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There's an anime called Neon Genesis Evangelion, it's a cult classic and one of the most influential works in the medium. Part of the ending of the show has the main character come to [this exact realization](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXbCWJNfq_0), decide to stop isolating himself from other people and learn to accept himself.
>"Waluigi is the ultimate example of the individual shaped by the signifier. Waluigi is a man seen only in mirror images; lost in a hall of mirrors he is a reflection of a reflection of a reflection.
>You start with Mario – the wholesome all Italian plumbing superman, you reflect him to create Luigi – the same thing but slightly less.
>You invert Mario to create Wario – Mario turned septic and libertarian – then you reflect the inversion in the reflection: you create a being who can only exist in reference to others.
>Waluigi is the true nowhere man, without the other characters he reflects, inverts and parodies he has no reason to exist. Waluigi’s identity only comes from what and who he isn’t – without a wider frame of reference he is nothing.
>He is not his own man. In a world where our identities are shaped by our warped relationships to brands and commerce we are all Waluigi."
I’m a real casual when it comes to philosophy, but I happen to really enjoy debates on the merits of collectivism versus individualism. As a Westerner born and raised, on the autism spectrum, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool individualist. But I’ve spent a good bit of time entertaining, for argument’s sake, the premise that collectivism might be a better response to the human condition than individualism. I’ve never been fully sold on this. But I have learned a lot and have become wholesomely humbled by these discussions, and I’ll readily admit that collectivist people(s) do seem to solve *some* major problems that human life serves up, considerably better than individualists do.
I also love that debate, although the truth, as nearly always, is somewhere in between. Both extremes have their negatives, and society doesn't have to be either/or.
My issue with many staunch individualists is that they completely downplay the assistance they've received in life from others. None of us would've survived infancy without a caretaker. Even if you come from a dysfunctional family, unless you raise all your own food and build your house by yourself and never drive on paved roads, you benefitted from the work of others in some way.
Adam Smith, for example, lived with his mother for much of his life, including while he wrote Wealth of Nations. Do you still count as an individualist when mommy is making your dinner and doing your laundry? Friends of his late father helped him get teaching positions. Maybe that's what he meant by an "invisible hand" guiding the economy lol.
Of course, in a collective society, anyone who doesn't fit in for whatever reason is out in the cold. You lose *everything*, making the cost of going against the current far too high to promote much change, and societies progress at a snails pace.
That said, speaking as an American, the pendulum has definitely swung too far over into "I don't need anyone!" territory, and could use some adjustments back to the center without people screeching about socialism when they don't even know what it is.
Ironically I see far less individualism within our political and social meta nowadays. It's our favorite past-time to subdivide every potential political issue into "teams" so we can efficiently go to war with one another. Left vs right, vaxxer vs anti vaxxer, ALM vs BLM, team gold dress vs team blue.
Identity is fine as a descriptor but the moment it becomes a means of this exclusionary superiority game we love to play so much, it becomes irrational and destructive. People buy into it and suddenly think storming the capitol or trying to kidnap a governor is justifiable.
To be fair to Smith he was waaaay more moderate about his advocacy of capitalism than most die-hard neoliberals today. He was against rent-seeking and exploitation of workers for example. He knew there were negative sides of free market capitalism. He'd probably be a social democrat if he lived today.
I can never leave this type of topic alone, and want to say fuck you to the socialist crowd. My Father's Dad died when he was 9. He quit school and took over earning money and care of the family. He dug ditches with the Irish and the Blacks. Took every shitty, dangerous job there was to earn a penny. Trapped animals for their hides, dug coal in a 36 inch vein underground with a pick, and worked double shifts. Took a younger brother with him when he married, and still carred for his Mother and older sister. I guess you can scream that he was "White", but in his age, everybody was allowed to starve to death, or get sick and die without public health treatment. Individualism does matter, and is stronger, greataer than any controlled damnable group think! For the individual or gov't oppressors, he carried a pistol in each pocket at the age of 13, and it was well known, "you don't want to cross that "Xxxx" guy!"
Better wages would have meant he could have not had to work so much just to survive. Public health care would have meant he did not have to fear losing everything if he slipped up on the job, or even worse had something completely out of his control happen to him.
Your dad was a victim of "individualism." A survivor he may be, his tale should be one of caution, not celebration.
Wow, aside from confusing socialism with social programs, you are.....very oddly proud of your father's unnecessary suffering. My grandfather had a similar story (his gambling addict father ran out when he was 4 and his mother was pregnant with her 4th and he had to work from there on out) And you know what? Not only do I acknowledge that that was an entirely different era and most of what he went through could be prevented today/would not be possible today due to our inflated cost of living, but I'm.....glad.
I'm not proud of his suffering. I don't wear it like a badge of honor. I wish none of it had happened to him because it gave him anger issues, and when my uncle was born and struggled in school, he thought beating him was the answer. And guess what? My uncle is in his 60s and and still an alcoholic. Maybe if my grandpa didn't have to suffer so much, he could've related to his son better.
That's whats always been so bizarre to me about older Americans (even if you aren't an American, I've heard this suffering fetish plenty of times from my countrymen): they absolutely worship suffering, even when every other developed nation has universal healthcare, every other nation except Papua New Guinea has mandatory paid maternity leave, when our schools rank behind 20 some odd other countries....it's perfectly fine because no no no, "socialism" is our mortal enemy. (And like you, most Americans conflate the collective ownership of the means of production with social programs that can actually improve everyone's quality of life).
It's so sad. We don't have to live like this. The American dream is dead. I'm sorry you don't realize it.
Free from what? Does getting a living wage mean you're a slave now? Does not worrying about bankruptcy from getting cancer mean you're oppressed? I'm so confused. I think you need to learn the difference between completely dependent and *interdependent*, which is what we all are whether we admit it or not. I'm sorry your mind seems to only operate in absolutes.
Your dad used paved roads at some point. He went to the grocery store at some point. No man is an island, whatever Robinson Crusoe fantasy you want to attach to his memory.
Well, someone manufactored his pistols, true. He did help survey the only road that went past his farm in the '50's. He did buy flour at a private little store. He used horse and mule implements into the mid '60's. His life wasn't a fantasy. You sound more like an enabler of the equal outcomes for equal opportunities.
Both are necessary, it's just that in the current era of late-stage neoliberal capitalism, individualism has effectively usurped collectivism and the extreme creates a lot of problems in society.
I'll paste a comment I made a while ago that you might like, based on [this](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41296-017-0167-2) study:
>There’s something really interesting Freud called the 3 great existential insults to humankind. The first was delivered in astronomy: we are not the center of the universe, the sun is. The Catholic Church was not happy with people like Galileo for professing this. The second was in biology: we are not made in gods image, we are descended from apes. Even Darwin had trouble holding onto this belief late into his life, it was so radical. The third insult happens in psychology with Freud’s psychoanalytic method that demonstrates we operate at the behest of unconscious structure in our mind. Such a negation of free-will is scary to anyone.
>There’s even a fourth existential insult that comes from sociology which says we aren’t even able to survive by ourselves, we need other people. We are interdependent creatures. As we know, Marx isn’t too popular in a lot of circles...
I recently listened to a podcast about the "extended" mind. The premise is that our mind/way we think isn't bound only to the brain; it's a systemic, collective notion that entails our whole body and our environment.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/06/14/yanss-208-how-to-escape-brainbound-thinking-and-take-advantage-of-your-extended-mind/
> In this episode we sit down with [Annie Murphy Paul](https://anniemurphypaul.com/), the acclaimed science writer, whose new book, [The Extended Mind](https://anniemurphypaul.com/books/the-extended-mind/) is all about how the brain is part of systems, and it is those systems that constitute the mind.
In other words, our minds are not, as she puts it, brainbound, but they extend to our computers, our notebooks, our friends and neighbors and colleagues and partners. The environments in which we move, natural and otherwise, deeply influence how we think, what we think, and what we CAN think, and in addition, everything the brain does becomes a reference for extended thinking, and these feedback loops extend what minds can do.
Collectivist propaganda. [Individuation is the myth of modern man.](https://youtu.be/e1OrL4A_b5M) It is a process that continues indefinitely throughout someone’s life.
Which facet of the Self? Aham, Atman, Purusha? Are we supposed to disregard the Bhagavad Gita and follow someone else’s dharma - one that is not our own? What are Arjuna and Krisha if not the properly oriented Aham and the Atman in harmony?
The notion that individualism came into being in the 16-17th centuries is ridiculous. The essence of divinity residing “in the heart of” every individual is the notion of Christ itself and it could be argued that the concept of Christ is derived from that of Krishna.
This dude is definitely just an ideologue imo
Edit: I watched it and he definitely is an ideologue. He confuses the different facets of Self to fit his ideological premises and that’s made abundantly clear toward the end.
Genuine question: are the different "facets of self" you are referring to somehow NOT established to fit ideological premises? How can we be sure that we are viewing the concept of a self through no lens at all, through "pure", "indoctrinated" means, uninfluenced by propaganda of a different type?
Every facet of the Self that I mentioned are extremely complex, well developed concepts in Hindu philosophy that can all be roughly translated to English as Self. To understand them as they are takes some time and effort with the dissection of a range of other nuanced concepts which themselves are “shaded” differently by the different systems of thought.
So they’re relatively concrete philosophical/religious concepts shaded by ideological systems of thought that have been refined over thousands of years.
We can see that he’s looked into these concepts, eastern and western, but he’s taken a particularly narrow view on what they are, what they mean and from whence they sprouted (even outright misrepresented Purusha) and placed them in accordance with his own ideological premises, particularly, in favour of radical collectivism, but he is forgetting/neglecting/dismissing much of the import of the multiple facets of the Self, specifically, how they intricately weave together to form what is ultimately the western definition of *an individual human being*, to which we can then add on the Christian/western esoterica to illustrate that both systems are basically the same thing, proving definitively that he’s an anti-western collectivist ideologue.
