If you consider what you have already done, are currently doing, and might do today, even if you are the most committed couch potato, you will see your life’s complexity. There’s the animal part of it, of course, whether to change position in chair or couch, to stand, walk, trot, or run, to get food…all the physical functions that you perform. There’s the emotional part, too. It’s affected by that animal part of you—hunger, fatigue, discomfort, a burst of energy—and by what you are watching or reading, what you hear where you live or through an open window, and in those uncountable encounters with others, from pets to spiders to strangers on the sidewalk. And there’s the complexity of the brain that adds memories to thoughts in a stream of consciousness that makes Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake seem like an elementary school primer. In the midst of that complexity, you have to choose what is true and what is false, what is real or fake, and what is profound or trivial. In the context of that complexity, you discover that knowing what is worth knowing is akin to spotting a single zebra in a herd of close-packed zebras—in a stampede.
In the search for the true, the real, and the profound, you daily deal with Self and Non-Self. You can, you believe, distinguish between what belongs to or is part of you that makes you unique and what belongs to everyone and everything else that makes you a zebra in a herd. As a member of the herd, you find, at times, that you are almost indistinguishable in knowledge, behavior, and emotion from all those other selves. Sure, you can argue that there’s no question about your individuality simply because you are aware not only of yourself but also of others, but your awareness includes an inescapable recognition that if So-n-So reminds you of So-n-So, a doppelgänger, then you probably make others think that you have a mirror So-n-So. “You look just like…”; “You sound just like…”; “You act just like….”
Method acting reveals human commonality. After immersion in the life of another, the method actor “becomes” the portrayed person, a process that has in some actors lingered for weeks or even months after the performance. Commonality also shows itself in the ability to read facial expressions on total strangers—on Non-Selves—be they person or wolf. That you can both interpret and imitate those expressions shows a fusion; that you sometimes make the same expressions that others use without forethought also reveals that commonality. And because you can frame others as ethical or unethical, effective or ineffective, kind or unkind, or charitable or hateful, you reveal that link between Self and Non-Selves: You understand the nature of the species to which you belong. You have a standard by which you understand, evaluate, and judge. You recognize all that is common within the members of the species.
Regardless of those aspects of Self that you find mirrored in others, you retain a surety about your uniqueness. Look around. There you are, reading this, a single person in a single body possibly isolated in some room, isolated even if that room is a crowded coffee shop and you sit at a little round table by the window. Your Ego constantly attempts to convince you and others that you are different and have value just by virtue of that difference. Thus, even though Self seems to be intertwined with Non-Self in commonality, the constant quest for self-identity assures you that, yes, indeed, you are truly unique. Often, however, the “quest” is little more than your attempt to discover tiny differences you can use to claim “This is who I am.” You claim a knowledge of your Self, and it’s not, you declare, a mere reflection of Non-Selves, a model of them or a mimicry. The Ego doesn’t fare well when doubt’s about.
Nevertheless, doubt plagues you. It arises because there are so many Non-Selves that also have stripes, black on white or white on black; it doesn’t matter: The vertical patterns aren’t exact, but they are similar enough to camouflage your uniqueness. Surely, you have wondered whether or not your knowledge of everything that is Non-Self is trivial or profound or dubious or true. “I have this wavy stripe on my shoulder. See. Look closely to see that it’s different from other stripes on other shoulders; mine’s thicker at the top than at the bottom and has a circle of background color in the middle.” Oh! To what explanatory lengths we will go to demonstrate uniqueness!
If the most fundamental question you face is centered on identifying Self, then all other knowing is secondary, but not nonessential. After all, you would be hard pressed to survive if you didn’t have knowledge that, for example, fire burns organic material and you are so composed. That is, if you can definitively identify Self, what else can you indisputably identify? “What is there ‘beyond Self’ that is knowable?” you wonder.
But wondering isn’t where the process of knowing Self and Non-Self stops. Knowing isn’t just a matter that occupies the frontal cortex as our reflexes reveal. The knee jerks when the doctor touches it with that little hammer; it knows what to do just as your neck and shoulders respond turtle-like to an unexpected loud sound. Eventually, you have to accept or reject holistically what lies within and without because both accepting and rejecting bring consequences of shaping the Self in the midst of all those others, all those Non-Selves both inanimate and animate that cross your path frequently or infrequently. Thus, you establish an Ego that you accept while knowing that it varies as it encounters Non-Selves and even as it undergoes the vicissitudes of body, emotions, and perspectives in a world of change.
