focal marker, a way of organizing 
organically bound biological experience as it is assimilated via the 
contexts of culture. There is no "body reality" to the self, the 
human brain in which it appears to reside is, as Pirsig says, 
confusing the hardware with a software program. *Arlo* is no more his 
corporeal body than Microsoft Word is my computer. To date, the idea 
of the self has served social ends very well. It allows all sorts of 
activity that would otherwise be impossible.

But along the way two socially-valued (and socially-enforced) aspects 
of the self became confused with an inherent nature of what the "self 
is". These are continuity over time and continuity over contexts. To 
this end social practices encourage the adoption of "names" we carry 
with us over time, so that there is an "Arlo" tomorrow as there is an 
"Arlo" right here right now. We also value what Marsha and Ian point 
to as "consistency" (I prefer continuity) across contexts, so that 
that "Arlo" you meet here is seen as "more-or-less" the same "Arlo" 
known by others in any context.

My point is that these two things are social values we conform to 
(willingly, and sometimes with some pushing, which I will get to with 
ZMM) and not inherent "realities" of the "self". Indeed, my 
conjecture is that once we push these illusions aside, we can see 
clearly that "we" are in fact a multiplicity of "selves" rather than 
a singular "self". Sherry Turkle poses the question we should be 
asking about ourselves as "Who am we?" rather than "Who am I?"

In ZMM, Pirsig confronts head on the notion of a singular identity 
tied to a physiological form. After his electro-shock, he describes 
the view of the emerging self that has no memory of the former "Bob". 
And this quote marks a critical point (for me) in thinking about "the self".

"It was explained to me finally that "You have a new personality 
now." But this statement was no explanation at all. It puzzled me 
more than ever since I had no awareness at all of any "old" 
personality. If they had said, "You are a new personality," it would 
have been much clearer. That would have fitted. They had made the 
mistake of thinking of a personality as some sort of possession, like 
a suit of clothes, which a person wears. But apart from a personality 
what is there? Some bones and flesh. A collection of legal 
statistics, perhaps, but surely no person. The bones and flesh and 
legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the 
other way around. ... But who was the old personality whom they had 
known and presumed I was a continuation of?" (ZMM)

For everyone else around him, there was some adherence to the notion 
of continuity based on the physiological form. Even though his 
memories were all "replaced", he had no awareness of "who he was 
before", there was a tacit assumption around that this person was 
still "the same Bob" in many ways. My question is "in what ways"? 
These two identities, who used the same name and shared the same 
brain, were about as different and unrelated as "Arlo" and "Joe", 
weren't they?

Pirsig describes this further. "These EYES! That is the terror of it. 
These gloved hands I now look at, steering the motorcycle down the 
road, were once his! And if you can understand the feeling that comes 
from that, then you can understand real fear...the fear that comes 
from knowing there is nowhere you can possibly run." (ZMM)

This eloquently demonstrates the disconnectedness between the 
physical form and the "idea of self". I brought up the case of a 
young "boy" named "Mark" who believed with all his heart and mind he 
was a female trapped inside a male body. His "identity" was "Julia", 
and the disconnect he felt looking down at his body must've been the 
same disconnect the "new Bob" felt when seeing "old Bob's" hands on 
the grips. Conventionally, we'd argue that the "real person" here is 
the boy named Mark, and that "Julia" is a pretend identity. I ask 
"why?" And, how would our answer to that question change if 
"Mark"underwent gender-transformative surgery? Would "Julia" suddenly 
become "real"?

These are examples of the problem of tying "identity" to the physical 
form. We "are" who we believe ourselves to be. And we take that 
"face" or "mask" or "role" into our social engagements and work to 
develop a continuity to the identity we value.

Apart from the disconnect issue, however, is also the one of 
multiplicity. Pirsig's identities were temporally segmented so that 
one followed the other. My contention is that in addition to the 
disconnect between body and "self", it has become clear that each of 
us actually have many selves that appear in very particular contexts. 
The fact that these often carry the same name (contextual continuity) 
is a social convention, but not an absolute reality. The first book I 
had read that touched on this theme was James Carse's "Finite and 
Infinite Games", a wonderful and short book I'd highly recommend.

Into this the online world, and its use of "avatars", has made 
transparent the fact that we are always in an "avatar" of some sort. 
Some with greater degrees of discontinuity, others very alike, but 
all tailored and negotiated as part of contextual and immediately 
valuable social worlds. The "Arlo" you know here is an avatar, but 
its important to see that there is no "real Arlo" that sits behind 
this mask. There are only a plurality of avatars, who's connection to 
a bodily form seem to unite them into an amorphous whole, but this is 
merely an illusion. For example, the only "Joe" I know is the 
Joe-I-know-here, and that online presentation of self has value and 
realness for me independent of whatever "other Joe" exists out there 
in other contexts, and also independent of the physical body "Joe" inhabits.

When we think of "SA", we can see more avatarness upfront (our 
illusions don't over right away) because this "name" is one crafted 
expressly for this context. SA has resisted, mostly, pointing to 
bodily realities about his corporeal form, and has resisted attempts 
to pin "him/her" to a "real name". Whatever illusions you have about 
SA become self-evidently illusions we can see. Some will tell you 
that there is a "real person out there somewhere pretending to be 
SA". I ask, why is SA not real? What are the characteristics of this 
"more real person" who is pretending to be SA? If you think about 
this, you'll see yourself coming back to physiological associations 
and the need we have for continuity, and not anything about "SA" her/himself.

And that's really the ground from which I am coming from on this 
issue. Hope that makes what I say a little clearer.