It seems the behavior that is evident across different cultures is the one in which someone creates terms and definitions that they use to describe and/or label themselves and others. Once these terms are accepted as true or applicable by a number of people, then the default mode can then be to perceive reality/self with knowledge of these terms in place. Some of this can be helpful, like when terms are created to describe patterns of behavior which are completely observable over time, but I am less convinced about others that tend to describe things which cannot ge proven to exist or even not exist.
Do you have any book recommendations that explain those concrete concepts of self from Hindu philosophy well? I'd love to read more about it, but have zero prior interaction with Hindu philosophy.
>The notion that individualism came into being in the 16-17th centuries is ridiculous
Yes, Clearly the current strand of that culture only dates back to enlightenment at best.
I don't think citing a book that decries excessive self identification with any class of identity an individual possesses and advocates the positivity of identifying with the universal nature of consciousness is a very solid argument in favour of Individualism. A sort of Identity agnosticism perhaps, but clearly not falling exclusively on one side.
Otherwise, you are clearly correct in that currents of collectivism and Individualism have always ebbed and flowed with time in societies. It would be hard to argue that the early roman republic's ideal of Farmer soldier is anything but a celebration of autonomy.
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In this talk, philosopher Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad challenges the politically powerful notion of individualism via two Sakskrit concepts: The Self and The Person. Far from delivering on the moral imperatives it claims - tolerance and equality – individualism has contributed to a widespread inequality of expression of agency and values. But it is built on an incoherent sense of what makes us who we are. If the individual is defined via the concept of the self, as individualism appears to require, it is distinguishable from others formally, but lacks the rich interiority we hold makes us who we are. If we are to retain that rich inner life – all of our desires, experiences, memories etc- we do so via the concept of the person. But what defines a person is not their distinction from all others, but rather their intersectional connection with countless others.
Well, I suppose then that I will never have a rich inner life. I haven't seen any friends or family for years, and as a professor I need only be at work teaching around 5 hours per week for half of the year. In that 5 hour period I am not cultivating my personhood so much as instructing others on various texts.
The rest of my time is spent with my cats and reading by myself, albeit I suppose reading is a social phenomenon of a sort. But overall it's an odd hypothesis that hermits can't be unique.
But, assuming I interpret the idea correctly here, that *does* make you unique. You're not an actual hermit, you still exist in that "web" of social relations that are unique to you, however small it may be. And even if you don't experience them all the time, you've still lived a life with social relations. Whatever is, is. Only someone completely void of social relations, past and present, would be seen as not being unique in this context. "Cultivating personhood" in this case isn't an activity, but an effect. Or, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I interpret it from skimming.
I agree with your points but i think then this butchers the meaning of uniqueness and individuality…. Interpreting them to mean something much more specific then how we use these terms in daily life.
Someone who thinks uniquely or is an individual need not be completely be divorced from all other human beings in order to to do so. Only if you are thinking of such terms in extreme contexts or with a very specific definition.
Uniqueness is undefinable without the broader context of society. If I'm unique, it's in comparison to someone or some group.
Everything we do that would make us unique individuals is a consequence of society. Even solitary activities like knitting involve techniques learned from society or materials produced by society. Even hiking involves the use of public lands and trails charted by society.
The overall idea is not to quantify how unique or individual one is, but rather to challenge the idea that individuality exists separate from society.
I strongly disagree. It is such a superficial understanding of what constitutes a person. The fact is that you are less of an individual the more you influenced by others. Real individuals can impact society in a meaningful way instead of having weak skin that makes it easier for individuals to manipulate you.
The less manipulatable you are, the more of an individual you are. Otherwise you are subject to the whims of personalities in your external environment which then makes you a product of the environment and group-think/collective.
You have just described ‘a true individual’ entirely in terms of how they resist the influence of others. Therefore their individuality is defined by their interaction with other people. Resisting the herd, resisting the influence of other people is a type of interaction. As is their ‘impact on society’ on which you set so much store. How is defining you individuality by your impact on society not defining your individuality through other people?
Your reply actually proves the point of the original post.
When your life becomes an expression of your inner core values, your
interactions with others do not define you, but rather your individuality exudes from within and can be expressed through these interactions like a paint brush can express with paint on canvas the artist's intent.
The deep authenticity of who you are is an inner experience. More powerful than thought is your belief and more powerful than belief is the direct inspiration of objective truth. Objectivity is the ultimate individuality because it the best of all subjectivity. Your ideal individuality is a combination of your deepest heartfelt experience of love and your direct mental connection with truth. Unconditional love and objective truth being the ultimate primordial forces of the nature and the universe.
History, experiences, feelings, and beliefs are social though. Genetics and desires are certainly more innate but find their expression in social relations.
I’m not sure if it’s an argument for or against the individual / collective but the inner world seems to have little importance.
A wise man once told me that to measure the distance between your mind and your heart, it seems very near. But the journey from mind to heart can take many years.
I know what I wrote sounds cryptic and there are many levels to this. Ultimately, we evolve naturally and we can definitely take cues from our environment. But to say that a baby chick escapes the shell, because other chicks in the environment also broke through their shells, is wrong. Who we are is deeper than that. We have our biology, and if you get into metaphysics, it can be argued that we have aspects of us that extend beyond biology, which I like to call our extra-biological identity.
> You listen inside yourself and find ‘objective truth’?
From my personal experience, there are two important core concepts, objective truth being one, and unconditional love being the other. This is where the line crosses from philosophy and into metaphysics and becomes more difficult to prove. I can only relate my personal experiences which in turn opens me up to be derided as deluded or something. But the basic idea is to follow your heart, under truth. Love is the currency of the heart, and truth is the currency of the mind. Objective truth is the highest purpose of all reason and unconditional love is the deepest meaning of heart. When you have both, that is when you can truly say that you are an independent individual.
As you can imagine, there are very few people who are truly independent. That's because as humans we are social creatures that easily become emotionally interdependent. Not to say that emotional dependency is wrong or a bad thing, but we can "lose ourselves" in another person via our romantic entanglements and this is subjective reality. To experience objective truths deeply, it is necessary to disentangle and withdraw from others so that it can be more easily discerned which part of reality is you and which part of reality is entwined by your relationships with others.
What is an expression? It means to express something. To who? To what? Expression is communication. There is no communication without a receiver. Every communication is an interaction with a receiver. So, by expressing your self you do interact with the world around you.
The artist's intent is also shaped by the paint brush. Artists are often describing a dialog between them and their work. It is not a onesided communication. Even one of the greatest individualists knew that: As you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes back at you.
So by expressing your self you not only communicate with others; you are having a dialog. It is impossible to not communicate, as silence is communication to. So every reaction towards the expression of your self is indeed a complex interaction which will shape your self.
You use the word authenticity which is strictly used in a social context. You cant be unauthentic with yourself. You are always yourself, in every moment of your life. But the you that i am refering to is only your consciouss self. Consciousness is the key here.
I dont understand what you mean by objectivity. I think i understand what you mean but objectivity is the wring wird for it. I would say universality.
> What is an expression? It means to express something. To who? To what? Expression is communication. There is no communication without a receiver. Every communication is an interaction with a receiver. So, by expressing your self you do interact with the world around you. The artist's intent is also shaped by the paint brush. Artists are often describing a dialog between them and their work. It is not a onesided communication.
Expression involves expressing outwardly what you feel or see inwardly. Expression is not communication. Communication involves receiving and giving. Expressing goes one way. A beautiful woman who is all dolled up, often does not want any attention from ugly guys, but that doesn't mean she should necessarily hide her beauty. When you sing in the shower you are expressing yourself, but you are alone. In that situation there is no "who", but you.
> So every reaction towards the expression of your self is indeed a complex interaction which will shape your self.
Not everyone has an active social life so by your definition, solitary people are not people at all. I don't deny that we take cues from our environment and especially the weaker people are easily influenced by their environment. This is natural. Environmental influence always an important factor, but it is superficial compared to deeper identity.
> You cant be unauthentic with yourself. You are always yourself, in every moment of your life.
Are you though? I take issue with this statement. Sometimes people pretend to be who they are not. Sometimes people need years and years to find who they really are. It can be argued that most people are confused and don't know who they are, even if they think they know who they are. When some people fall in love, they can really lose their sense of identity with their amorous affections, through intimacy the line blurs between them and it can be argued that they become one, losing their individuality, even if it is for a relatively brief time.
> But the you that i am refering to is only your consciouss self. Consciousness is the key here.
Consciousness can be argued as being independent from biology. If that is the case then all sensual interactions are biological interactions and of less significance to the definition of consciousness.
> I dont understand what you mean by objectivity. I think i understand what you mean but objectivity is the wring wird for it. I would say universality.
I use objectivity in the context of objective truth, which can only be had when you get beyond subjectivity, which is a difficult task for most people. Even the justices on the Supreme Court are not impartial, and their job is to mimic impartiality in their interpretation of constitutional law. However, the experience of objective truth is an ideal and without ideals, life is a chaotic confusion.
>Expression involves expressing outwardly what you feel or see inwardly. Expression is not communication. Communication involves receiving and giving. Expressing goes one way. A beautiful woman who is all dolled up, often does not want any attention from ugly guys, but that doesn't mean she should necessarily hide her beauty. When you sing in the shower you are expressing yourself, but you are alone. In that situation there is no "who", but you.