You have acquired through experience both an awareness and an underlying feeling that life varies because everything is mutable. Scrutiny is therefore inevitable because of ostensible and real changes that force you—and everyone else—to reexamine what is presumed “to be true” and “reliable.” And that mutability that calls for scrutiny of all knowledge can be summed up in a simple question: Where can the Rain Man go to buy underwear when all but three K-Mart locations close this year? What was once a certainty proves to be uncertain.
As the herd of zebras moves, the multitude of stripes wave in seeming chaos. Is there a pattern? Is there something worth knowing in such mutability? Are individual selves easy to identify when so much of any individual lies within a pattern that constantly changes?
If you stare at your fractal screen saver, you will eventually pick out a pattern. Fractals are all about repeated patterns, aren’t they? The ostensible change is merely a matter of scale or reversal, the magnified edges of leaves, for example, reveal them to be models of whole leaves. That complexity of Self intermingled with a world of Non-Selves is like fractals imposed upon fractals, but you don’t want to be considered different merely by a change in scale. You don’t want to be either a larger or smaller version of any of the others. You deem yourself to be significantly different.
So, you argue that you are different, are unique, because your experience and makeup aren’t part of a pattern. Unrepeatable events, points, not patterns, are isolated, non-flowing events that are the generators of uniqueness. Those “points,” however temporary, work their way into the Self as memories that can alter Self and truth as you see it. Even twins standing side by side experience an event differently.
There’s a landscape filled with zebras. Picking out one is difficult, and you have to choose while undergoing that constant stream of consciousness that mixes memory with present circumstances and with desire, hope, anticipation, and fear. In discovering what is true or real, the Self has a daunting task that it makes more daunting just by its continuation in the midst of Non-Selves. The difficulty of picking out a single zebra is exacerbated because the herd often stampedes. You relish those moments when the herd stops to drink or eat because the stillness grants you time to focus.
In 1970 Oliver Sachs published The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales in which he tells the story of “Jimmie,” a middle-aged man who was stuck in time. Jimmie believed it was 1945. He lived in that present and was befuddled by the world around him and by his own inexplicable appearance in mirrors. Now, imagine you are Jimmie and today is all you have. There is no yesterday. It’s always TODAY. Could you identify your Self? Remember that there’s no remembering in this hypothetical. And if you could not see a progression of development that led to your having a “Self,” could you know anything about the world around you, about Non-Selves?
Can knowing be fixed in a world of change? Doesn’t change indicate a need to renew? What if what you know is fixed like Jimmie’s view of the world? What if you eliminate your memory, your development of what you know? In Jimmie’s case, memory was knowing, but the knowledge that was fixed in his brain was, in fact, not the real world that his contemporaries new in 1970. For them, what was knowable had undergone development or change.
“But I know that 2 plus 2 has a fixed answer,” you say. “And that, Mr. Smarty Pants, demonstrates that I can know a truth that is not time dependent. Math is immutable knowledge, and according to your definition of ‘Non-Selves,’ it’s a Non-Self that is ‘fixed.’ Jimmie could easily understand and know that. Two plus two was the same in 1945 as it was in 1970.”
So true. But just remember that math begins with axioms. And that means it begins with assumptions that we accept as “self-evident truths.” Can we apply the same kinds of reliable assumptions to all other “knowing”? Can we think axiomatically about the Self? Or about all other Non-math Non-Selves?
“Certainly,” you say. “Take zebras. They have stripes. That’s been true as long as there have been ”
“Are there no albino zebras or black zebras? Or, do we assume all zebras have stripes because we accept induction as a path to knowing even though, ultimately, induction operates on the basis of indefinite examples that are not infinite examples? And what of all the inductive thinking you do with regard to other Selves?”
Granted that given the axioms about natural numbers, 2 + 2 does equal 4, and it can be demonstrated or proved inductively. Now what? What else “out there” among the Non-Selves can you know inductively with such certainty? What, by contrast, can you know deductively?
