[MD] Virulent reality.

[MarshaV]

At 05:49 PM 9/11/2008, you wrote:
>[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)

Arlo,

The operative word is 'fictitious'.

Marsha




>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.
>
>
>Moq_Discuss mailing list
>Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
>http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
>Archives:
>http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
>http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/

.
.

Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
.
.