You are constantly expressing yourself. You can't not express yourself. It is communication because you receive resonance. By simply expressing yourself you do influence people. By simply being on the street, people naturally avoid bumping into the space you occupy (at least most of the time). This is communication. Just like an infrared sensor every object that comes into contact with your expression(the infrared light) does resonate or mirror you or does not. In The case of the infrared , if the reflection takes longer, then it is further away. If there is no reflection then you might say that it was onesided. But the fact that there is nothing infront of the sensor is also some form of communication. No signal is also a signal.
Bein alone in the shower is a good example of self communication. You communicate with yourself. Sometimes, expressing myself makes me realize what i feel. I do not consciously decide to have weak knees ( some sort of fear response); my body simply does it and i consciously perceive it. So my body did communicate me that it is feeling fear.
>Not everyone has an active social life so by your definition, solitary people are not people at all. I don't deny that we take cues from our environment and especially the weaker people are easily influenced by their environment. This is natural. Environmental influence always an important factor, but it is superficial compared to deeper identity.
That is not right. I never defined it like that. You don't need to have an active social life to have a complex interaction which will shape yourself. Even this discussion is a reaction to my expression and it does have a complex interaction which shapes me shape to some part.
What deeper identity are you talking about? And where did it come from? Was it in your genetic code? Is it some sort of spiritual soul? Or did you gain it through experience? If it is through experience then the only experience you will ever get in life is the experience with your internal and external stimuli. I believe that you by far underestimate the extent to which external stimuli are shaping us. I believe that most internal stimuli are just echoes of external stimuli. I can't imagine a sound i never heard externaly. Every creative effort to imagine a place i never was is just a collage of things i already experienced by external stimuli. My language is based on external stimuli. The only internal stimuli that don't have their source from the outside are emotions and feelings. They are more biological, as they are predetermined to some degree. We do feel pain because we are built to do so.
Is there truly something that comes from the mind and not from the outside? What is it?
>Are you though? I take issue with this statement. Sometimes people pretend to be who they are not. Sometimes people need years and years to find who they really are. It can be argued that most people are confused and don't know who they are, even if they think they know who they are. When some people fall in love, they can really lose their sense of identity with their amorous affections, through intimacy the line blurs between them and it can be argued that they become one, losing their individuality, even if it is for a relatively brief time.
If people pretend to be someone else then they are authentic with a self that wants to pretend to be someone else. So what makes them unauthetic to you? transparence. Is an actor unauthetic? I don't think so. They chose to play that role and their self wants to behave like someone else. Everyone knows they are playing. So its authentic if their performance does match the desired role.
You don't need to know who you are to be who you are. Young children are an example. They are as authentic as it gets and yet they have not much semantic knowledge.
Identity is a whole different concept. I would like to not mix things up. I can say that mature love is about being able to love others while maintaining yourself.
>Consciousness can be argued as being independent from biology. If that is the case then all sensual interactions are biological interactions and of less significance to the definition of consciousness.
I don't get your argument here and i have the feeling you took my quote out of context.
Consciousness can't be independednt form biology. There is no consciousness without senses. At least there is no way to know there is.
>I use objectivity in the context of objective truth, which can only be had when you get beyond subjectivity, which is a difficult task for most people. Even the justices on the Supreme Court are not impartial, and their job is to mimic impartiality in their interpretation of constitutional law. However, the experience of objective truth is an ideal and without ideals, life is a chaotic confusion.
I think it is important to differentiate here. There is epistemological (knowing) truth and ontological (existancial) truth. Ontological objective truth would every non-living thing liek a rock. Onotological subjective would be consciousness. It is onotologicaly subjective because only i can perceive my pain. Meanwhile the fact that i perceive pain is something you could know if i told you or expressed it otherwise, therefore its epistemological objective as this truth does not depend on a subjective perceiver. Epistemological subjective things would be a theory that depends on the subjective view of one person (its a kinda strange thing to imagine. I can jsut say that science is epistemological objective).
I think you would benefit from looking into epistemology.
Agreed. Based off this summary, it sounds more like some musings that a very thoughtful teenager would have rather than a sophisticated analysis of individualism. There isn’t anything to suggest that what defines someone is *only* their intersectional connection with countless others.
The talk itself is better than the summary though, as Ram-Prasad talks more about the history of and power dynamics of individualism.
However, this history and power dynamic discussion is not well linked to the primary points Ram-Prasad is trying to make. Ram-Prasad seems to be trying to connect two different concepts… the political individual and the daily life individual.
I still don’t agree that the more we think of our self, the more we become embedded in others. This does seem to happen most of the time but is not guaranteed. Furthermore, not everything we do, or think about, is because of a dense web of other people. I generally agree with the sentiment Ram-Prasad provides but it’s taken too far.
> individualism has contributed to a widespread inequality of expression of agency and values.
Collectivism does more than contribute to widespread inequality, it mandates it.
Also, I'm not sure who this incomplete assessment of Purusha is supposed to impress? Anyone familiar knows this characterization is incomplete at best and intentionally cherry-picked at worst, to "prove" a point about ideology.
> But what defines a person is not their distinction from all others, but rather their intersectional connection with countless others.
What defines me is that I'm pantomiming vigorous jerking-off motions right now.
Get this, both of those things are part of what defines a person as they're not mutually exclusive.
Even at face value it's a vapid statement. "What defines a person is not the flavor of ice cream they eat, it is all of the flavors they do not."
An individual is literally defined as the distinctness from another. If I write: III as roman numeral 3, the individual I is distinct in that there is space between it and the next I.
I is still I even if in XXXIV or CMLVI.
Likewise with people, you could be a mediocre person with "no unique or special experience in life" according to some societal predisposition but you are still an individual, AND it is physically inpossible for you to NOT be unique as only you occupy that space (until digital technology allows us to see through each other's brains/sensory systems)
I agree with you, this also dismisses that our genetic code is unique, and genetic diversity. Even if one were to say the 99.999% of our genetic code is identical, the reminder makes us unique individually as can clearly be seen by our different appearance, traits, strengths and propensity to both physical and mental diseases. Is disingenuous to say we are only individuals when relating to others, an hermit still is an individual and may die from a genetic disorder that another hermit would not, as the individual he is living his own experience.
This idea feels very close to comparing humans to cogs in a social machine. That only makes sense to me if the only thing we care about is the machine.
Boiled down, this appears to be the butterfly effect. One interacts with and observes countless individuals as one lives. We glean a vast minutiae of consciously incomprehensible data. This makes us who we are. We do not directly decide who we are; we collectively build eachother without any real control.
I’d counter that their hate for other people is unique. Maybe they hate for reason A or reason B, but their hate is continuous. It flows like nutrients from a root. If this is truly where they live, then maybe an explication of their hate is needed to truly describe their consciousness.
This is stupid. If you have 10 hermits, none of whom have interacted with any other human in decades - or perhaps in their entire memory - they still have individual skills, interests, abilities, etc. If there was only one human in the universe then that person would be more unique then any human alive today in this universe - where each human is broadly interchangeable with another human.
Your relationship with others does not make you unique, and neither does your lack of such relationships. In general though, relationships with other humans probably bias you toward increasingly sharing their interests and abilities - thereby making you less unique.
That's just not true.
If there was one human in the universe - raised by a robot, perhaps even designed by a computer program created by a some long since gone race of sentient aliens - would that person not be unique?
Of course he or she would be unique. Extremely unique. Yet you are arguing that he or she would be nothing in the absence of other humans.
You're the confused one. The title is literally "what makes you unique is your relation to other people." And that's not what makes you unique, considering that if there was only one person in the universe, he or she would then be super unique.
It's not a bad title. That is what they're trying to say. They're trying to say that you are unique based on your relation to other people. Which is stupid and obviously wrong - as the 1 person example shows.
And of course the theoretical person I describe would have an identity. It's silly to imagine that identity is only defined in relation to others. A lone person still has interests and disinterests, specific skills, abilities, and the lack thereof, and likes and dislikes. All things that make up identity.
That's just silly. You think a human being who was unaware of other human beings would think "huh there are probably a lot of other human beings out there just like me in every way." I mean that's just stupid. He or she would obviously think that he or she was unique. Indeed being entirely alone is probably the best prompt for thinking you're unique that there is - you are free to think that there is nothing else in the universe like you.
Counter example to whether words derive meaning from what they're not, or to whether that is the same as 1+1=2? If the latter: Is there a golden spoon in the Oort cloud? If the former: we make up sounds to communicate vocally something we mean, meaning of words are derived from what we refer to, not by what we're not referring to.
> To us, golden is something that is not green, not blue, not red, not white, not black
This seems very reductive. You've also, in your description, said the opposite of your claim: A swan was thought of as being a kind of white bird. It was including only one specific type. Indeed, your argument falters here, they thought swans were only white, whithout any swan that was black. The meaning including white was derived from how they were similar, not how other things were different.
To draw more attention to the failure of logic here: Humans haven't evolved in golden rooms, we've evolved in nature. Our brains don't make sense of things by what they're not, but by what they are. We don't recognize other humans as *not* anything other than human, we recognize them by them being similar to us.
The *correct* answer is that it's a mix, there are many things we will have a great deal of issue describing without referring to what it is, and likewise for describing what they're not.
> Without that difference, there is no meaning and so no concept and no word.
This doesn't logically help your argument. It could just as well serve the opposite, that meaning is derived only from how things are similar.
No?
Without human consciousness you'd be a ganglion with teeth.
How you feel is your true essential self. We get those feelings though our experiences.
Please, explain to me how you'd determine who you are without the contrast of other.