“A four-legged horse-like animal with stripes is a zebra. If a horse-like animal has stripes, it’s a zebra. It’s demonstrable through syllogistic thinking.”
Or it’s an okapi.
“Not fair. Okapis just have butt and leg stripes, and they are horizontal lines, not vertical.”
But note what you just did. You had to refine to define. And that’s the task you have all the time to distinguish your Self from all the Non-Selves.
In the search for the true, the real, and the profound, you daily deal with Self and Non-Self. You can, you believe, distinguish between what belongs to or is part of you that makes you unique and what belongs to everyone and everything else that makes you a zebra in a herd. As a member of the herd, you find, at times, that you are almost indistinguishable in knowledge, behavior, and emotion from all those other selves. Sure, you can argue that there’s no question about your individuality simply because you are aware not only of yourself but also of others, but your awareness includes an inescapable recognition that if So-n-So reminds you of So-n-So, a doppelgänger, then you probably make others think that you have a mirror So-n-So. “You look just like…”; “You sound just like…”; “You act just like….”
Method acting reveals human commonality. After immersion in the life of another, the method actor “becomes” the portrayed person, a process that has in some actors lingered for weeks or even months after the performance. Commonality also shows itself in the ability to read facial expressions on total strangers—on Non-Selves—be they person or wolf. That you can both interpret and imitate those expressions shows a fusion; that you sometimes make the same expressions that others use without forethought also reveals that commonality. And because you can frame others as ethical or unethical, effective or ineffective, kind or unkind, or charitable or hateful, you reveal that link between Self and Non-Selves: You understand the nature of the species to which you belong. You have a standard by which you understand, evaluate, and judge. You recognize all that is common within the members of the species.
Regardless of those aspects of Self that you find mirrored in others, you retain a surety about your uniqueness. Look around. There you are, reading this, a single person in a single body possibly isolated in some room, isolated even if that room is a crowded coffee shop and you sit at a little round table by the window. Your Ego constantly attempts to convince you and others that you are different and have value just by virtue of that difference. Thus, even though Self seems to be intertwined with Non-Self in commonality, the constant quest for self-identity assures you that, yes, indeed, you are truly unique. Often, however, the “quest” is little more than your attempt to discover tiny differences you can use to claim “This is who I am.” You claim a knowledge of your Self, and it’s not, you declare, a mere reflection of Non-Selves, a model of them or a mimicry. The Ego doesn’t fare well when doubt’s about.
Nevertheless, doubt plagues you. It arises because there are so many Non-Selves that also have stripes, black on white or white on black; it doesn’t matter: The vertical patterns aren’t exact, but they are similar enough to camouflage your uniqueness. Surely, you have wondered whether or not your knowledge of everything that is Non-Self is trivial or profound or dubious or true. “I have this wavy stripe on my shoulder. See. Look closely to see that it’s different from other stripes on other shoulders; mine’s thicker at the top than at the bottom and has a circle of background color in the middle.” Oh! To what explanatory lengths we will go to demonstrate uniqueness!
If the most fundamental question you face is centered on identifying Self, then all other knowing is secondary, but not nonessential. After all, you would be hard pressed to survive if you didn’t have knowledge that, for example, fire burns organic material and you are so composed. That is, if you can definitively identify Self, what else can you indisputably identify? “What is there ‘beyond Self’ that is knowable?” you wonder.
But wondering isn’t where the process of knowing Self and Non-Self stops. Knowing isn’t just a matter that occupies the frontal cortex as our reflexes reveal. The knee jerks when the doctor touches it with that little hammer; it knows what to do just as your neck and shoulders respond turtle-like to an unexpected loud sound. Eventually, you have to accept or reject holistically what lies within and without because both accepting and rejecting bring consequences of shaping the Self in the midst of all those others, all those Non-Selves both inanimate and animate that cross your path frequently or infrequently. Thus, you establish an Ego that you accept while knowing that it varies as it encounters Non-Selves and even as it undergoes the vicissitudes of body, emotions, and perspectives in a world of change.