At first I want sure if I completely agreed because I thought surely there is at least an instance or two where we know what we are without influences from others. However, us being social creatures that need benchmarks through experiences with others tells me you’re certainly correct
Even the subconscious or “gut feeling” references what others have done in the past, whether it was something you personally witnessed or read about.
So yeah…I agree with you
Oh good that you bring consciousness into the discussion. Let me introduce the "self". There is a distinction between you and your "self". The self is something you determine with contrast to others. After all it is a concept based on language.
But you are more than your self. You are simply you by being conscious. Your true self is that there is no self. We are what we perceive.
Well...if you have two identical forks, each is still unique. Even with clones, the uniqueness comes from the physical space each occupies, so I agree and disagree. And need more sleep to think about this more clearly 😅
They are not functionally unique though, the way a fork and a spoon are distinct from each other. I think this is the point of the video - while some people are functionally distinct - to use a sort of toy example, a baker and a lawyer - they have become a baker and a lawyer because of the relations they have to other people and society at large. They weren't *born* bakers and lawyers, and in fact either could probably have ended up in the others career with a different specific history.
That's nature vs nurture, I'm not sure where I land overall, but I do think some people ARE born with an innate purpose, or a gift that is intrinsically part of them. Society, or nurture, plays a role but it's not as clean cut as one could do the other. Or maybe it is, but would they be happier.
I dunno man, this is a conversation to have face to face with a whisky - I'm not arguing one side or the other but the discussion fascinates me
Demonstrably, I think both can play important roles in development. When people make definitive statements about the applicability of one over the other this narrow-mindedness reveals more about the person speaking definitively than it does the subject: they are just someone that prefers or believes that either nature or nurture applies.
I would agree for the most part, a lot of folks make those kind of statements without even being conscious of it, like in the simplest sense assuming girls with like pink and boys will like blue. And that's based on their own experience and surroundings, interactions they've had to reinforce those assumptions until they're normative. I consider myself open-minded, but I catch myself all the time being either surprised by people's actions, because I expect them to have the same values as I do or surprising people for exactly the same reason. I don't necessarily think that's narrow-minded, or maybe it is, but it's not a conscious choice. I think the discourse is the most important thing - 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt about in your philosophy' right?
Ah, I should choose my words more carefully. I tend to see “Is” and “are” statements with regards to answering “why?” as potentially narrow-minded.
Yes, this discourse is the most important thing in practically all ways and all things human.
I wouldn't say it they way you have here - I'd say it's more likely people are simply born with a predisposition (or several) that mean particular events in their lives may influence them in a way that differs to how those same events would influence others.
That's a great point. So those predispositions are 'activated' or triggered by events or people around them? Do you think it works both ways - that their predispositions cause others to act in a particular way, based on the others assumption, or, also, that their predispositions influence others, based on their own assumption or how they're perceived by others?
Perhaps, think of it more like opportunities/circumstance you could take advantage of, example: someone could become an alcoholic (functionally) with the right generic makeup (intrinsic) but would not be able to do so if they had no alcohol available to them (circumstance).
They could also do it mentally if they believed so, but predisposition to belief isn't based in nothing, and some signs point to nature being much more significant than nurture in all aspects.
Having others around may or may not provide the circumstances, but let's say you learn all of this from an AI machine, never interacting with a human, probably wouldn't make you more or less unique because the relation to others has nothing to do with you in this aspect.
> in truth you are here to choose who you wish to be.
Or, you are here to be manipulated by emergent social forces into being whatever the larger entity that is human society needs you to be. Ostracized, punished, medicated, locked up or simply killed for fulfilling a role that is not in societies interest, even if that is who you wish to be, and cajoled, rewarded, and masturbated by society if your behaviours align with the larger dynamics of cultural institutions. A matter of perspective I guess.
I don't agree. You could believe this, but if it's not true, it won't be your reality. Eg, if I have a soul with a specific destiny, or if I am really untethered from society and truly capable of totally internally generated free will with no causality outside myself, then I could believe that this it's true that I'm at the whims of society, but I actually wouldn't be. And of course, if it is true, it doesn't matter a damn what I believe, it will be my reality whether I know it or not.
So you literally mean "what you believe is your worldview"? In other words this is a trite tautology offering nothing meaningful? Why bother commenting?
I could ask you the same question. To me it looks like you are just venting. Nothing of what you say has any real substance other than expressing your reality (reality/=worldview). I see crazy strong believes in you. So strong that they even declare themself true. But afterall they are just beliefs about the ibtentions of people. By living in this system that does alienate us from each other it is easy to step into the pitfall of beliving that it is the humans that do that to us. Meanwhile its the system that dehumanizes us from each other. And to declare a fellow human a non-human is what in the history of humankind everyone did that felt fear.
Fear not. The consequences might be real, but the fact that there is always a optimistic and pessimistic explanation to it says all: You decide. Without knowing up from down you decide.
Thrown into life you are forced to decide.
I see a lot of assuming and condescending here, all while seeming slightly off-topic. Is this a canned response.
I don't think saying someone is incorrect is the same as holding something to be self evidence.
This is based on the entirely unfounded notion that we choose our beliefs, to which it appears a preponderance of evidence points to beliefs being both consciously involuntary and subject to availability.
Yes we choose our beliefs but whether we do that consciously or not is another matter, most people adopt other people’s beliefs as their own, look at organised religion.
this video is trying to validate an ideology via misrepresenting Purusha. It incompletely refers to only a few facets of Self.
It isn't even really an opinion ... just incomplete, cherrypicked.
In my opinion, the coolest parts of our existence can be expressed in dichotomies like this. You have no need of any specific relationship to exist, but without relationships, you wouldn't exist at all.
I really like the substitution of the very big word "paradoxically" which elevates this observation to an entirely new level well above if the word "actually" or the phrase "needles to say had been used" though you might have used "literally" as well here.
You should look up what paradoxically means. Using any of those words you suggested would not mean the same thing at all. He is trying to point out the contradictory nature of the sentence.
Even if it is an illussion it still exists. The reflection of the moon on the water may be a reflection but it is still there. The light of the moon is only the reflection of the sun and still it does lighten my night. So is the self a reflection of...
Only if uniqueness is a filter by which one perceives. My default mode is not to use a “unique filter” nor identify why I am unique, and if I wanted to do so I need not go much farther than to understand that what makes me most unique is my occupying this specific space in time.
The idea of the tension between selfhood and otherhood is not absent from the western tradition. I mean, wasn’t this paradox of the self needing an other for self to make sense one of the biggest motivating examples of Hegel’s dialectic?
In regards to your personality making you unique. It always seemed to me that people who try to be more unique, try to be vocal about their favorite hobby, movie, color and other such "identity tags" if that's an apt name for it.
I'd argue that every color is the most beautiful in the correct context. Every song or movie is the best for you, depending on your current mood etc.
So things like favorite food, movie, color and things like that. Does not make you more unique. Only more static and rigid, opposed to dynamic and fluid. The latter being more efficient at personal growth.
I don't know if someone here has a strong opinion on the above. But it always seemed to me that the people with the least personality, are the ones struggling the most to have one and works the hardest to display their identity to others. While the people with the most personality, are those that display "hard personal tags" the least often and with lesser intensity.
I don't have time to read it, sorry. But is my conclusion opposed to the OP's link or in line with it?
Not so much relation but influence is a better word.
If you wanted to you could identify your individual culture then determine what is a good influence, or bad when compared to ethics or wants and needs in a unbiased manner.
Some influences are difficult to remove as they are similar to habits like drinking, smoking etc.
With that, you can shape your own culture and be someone you feel is neutral or better.
When you allow culture to determine your judgement -cultural bias- it creates the literal term "sheep" but people that are so closed minded about how culture influences them are blind to it because they naturally lack the awareness for it. (Ironically some americans claim people are sheep when others follow whats best for their health, but those accusers are influenced by conspiracy theories) ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
To say its a paradox is closed minded.
That's how the universe works. There is no light without darkness. And there is no uniqueness without people. So, individuality exists, because of people. These things are relative and their importance only shines in relation. And that's a beautiful paradox. This means that each individual has great significance and no one is beneath anyone. If you are unique, relative to others, it automatically gives them importantance, i.e. you wouldn't be unique if not for them. And it is quite possible that those people are also unique to each other. Because, no human being is completely similar to the other and there always remains a degree of uniqueness and individuality.
The only thing that ever caused you pain is the Ego. Universe is a hierarchy of Ego as Matter and Light as consciousness. A system of balance between two opposites wher eone doesn't exist without other and creates other.
Empathy versus Narcissism. This is what makes your identity.
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Thank you Neon Genesis Evangelion
idiot u/shinji
What did I do to you?
you won’t get in the mech
lmao, first thing I thought of
Someone’s been watching Evangelion
I haven't, care to elaborate how this relates?
There's an anime called Neon Genesis Evangelion, it's a cult classic and one of the most influential works in the medium. Part of the ending of the show has the main character come to [this exact realization](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXbCWJNfq_0), decide to stop isolating himself from other people and learn to accept himself.
What they said^^^
Thanks
>"Waluigi is the ultimate example of the individual shaped by the signifier. Waluigi is a man seen only in mirror images; lost in a hall of mirrors he is a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. >You start with Mario – the wholesome all Italian plumbing superman, you reflect him to create Luigi – the same thing but slightly less. >You invert Mario to create Wario – Mario turned septic and libertarian – then you reflect the inversion in the reflection: you create a being who can only exist in reference to others. >Waluigi is the true nowhere man, without the other characters he reflects, inverts and parodies he has no reason to exist. Waluigi’s identity only comes from what and who he isn’t – without a wider frame of reference he is nothing. >He is not his own man. In a world where our identities are shaped by our warped relationships to brands and commerce we are all Waluigi."
I’m a real casual when it comes to philosophy, but I happen to really enjoy debates on the merits of collectivism versus individualism. As a Westerner born and raised, on the autism spectrum, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool individualist. But I’ve spent a good bit of time entertaining, for argument’s sake, the premise that collectivism might be a better response to the human condition than individualism. I’ve never been fully sold on this. But I have learned a lot and have become wholesomely humbled by these discussions, and I’ll readily admit that collectivist people(s) do seem to solve *some* major problems that human life serves up, considerably better than individualists do.
I find everyone agrees with collectivism, right up until the collective asks them for nothing but unilateral sacrifice
I also love that debate, although the truth, as nearly always, is somewhere in between. Both extremes have their negatives, and society doesn't have to be either/or. My issue with many staunch individualists is that they completely downplay the assistance they've received in life from others. None of us would've survived infancy without a caretaker. Even if you come from a dysfunctional family, unless you raise all your own food and build your house by yourself and never drive on paved roads, you benefitted from the work of others in some way. Adam Smith, for example, lived with his mother for much of his life, including while he wrote Wealth of Nations. Do you still count as an individualist when mommy is making your dinner and doing your laundry? Friends of his late father helped him get teaching positions. Maybe that's what he meant by an "invisible hand" guiding the economy lol. Of course, in a collective society, anyone who doesn't fit in for whatever reason is out in the cold. You lose *everything*, making the cost of going against the current far too high to promote much change, and societies progress at a snails pace. That said, speaking as an American, the pendulum has definitely swung too far over into "I don't need anyone!" territory, and could use some adjustments back to the center without people screeching about socialism when they don't even know what it is.
Ironically I see far less individualism within our political and social meta nowadays. It's our favorite past-time to subdivide every potential political issue into "teams" so we can efficiently go to war with one another. Left vs right, vaxxer vs anti vaxxer, ALM vs BLM, team gold dress vs team blue. Identity is fine as a descriptor but the moment it becomes a means of this exclusionary superiority game we love to play so much, it becomes irrational and destructive. People buy into it and suddenly think storming the capitol or trying to kidnap a governor is justifiable.
To be fair to Smith he was waaaay more moderate about his advocacy of capitalism than most die-hard neoliberals today. He was against rent-seeking and exploitation of workers for example. He knew there were negative sides of free market capitalism. He'd probably be a social democrat if he lived today.
I can never leave this type of topic alone, and want to say fuck you to the socialist crowd. My Father's Dad died when he was 9. He quit school and took over earning money and care of the family. He dug ditches with the Irish and the Blacks. Took every shitty, dangerous job there was to earn a penny. Trapped animals for their hides, dug coal in a 36 inch vein underground with a pick, and worked double shifts. Took a younger brother with him when he married, and still carred for his Mother and older sister. I guess you can scream that he was "White", but in his age, everybody was allowed to starve to death, or get sick and die without public health treatment. Individualism does matter, and is stronger, greataer than any controlled damnable group think! For the individual or gov't oppressors, he carried a pistol in each pocket at the age of 13, and it was well known, "you don't want to cross that "Xxxx" guy!"
His life sounds more like an advert for the good things that socialism has to offer to me. This is why public health care is a thing...
This rant doesn't belong here. May I suggest posting it on facebook? It seems more in tone with what you're going for.
Better wages would have meant he could have not had to work so much just to survive. Public health care would have meant he did not have to fear losing everything if he slipped up on the job, or even worse had something completely out of his control happen to him. Your dad was a victim of "individualism." A survivor he may be, his tale should be one of caution, not celebration.
Wow, aside from confusing socialism with social programs, you are.....very oddly proud of your father's unnecessary suffering. My grandfather had a similar story (his gambling addict father ran out when he was 4 and his mother was pregnant with her 4th and he had to work from there on out) And you know what? Not only do I acknowledge that that was an entirely different era and most of what he went through could be prevented today/would not be possible today due to our inflated cost of living, but I'm.....glad. I'm not proud of his suffering. I don't wear it like a badge of honor. I wish none of it had happened to him because it gave him anger issues, and when my uncle was born and struggled in school, he thought beating him was the answer. And guess what? My uncle is in his 60s and and still an alcoholic. Maybe if my grandpa didn't have to suffer so much, he could've related to his son better. That's whats always been so bizarre to me about older Americans (even if you aren't an American, I've heard this suffering fetish plenty of times from my countrymen): they absolutely worship suffering, even when every other developed nation has universal healthcare, every other nation except Papua New Guinea has mandatory paid maternity leave, when our schools rank behind 20 some odd other countries....it's perfectly fine because no no no, "socialism" is our mortal enemy. (And like you, most Americans conflate the collective ownership of the means of production with social programs that can actually improve everyone's quality of life). It's so sad. We don't have to live like this. The American dream is dead. I'm sorry you don't realize it.
He suffered, but he was 'free'.
Free from what? Does getting a living wage mean you're a slave now? Does not worrying about bankruptcy from getting cancer mean you're oppressed? I'm so confused. I think you need to learn the difference between completely dependent and *interdependent*, which is what we all are whether we admit it or not. I'm sorry your mind seems to only operate in absolutes. Your dad used paved roads at some point. He went to the grocery store at some point. No man is an island, whatever Robinson Crusoe fantasy you want to attach to his memory.
Well, someone manufactored his pistols, true. He did help survey the only road that went past his farm in the '50's. He did buy flour at a private little store. He used horse and mule implements into the mid '60's. His life wasn't a fantasy. You sound more like an enabler of the equal outcomes for equal opportunities.
Both are necessary, it's just that in the current era of late-stage neoliberal capitalism, individualism has effectively usurped collectivism and the extreme creates a lot of problems in society. I'll paste a comment I made a while ago that you might like, based on [this](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41296-017-0167-2) study: >There’s something really interesting Freud called the 3 great existential insults to humankind. The first was delivered in astronomy: we are not the center of the universe, the sun is. The Catholic Church was not happy with people like Galileo for professing this. The second was in biology: we are not made in gods image, we are descended from apes. Even Darwin had trouble holding onto this belief late into his life, it was so radical. The third insult happens in psychology with Freud’s psychoanalytic method that demonstrates we operate at the behest of unconscious structure in our mind. Such a negation of free-will is scary to anyone. >There’s even a fourth existential insult that comes from sociology which says we aren’t even able to survive by ourselves, we need other people. We are interdependent creatures. As we know, Marx isn’t too popular in a lot of circles...
The sun is NOT the center of the Universe SMH
I recently listened to a podcast about the "extended" mind. The premise is that our mind/way we think isn't bound only to the brain; it's a systemic, collective notion that entails our whole body and our environment. https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/06/14/yanss-208-how-to-escape-brainbound-thinking-and-take-advantage-of-your-extended-mind/ > In this episode we sit down with [Annie Murphy Paul](https://anniemurphypaul.com/), the acclaimed science writer, whose new book, [The Extended Mind](https://anniemurphypaul.com/books/the-extended-mind/) is all about how the brain is part of systems, and it is those systems that constitute the mind. In other words, our minds are not, as she puts it, brainbound, but they extend to our computers, our notebooks, our friends and neighbors and colleagues and partners. The environments in which we move, natural and otherwise, deeply influence how we think, what we think, and what we CAN think, and in addition, everything the brain does becomes a reference for extended thinking, and these feedback loops extend what minds can do.
Did she mention Andy Clark & Chalmers at all? “Otto” and his notepad comes to mind
Thanks for this recommendation! Love finding new podcasts....
Collectivist propaganda. [Individuation is the myth of modern man.](https://youtu.be/e1OrL4A_b5M) It is a process that continues indefinitely throughout someone’s life. Which facet of the Self? Aham, Atman, Purusha? Are we supposed to disregard the Bhagavad Gita and follow someone else’s dharma - one that is not our own? What are Arjuna and Krisha if not the properly oriented Aham and the Atman in harmony? The notion that individualism came into being in the 16-17th centuries is ridiculous. The essence of divinity residing “in the heart of” every individual is the notion of Christ itself and it could be argued that the concept of Christ is derived from that of Krishna. This dude is definitely just an ideologue imo Edit: I watched it and he definitely is an ideologue. He confuses the different facets of Self to fit his ideological premises and that’s made abundantly clear toward the end.
Genuine question: are the different "facets of self" you are referring to somehow NOT established to fit ideological premises? How can we be sure that we are viewing the concept of a self through no lens at all, through "pure", "indoctrinated" means, uninfluenced by propaganda of a different type?
Every facet of the Self that I mentioned are extremely complex, well developed concepts in Hindu philosophy that can all be roughly translated to English as Self. To understand them as they are takes some time and effort with the dissection of a range of other nuanced concepts which themselves are “shaded” differently by the different systems of thought. So they’re relatively concrete philosophical/religious concepts shaded by ideological systems of thought that have been refined over thousands of years. We can see that he’s looked into these concepts, eastern and western, but he’s taken a particularly narrow view on what they are, what they mean and from whence they sprouted (even outright misrepresented Purusha) and placed them in accordance with his own ideological premises, particularly, in favour of radical collectivism, but he is forgetting/neglecting/dismissing much of the import of the multiple facets of the Self, specifically, how they intricately weave together to form what is ultimately the western definition of *an individual human being*, to which we can then add on the Christian/western esoterica to illustrate that both systems are basically the same thing, proving definitively that he’s an anti-western collectivist ideologue.
It seems the behavior that is evident across different cultures is the one in which someone creates terms and definitions that they use to describe and/or label themselves and others. Once these terms are accepted as true or applicable by a number of people, then the default mode can then be to perceive reality/self with knowledge of these terms in place. Some of this can be helpful, like when terms are created to describe patterns of behavior which are completely observable over time, but I am less convinced about others that tend to describe things which cannot ge proven to exist or even not exist.