You have acquired through experience both an awareness and an underlying feeling that life varies because everything is mutable. Scrutiny is therefore inevitable because of ostensible and real changes that force you—and everyone else—to reexamine what is presumed “to be true” and “reliable.” And that mutability that calls for scrutiny of all knowledge can be summed up in a simple question: Where can the Rain Man go to buy underwear when all but three K-Mart locations close this year? What was once a certainty proves to be uncertain.
As the herd of zebras moves, the multitude of stripes wave in seeming chaos. Is there a pattern? Is there something worth knowing in such mutability? Are individual selves easy to identify when so much of any individual lies within a pattern that constantly changes?
If you stare at your fractal screen saver, you will eventually pick out a pattern. Fractals are all about repeated patterns, aren’t they? The ostensible change is merely a matter of scale or reversal, the magnified edges of leaves, for example, reveal them to be models of whole leaves. That complexity of Self intermingled with a world of Non-Selves is like fractals imposed upon fractals, but you don’t want to be considered different merely by a change in scale. You don’t want to be either a larger or smaller version of any of the others. You deem yourself to be significantly different.
So, you argue that you are different, are unique, because your experience and makeup aren’t part of a pattern. Unrepeatable events, points, not patterns, are isolated, non-flowing events that are the generators of uniqueness. Those “points,” however temporary, work their way into the Self as memories that can alter Self and truth as you see it. Even twins standing side by side experience an event differently.
There’s a landscape filled with zebras. Picking out one is difficult, and you have to choose while undergoing that constant stream of consciousness that mixes memory with present circumstances and with desire, hope, anticipation, and fear. In discovering what is true or real, the Self has a daunting task that it makes more daunting just by its continuation in the midst of Non-Selves. The difficulty of picking out a single zebra is exacerbated because the herd often stampedes. You relish those moments when the herd stops to drink or eat because the stillness grants you time to focus.
In 1970 Oliver Sachs published The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales in which he tells the story of “Jimmie,” a middle-aged man who was stuck in time. Jimmie believed it was 1945. He lived in that present and was befuddled by the world around him and by his own inexplicable appearance in mirrors. Now, imagine you are Jimmie and today is all you have. There is no yesterday. It’s always TODAY. Could you identify your Self? Remember that there’s no remembering in this hypothetical. And if you could not see a progression of development that led to your having a “Self,” could you know anything about the world around you, about Non-Selves?
Can knowing be fixed in a world of change? Doesn’t change indicate a need to renew? What if what you know is fixed like Jimmie’s view of the world? What if you eliminate your memory, your development of what you know? In Jimmie’s case, memory was knowing, but the knowledge that was fixed in his brain was, in fact, not the real world that his contemporaries new in 1970. For them, what was knowable had undergone development or change.
“But I know that 2 plus 2 has a fixed answer,” you say. “And that, Mr. Smarty Pants, demonstrates that I can know a truth that is not time dependent. Math is immutable knowledge, and according to your definition of ‘Non-Selves,’ it’s a Non-Self that is ‘fixed.’ Jimmie could easily understand and know that. Two plus two was the same in 1945 as it was in 1970.”
So true. But just remember that math begins with axioms. And that means it begins with assumptions that we accept as “self-evident truths.” Can we apply the same kinds of reliable assumptions to all other “knowing”? Can we think axiomatically about the Self? Or about all other Non-math Non-Selves?
“Certainly,” you say. “Take zebras. They have stripes. That’s been true as long as there have been ”
“Are there no albino zebras or black zebras? Or, do we assume all zebras have stripes because we accept induction as a path to knowing even though, ultimately, induction operates on the basis of indefinite examples that are not infinite examples? And what of all the inductive thinking you do with regard to other Selves?”
Granted that given the axioms about natural numbers, 2 + 2 does equal 4, and it can be demonstrated or proved inductively. Now what? What else “out there” among the Non-Selves can you know inductively with such certainty? What, by contrast, can you know deductively?
“A four-legged horse-like animal with stripes is a zebra. If a horse-like animal has stripes, it’s a zebra. It’s demonstrable through syllogistic thinking.”
Or it’s an okapi.
“Not fair. Okapis just have butt and leg stripes, and they are horizontal lines, not vertical.”
But note what you just did. You had to refine to define. And that’s the task you have all the time to distinguish your Self from all the Non-Selves.
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