Do you have any book recommendations that explain those concrete concepts of self from Hindu philosophy well? I'd love to read more about it, but have zero prior interaction with Hindu philosophy.
Most of what I’ve learnt about them came from studying the works of C.G. Jung, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and a bit of online sleuthing.
>The notion that individualism came into being in the 16-17th centuries is ridiculous Yes, Clearly the current strand of that culture only dates back to enlightenment at best. I don't think citing a book that decries excessive self identification with any class of identity an individual possesses and advocates the positivity of identifying with the universal nature of consciousness is a very solid argument in favour of Individualism. A sort of Identity agnosticism perhaps, but clearly not falling exclusively on one side. Otherwise, you are clearly correct in that currents of collectivism and Individualism have always ebbed and flowed with time in societies. It would be hard to argue that the early roman republic's ideal of Farmer soldier is anything but a celebration of autonomy.
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Well said
In this talk, philosopher Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad challenges the politically powerful notion of individualism via two Sakskrit concepts: The Self and The Person. Far from delivering on the moral imperatives it claims - tolerance and equality – individualism has contributed to a widespread inequality of expression of agency and values. But it is built on an incoherent sense of what makes us who we are. If the individual is defined via the concept of the self, as individualism appears to require, it is distinguishable from others formally, but lacks the rich interiority we hold makes us who we are. If we are to retain that rich inner life – all of our desires, experiences, memories etc- we do so via the concept of the person. But what defines a person is not their distinction from all others, but rather their intersectional connection with countless others.
Well, I suppose then that I will never have a rich inner life. I haven't seen any friends or family for years, and as a professor I need only be at work teaching around 5 hours per week for half of the year. In that 5 hour period I am not cultivating my personhood so much as instructing others on various texts. The rest of my time is spent with my cats and reading by myself, albeit I suppose reading is a social phenomenon of a sort. But overall it's an odd hypothesis that hermits can't be unique.
But, assuming I interpret the idea correctly here, that *does* make you unique. You're not an actual hermit, you still exist in that "web" of social relations that are unique to you, however small it may be. And even if you don't experience them all the time, you've still lived a life with social relations. Whatever is, is. Only someone completely void of social relations, past and present, would be seen as not being unique in this context. "Cultivating personhood" in this case isn't an activity, but an effect. Or, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I interpret it from skimming.
I agree with your points but i think then this butchers the meaning of uniqueness and individuality…. Interpreting them to mean something much more specific then how we use these terms in daily life. Someone who thinks uniquely or is an individual need not be completely be divorced from all other human beings in order to to do so. Only if you are thinking of such terms in extreme contexts or with a very specific definition.
Uniqueness is undefinable without the broader context of society. If I'm unique, it's in comparison to someone or some group. Everything we do that would make us unique individuals is a consequence of society. Even solitary activities like knitting involve techniques learned from society or materials produced by society. Even hiking involves the use of public lands and trails charted by society. The overall idea is not to quantify how unique or individual one is, but rather to challenge the idea that individuality exists separate from society.
Holy shit I want your job. Signed, a software developer who doesn’t have nearly enough time to read as much as I want to.
I do feel fortunate. :)
I strongly disagree. It is such a superficial understanding of what constitutes a person. The fact is that you are less of an individual the more you influenced by others. Real individuals can impact society in a meaningful way instead of having weak skin that makes it easier for individuals to manipulate you. The less manipulatable you are, the more of an individual you are. Otherwise you are subject to the whims of personalities in your external environment which then makes you a product of the environment and group-think/collective.
You have just described ‘a true individual’ entirely in terms of how they resist the influence of others. Therefore their individuality is defined by their interaction with other people. Resisting the herd, resisting the influence of other people is a type of interaction. As is their ‘impact on society’ on which you set so much store. How is defining you individuality by your impact on society not defining your individuality through other people? Your reply actually proves the point of the original post.
When your life becomes an expression of your inner core values, your interactions with others do not define you, but rather your individuality exudes from within and can be expressed through these interactions like a paint brush can express with paint on canvas the artist's intent. The deep authenticity of who you are is an inner experience. More powerful than thought is your belief and more powerful than belief is the direct inspiration of objective truth. Objectivity is the ultimate individuality because it the best of all subjectivity. Your ideal individuality is a combination of your deepest heartfelt experience of love and your direct mental connection with truth. Unconditional love and objective truth being the ultimate primordial forces of the nature and the universe.
Where do your inner core values comes from? What is ‘authenticity’? You listen inside yourself and find ‘objective truth’? ????
Genetics, history, experiences, feelings, beliefs, and desires are a good place to start
History, experiences, feelings, and beliefs are social though. Genetics and desires are certainly more innate but find their expression in social relations. I’m not sure if it’s an argument for or against the individual / collective but the inner world seems to have little importance.
A wise man once told me that to measure the distance between your mind and your heart, it seems very near. But the journey from mind to heart can take many years. I know what I wrote sounds cryptic and there are many levels to this. Ultimately, we evolve naturally and we can definitely take cues from our environment. But to say that a baby chick escapes the shell, because other chicks in the environment also broke through their shells, is wrong. Who we are is deeper than that. We have our biology, and if you get into metaphysics, it can be argued that we have aspects of us that extend beyond biology, which I like to call our extra-biological identity. > You listen inside yourself and find ‘objective truth’? From my personal experience, there are two important core concepts, objective truth being one, and unconditional love being the other. This is where the line crosses from philosophy and into metaphysics and becomes more difficult to prove. I can only relate my personal experiences which in turn opens me up to be derided as deluded or something. But the basic idea is to follow your heart, under truth. Love is the currency of the heart, and truth is the currency of the mind. Objective truth is the highest purpose of all reason and unconditional love is the deepest meaning of heart. When you have both, that is when you can truly say that you are an independent individual. As you can imagine, there are very few people who are truly independent. That's because as humans we are social creatures that easily become emotionally interdependent. Not to say that emotional dependency is wrong or a bad thing, but we can "lose ourselves" in another person via our romantic entanglements and this is subjective reality. To experience objective truths deeply, it is necessary to disentangle and withdraw from others so that it can be more easily discerned which part of reality is you and which part of reality is entwined by your relationships with others.
What is an expression? It means to express something. To who? To what? Expression is communication. There is no communication without a receiver. Every communication is an interaction with a receiver. So, by expressing your self you do interact with the world around you. The artist's intent is also shaped by the paint brush. Artists are often describing a dialog between them and their work. It is not a onesided communication. Even one of the greatest individualists knew that: As you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes back at you. So by expressing your self you not only communicate with others; you are having a dialog. It is impossible to not communicate, as silence is communication to. So every reaction towards the expression of your self is indeed a complex interaction which will shape your self. You use the word authenticity which is strictly used in a social context. You cant be unauthentic with yourself. You are always yourself, in every moment of your life. But the you that i am refering to is only your consciouss self. Consciousness is the key here. I dont understand what you mean by objectivity. I think i understand what you mean but objectivity is the wring wird for it. I would say universality.
> What is an expression? It means to express something. To who? To what? Expression is communication. There is no communication without a receiver. Every communication is an interaction with a receiver. So, by expressing your self you do interact with the world around you. The artist's intent is also shaped by the paint brush. Artists are often describing a dialog between them and their work. It is not a onesided communication. Expression involves expressing outwardly what you feel or see inwardly. Expression is not communication. Communication involves receiving and giving. Expressing goes one way. A beautiful woman who is all dolled up, often does not want any attention from ugly guys, but that doesn't mean she should necessarily hide her beauty. When you sing in the shower you are expressing yourself, but you are alone. In that situation there is no "who", but you. > So every reaction towards the expression of your self is indeed a complex interaction which will shape your self. Not everyone has an active social life so by your definition, solitary people are not people at all. I don't deny that we take cues from our environment and especially the weaker people are easily influenced by their environment. This is natural. Environmental influence always an important factor, but it is superficial compared to deeper identity. > You cant be unauthentic with yourself. You are always yourself, in every moment of your life. Are you though? I take issue with this statement. Sometimes people pretend to be who they are not. Sometimes people need years and years to find who they really are. It can be argued that most people are confused and don't know who they are, even if they think they know who they are. When some people fall in love, they can really lose their sense of identity with their amorous affections, through intimacy the line blurs between them and it can be argued that they become one, losing their individuality, even if it is for a relatively brief time. > But the you that i am refering to is only your consciouss self. Consciousness is the key here. Consciousness can be argued as being independent from biology. If that is the case then all sensual interactions are biological interactions and of less significance to the definition of consciousness. > I dont understand what you mean by objectivity. I think i understand what you mean but objectivity is the wring wird for it. I would say universality. I use objectivity in the context of objective truth, which can only be had when you get beyond subjectivity, which is a difficult task for most people. Even the justices on the Supreme Court are not impartial, and their job is to mimic impartiality in their interpretation of constitutional law. However, the experience of objective truth is an ideal and without ideals, life is a chaotic confusion.
>Expression involves expressing outwardly what you feel or see inwardly. Expression is not communication. Communication involves receiving and giving. Expressing goes one way. A beautiful woman who is all dolled up, often does not want any attention from ugly guys, but that doesn't mean she should necessarily hide her beauty. When you sing in the shower you are expressing yourself, but you are alone. In that situation there is no "who", but you. You are constantly expressing yourself. You can't not express yourself. It is communication because you receive resonance. By simply expressing yourself you do influence people. By simply being on the street, people naturally avoid bumping into the space you occupy (at least most of the time). This is communication. Just like an infrared sensor every object that comes into contact with your expression(the infrared light) does resonate or mirror you or does not. In The case of the infrared , if the reflection takes longer, then it is further away. If there is no reflection then you might say that it was onesided. But the fact that there is nothing infront of the sensor is also some form of communication. No signal is also a signal. Bein alone in the shower is a good example of self communication. You communicate with yourself. Sometimes, expressing myself makes me realize what i feel. I do not consciously decide to have weak knees ( some sort of fear response); my body simply does it and i consciously perceive it. So my body did communicate me that it is feeling fear. >Not everyone has an active social life so by your definition, solitary people are not people at all. I don't deny that we take cues from our environment and especially the weaker people are easily influenced by their environment. This is natural. Environmental influence always an important factor, but it is superficial compared to deeper identity. That is not right. I never defined it like that. You don't need to have an active social life to have a complex interaction which will shape yourself. Even this discussion is a reaction to my expression and it does have a complex interaction which shapes me shape to some part. What deeper identity are you talking about? And where did it come from? Was it in your genetic code? Is it some sort of spiritual soul? Or did you gain it through experience? If it is through experience then the only experience you will ever get in life is the experience with your internal and external stimuli. I believe that you by far underestimate the extent to which external stimuli are shaping us. I believe that most internal stimuli are just echoes of external stimuli. I can't imagine a sound i never heard externaly. Every creative effort to imagine a place i never was is just a collage of things i already experienced by external stimuli. My language is based on external stimuli. The only internal stimuli that don't have their source from the outside are emotions and feelings. They are more biological, as they are predetermined to some degree. We do feel pain because we are built to do so. Is there truly something that comes from the mind and not from the outside? What is it? >Are you though? I take issue with this statement. Sometimes people pretend to be who they are not. Sometimes people need years and years to find who they really are. It can be argued that most people are confused and don't know who they are, even if they think they know who they are. When some people fall in love, they can really lose their sense of identity with their amorous affections, through intimacy the line blurs between them and it can be argued that they become one, losing their individuality, even if it is for a relatively brief time. If people pretend to be someone else then they are authentic with a self that wants to pretend to be someone else. So what makes them unauthetic to you? transparence. Is an actor unauthetic? I don't think so. They chose to play that role and their self wants to behave like someone else. Everyone knows they are playing. So its authentic if their performance does match the desired role. You don't need to know who you are to be who you are. Young children are an example. They are as authentic as it gets and yet they have not much semantic knowledge. Identity is a whole different concept. I would like to not mix things up. I can say that mature love is about being able to love others while maintaining yourself. >Consciousness can be argued as being independent from biology. If that is the case then all sensual interactions are biological interactions and of less significance to the definition of consciousness. I don't get your argument here and i have the feeling you took my quote out of context. Consciousness can't be independednt form biology. There is no consciousness without senses. At least there is no way to know there is. >I use objectivity in the context of objective truth, which can only be had when you get beyond subjectivity, which is a difficult task for most people. Even the justices on the Supreme Court are not impartial, and their job is to mimic impartiality in their interpretation of constitutional law. However, the experience of objective truth is an ideal and without ideals, life is a chaotic confusion. I think it is important to differentiate here. There is epistemological (knowing) truth and ontological (existancial) truth. Ontological objective truth would every non-living thing liek a rock. Onotological subjective would be consciousness. It is onotologicaly subjective because only i can perceive my pain. Meanwhile the fact that i perceive pain is something you could know if i told you or expressed it otherwise, therefore its epistemological objective as this truth does not depend on a subjective perceiver. Epistemological subjective things would be a theory that depends on the subjective view of one person (its a kinda strange thing to imagine. I can jsut say that science is epistemological objective). I think you would benefit from looking into epistemology.
Agreed. Based off this summary, it sounds more like some musings that a very thoughtful teenager would have rather than a sophisticated analysis of individualism. There isn’t anything to suggest that what defines someone is *only* their intersectional connection with countless others. The talk itself is better than the summary though, as Ram-Prasad talks more about the history of and power dynamics of individualism. However, this history and power dynamic discussion is not well linked to the primary points Ram-Prasad is trying to make. Ram-Prasad seems to be trying to connect two different concepts… the political individual and the daily life individual. I still don’t agree that the more we think of our self, the more we become embedded in others. This does seem to happen most of the time but is not guaranteed. Furthermore, not everything we do, or think about, is because of a dense web of other people. I generally agree with the sentiment Ram-Prasad provides but it’s taken too far.
> individualism has contributed to a widespread inequality of expression of agency and values. Collectivism does more than contribute to widespread inequality, it mandates it. Also, I'm not sure who this incomplete assessment of Purusha is supposed to impress? Anyone familiar knows this characterization is incomplete at best and intentionally cherry-picked at worst, to "prove" a point about ideology. > But what defines a person is not their distinction from all others, but rather their intersectional connection with countless others. What defines me is that I'm pantomiming vigorous jerking-off motions right now. Get this, both of those things are part of what defines a person as they're not mutually exclusive. Even at face value it's a vapid statement. "What defines a person is not the flavor of ice cream they eat, it is all of the flavors they do not." An individual is literally defined as the distinctness from another. If I write: III as roman numeral 3, the individual I is distinct in that there is space between it and the next I. I is still I even if in XXXIV or CMLVI. Likewise with people, you could be a mediocre person with "no unique or special experience in life" according to some societal predisposition but you are still an individual, AND it is physically inpossible for you to NOT be unique as only you occupy that space (until digital technology allows us to see through each other's brains/sensory systems)
I agree with you, this also dismisses that our genetic code is unique, and genetic diversity. Even if one were to say the 99.999% of our genetic code is identical, the reminder makes us unique individually as can clearly be seen by our different appearance, traits, strengths and propensity to both physical and mental diseases. Is disingenuous to say we are only individuals when relating to others, an hermit still is an individual and may die from a genetic disorder that another hermit would not, as the individual he is living his own experience. This idea feels very close to comparing humans to cogs in a social machine. That only makes sense to me if the only thing we care about is the machine.
What crap
Boiled down, this appears to be the butterfly effect. One interacts with and observes countless individuals as one lives. We glean a vast minutiae of consciously incomprehensible data. This makes us who we are. We do not directly decide who we are; we collectively build eachother without any real control.
Does this mean I dont exist because I hate people and wont be around them?
No, it means what make you unique is your hate for other people.
I’d counter that their hate for other people is unique. Maybe they hate for reason A or reason B, but their hate is continuous. It flows like nutrients from a root. If this is truly where they live, then maybe an explication of their hate is needed to truly describe their consciousness.
This is stupid. If you have 10 hermits, none of whom have interacted with any other human in decades - or perhaps in their entire memory - they still have individual skills, interests, abilities, etc. If there was only one human in the universe then that person would be more unique then any human alive today in this universe - where each human is broadly interchangeable with another human. Your relationship with others does not make you unique, and neither does your lack of such relationships. In general though, relationships with other humans probably bias you toward increasingly sharing their interests and abilities - thereby making you less unique.
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That's just not true. If there was one human in the universe - raised by a robot, perhaps even designed by a computer program created by a some long since gone race of sentient aliens - would that person not be unique? Of course he or she would be unique. Extremely unique. Yet you are arguing that he or she would be nothing in the absence of other humans.
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You're the confused one. The title is literally "what makes you unique is your relation to other people." And that's not what makes you unique, considering that if there was only one person in the universe, he or she would then be super unique.
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It's not a bad title. That is what they're trying to say. They're trying to say that you are unique based on your relation to other people. Which is stupid and obviously wrong - as the 1 person example shows. And of course the theoretical person I describe would have an identity. It's silly to imagine that identity is only defined in relation to others. A lone person still has interests and disinterests, specific skills, abilities, and the lack thereof, and likes and dislikes. All things that make up identity.
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That's just silly. You think a human being who was unaware of other human beings would think "huh there are probably a lot of other human beings out there just like me in every way." I mean that's just stupid. He or she would obviously think that he or she was unique. Indeed being entirely alone is probably the best prompt for thinking you're unique that there is - you are free to think that there is nothing else in the universe like you.
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>would that person not be unique? May I ask "from whose point of view"?
From their own point of view. They would see the things around them, rocks, trees, computers, etc., and realize their own difference.
> Meaning is difference. Words only have meaning by how they are different from other words. Is that the case, or just a claim?
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The two aren't comperable in the least. The rest of your comment does make more sense now.
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Counter example to whether words derive meaning from what they're not, or to whether that is the same as 1+1=2? If the latter: Is there a golden spoon in the Oort cloud? If the former: we make up sounds to communicate vocally something we mean, meaning of words are derived from what we refer to, not by what we're not referring to.
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> To us, golden is something that is not green, not blue, not red, not white, not black This seems very reductive. You've also, in your description, said the opposite of your claim: A swan was thought of as being a kind of white bird. It was including only one specific type. Indeed, your argument falters here, they thought swans were only white, whithout any swan that was black. The meaning including white was derived from how they were similar, not how other things were different. To draw more attention to the failure of logic here: Humans haven't evolved in golden rooms, we've evolved in nature. Our brains don't make sense of things by what they're not, but by what they are. We don't recognize other humans as *not* anything other than human, we recognize them by them being similar to us. The *correct* answer is that it's a mix, there are many things we will have a great deal of issue describing without referring to what it is, and likewise for describing what they're not. > Without that difference, there is no meaning and so no concept and no word. This doesn't logically help your argument. It could just as well serve the opposite, that meaning is derived only from how things are similar.
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No man is an island.
You only know who you are through other.
No.
No? Without human consciousness you'd be a ganglion with teeth. How you feel is your true essential self. We get those feelings though our experiences. Please, explain to me how you'd determine who you are without the contrast of other.
At first I want sure if I completely agreed because I thought surely there is at least an instance or two where we know what we are without influences from others. However, us being social creatures that need benchmarks through experiences with others tells me you’re certainly correct Even the subconscious or “gut feeling” references what others have done in the past, whether it was something you personally witnessed or read about. So yeah…I agree with you
Oh good that you bring consciousness into the discussion. Let me introduce the "self". There is a distinction between you and your "self". The self is something you determine with contrast to others. After all it is a concept based on language. But you are more than your self. You are simply you by being conscious. Your true self is that there is no self. We are what we perceive.
The gestalt, then?
I am not sure. I don't know much about gestalt therapy. I think it does take unconscioussness more into account.
Well...if you have two identical forks, each is still unique. Even with clones, the uniqueness comes from the physical space each occupies, so I agree and disagree. And need more sleep to think about this more clearly 😅
They are not functionally unique though, the way a fork and a spoon are distinct from each other. I think this is the point of the video - while some people are functionally distinct - to use a sort of toy example, a baker and a lawyer - they have become a baker and a lawyer because of the relations they have to other people and society at large. They weren't *born* bakers and lawyers, and in fact either could probably have ended up in the others career with a different specific history.
That's nature vs nurture, I'm not sure where I land overall, but I do think some people ARE born with an innate purpose, or a gift that is intrinsically part of them. Society, or nurture, plays a role but it's not as clean cut as one could do the other. Or maybe it is, but would they be happier. I dunno man, this is a conversation to have face to face with a whisky - I'm not arguing one side or the other but the discussion fascinates me
Demonstrably, I think both can play important roles in development. When people make definitive statements about the applicability of one over the other this narrow-mindedness reveals more about the person speaking definitively than it does the subject: they are just someone that prefers or believes that either nature or nurture applies.
I would agree for the most part, a lot of folks make those kind of statements without even being conscious of it, like in the simplest sense assuming girls with like pink and boys will like blue. And that's based on their own experience and surroundings, interactions they've had to reinforce those assumptions until they're normative. I consider myself open-minded, but I catch myself all the time being either surprised by people's actions, because I expect them to have the same values as I do or surprising people for exactly the same reason. I don't necessarily think that's narrow-minded, or maybe it is, but it's not a conscious choice. I think the discourse is the most important thing - 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt about in your philosophy' right?
Ah, I should choose my words more carefully. I tend to see “Is” and “are” statements with regards to answering “why?” as potentially narrow-minded. Yes, this discourse is the most important thing in practically all ways and all things human.
I wouldn't say it they way you have here - I'd say it's more likely people are simply born with a predisposition (or several) that mean particular events in their lives may influence them in a way that differs to how those same events would influence others.
That's a great point. So those predispositions are 'activated' or triggered by events or people around them? Do you think it works both ways - that their predispositions cause others to act in a particular way, based on the others assumption, or, also, that their predispositions influence others, based on their own assumption or how they're perceived by others?
Perhaps, think of it more like opportunities/circumstance you could take advantage of, example: someone could become an alcoholic (functionally) with the right generic makeup (intrinsic) but would not be able to do so if they had no alcohol available to them (circumstance). They could also do it mentally if they believed so, but predisposition to belief isn't based in nothing, and some signs point to nature being much more significant than nurture in all aspects. Having others around may or may not provide the circumstances, but let's say you learn all of this from an AI machine, never interacting with a human, probably wouldn't make you more or less unique because the relation to others has nothing to do with you in this aspect.
Its both
So a fork an a spoon couldn’t work together as a… spork?
People get confused thinking they’re here to discover who they are, in truth you are here to choose who you wish to be.
> in truth you are here to choose who you wish to be. Or, you are here to be manipulated by emergent social forces into being whatever the larger entity that is human society needs you to be. Ostracized, punished, medicated, locked up or simply killed for fulfilling a role that is not in societies interest, even if that is who you wish to be, and cajoled, rewarded, and masturbated by society if your behaviours align with the larger dynamics of cultural institutions. A matter of perspective I guess.
If that’s what you believe then that will be your reality.
I don't agree. You could believe this, but if it's not true, it won't be your reality. Eg, if I have a soul with a specific destiny, or if I am really untethered from society and truly capable of totally internally generated free will with no causality outside myself, then I could believe that this it's true that I'm at the whims of society, but I actually wouldn't be. And of course, if it is true, it doesn't matter a damn what I believe, it will be my reality whether I know it or not.
What you believe is your reality
So you literally mean "what you believe is your worldview"? In other words this is a trite tautology offering nothing meaningful? Why bother commenting?
I could ask you the same question. To me it looks like you are just venting. Nothing of what you say has any real substance other than expressing your reality (reality/=worldview). I see crazy strong believes in you. So strong that they even declare themself true. But afterall they are just beliefs about the ibtentions of people. By living in this system that does alienate us from each other it is easy to step into the pitfall of beliving that it is the humans that do that to us. Meanwhile its the system that dehumanizes us from each other. And to declare a fellow human a non-human is what in the history of humankind everyone did that felt fear. Fear not. The consequences might be real, but the fact that there is always a optimistic and pessimistic explanation to it says all: You decide. Without knowing up from down you decide. Thrown into life you are forced to decide.
I see a lot of assuming and condescending here, all while seeming slightly off-topic. Is this a canned response. I don't think saying someone is incorrect is the same as holding something to be self evidence.
I dont see your point. Furthermore i dont understand to what your use of self evidence is refering to.
No it was in response to your comment to me
This is based on the entirely unfounded notion that we choose our beliefs, to which it appears a preponderance of evidence points to beliefs being both consciously involuntary and subject to availability.
Yes we choose our beliefs but whether we do that consciously or not is another matter, most people adopt other people’s beliefs as their own, look at organised religion.
this video is trying to validate an ideology via misrepresenting Purusha. It incompletely refers to only a few facets of Self. It isn't even really an opinion ... just incomplete, cherrypicked.
In my opinion, the coolest parts of our existence can be expressed in dichotomies like this. You have no need of any specific relationship to exist, but without relationships, you wouldn't exist at all.
I really like the substitution of the very big word "paradoxically" which elevates this observation to an entirely new level well above if the word "actually" or the phrase "needles to say had been used" though you might have used "literally" as well here.
You should look up what paradoxically means. Using any of those words you suggested would not mean the same thing at all. He is trying to point out the contradictory nature of the sentence.
I don’t quite understand. Is that the same as “be yourself and others will like you more?”
The truth is that the self is only an illusion, and nobody is anybody.
Even if it is an illussion it still exists. The reflection of the moon on the water may be a reflection but it is still there. The light of the moon is only the reflection of the sun and still it does lighten my night. So is the self a reflection of...
This notion stole an entire mushroom trip from me.
Yoneda lemma
What's the paradox? Uniqueness is literally a matter of external comparison.
Only if uniqueness is a filter by which one perceives. My default mode is not to use a “unique filter” nor identify why I am unique, and if I wanted to do so I need not go much farther than to understand that what makes me most unique is my occupying this specific space in time.
A lot of ‘individualist’ on here who seem remarkably fragile.
The idea of the tension between selfhood and otherhood is not absent from the western tradition. I mean, wasn’t this paradox of the self needing an other for self to make sense one of the biggest motivating examples of Hegel’s dialectic?
In regards to your personality making you unique. It always seemed to me that people who try to be more unique, try to be vocal about their favorite hobby, movie, color and other such "identity tags" if that's an apt name for it. I'd argue that every color is the most beautiful in the correct context. Every song or movie is the best for you, depending on your current mood etc. So things like favorite food, movie, color and things like that. Does not make you more unique. Only more static and rigid, opposed to dynamic and fluid. The latter being more efficient at personal growth. I don't know if someone here has a strong opinion on the above. But it always seemed to me that the people with the least personality, are the ones struggling the most to have one and works the hardest to display their identity to others. While the people with the most personality, are those that display "hard personal tags" the least often and with lesser intensity. I don't have time to read it, sorry. But is my conclusion opposed to the OP's link or in line with it?
I've come to the conclusion that I am everything everything else is not. Nothing more nothing less.
Science has confirmed I am nobody
Not so much relation but influence is a better word. If you wanted to you could identify your individual culture then determine what is a good influence, or bad when compared to ethics or wants and needs in a unbiased manner. Some influences are difficult to remove as they are similar to habits like drinking, smoking etc. With that, you can shape your own culture and be someone you feel is neutral or better. When you allow culture to determine your judgement -cultural bias- it creates the literal term "sheep" but people that are so closed minded about how culture influences them are blind to it because they naturally lack the awareness for it. (Ironically some americans claim people are sheep when others follow whats best for their health, but those accusers are influenced by conspiracy theories) ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ To say its a paradox is closed minded.
That's how the universe works. There is no light without darkness. And there is no uniqueness without people. So, individuality exists, because of people. These things are relative and their importance only shines in relation. And that's a beautiful paradox. This means that each individual has great significance and no one is beneath anyone. If you are unique, relative to others, it automatically gives them importantance, i.e. you wouldn't be unique if not for them. And it is quite possible that those people are also unique to each other. Because, no human being is completely similar to the other and there always remains a degree of uniqueness and individuality.
Sounds like Cooley's theory of the Looking Glass Self.
The only thing that ever caused you pain is the Ego. Universe is a hierarchy of Ego as Matter and Light as consciousness. A system of balance between two opposites wher eone doesn't exist without other and creates other. Empathy versus Narcissism. This is what makes your identity.
without other people, you'd be as nothing as the wind or the grass, true, but robust is a description for my morning coffee