Tag: Identity

An Introduction to the Ringmaster: Why “I Am Not I” and Why this Is the Beginning of Freedom

negativegeography5 Comments
Photo by Prakriti Khajuria on Pexels.com

An Introduction to the Ringmaster: 

I can’t remain too long in any consistent first person, otherwise you’ll end up believing that I’m really me, and then I’ll be pinned inanimately to the page and unable to shape-shift as any living creature must if it hopes to avoid the tarpits.

Consider Me the ringmaster for what follows. I am part of the performance, just another circus freak, not the kind of Self you’d bring home to meet your mother.

Let’s dare to suggest I’m not even a living thing so much as a material swelling of words, thoughts, ideas, pictures, emotions, the chaotic surface waves left by the spirit of life as it hovered over the keyboard for a moment before passing on to better things. After all, the screen or page you’re reading is not itself alive. Nor is this picture of “me” that hovers over the page momentarily.

Or say instead that this picture of “Me” is a mnemonic shell that formed where life once placed its fleeting and immaterial finger. I am the fossil of something more lively that passed this way.

Or maybe I’m the detritus of memory, a junk-encrusted tumbleweed of ideas of myself, a messy and clanging assemblage of cans and can’t-do’s, recoils, crossed-wires and lost marbles. This would explain why I’m such a noisy sonofabitch.Read More »

The Immaterial Origins of Life and Intelligence: an imaginary interview

negativegeography2 Comments
Photo by u0415u043bu0435u043du0430 u041au0443u0437u044cu043cu0438u043du0430 on Pexels.com

Is the Self an illusion?

On one level I’d say no, because the Self is merely the means by which the body refers to itself. So the Self isn’t delusional from that perspective, because the word and image are grounded in a real referent (the body). However, this projection of a bodily image quickly morphs into a sense of Self that controls the body, or is trapped within the body, as if it were a spirit or separate entity. This is where the illusion starts.

The brain tends to be imagined as a seat of consciousness (also semi-independent from the rest of the body) – wobbling up there like a big, fat turkey on a telephone pole. But this image of a body/brain dichotomy easily morphs into a projection of an even more independent-seeming “mind” drifting above the body like a balloon on a long string. And this “mind” tends to become a synonym for the Self, which sits at its desk behind the eyes and acts like a CEO of the in-corporation, or an overlord of sorts. The varieties of imagery are endless. And even among atheists, this Self tends to take on the qualities of a “soul” as well, a lively essence possessing or inhabiting the body.

But these are not minds, Selves or souls, but merely images — masks that have lured this bodily intelligence into dreams of an autonomous existence over and above the comparatively material level of biology. They are deceptive illusions of minds and souls, illusions of identity.
Read More »

Technical Note on Why the Last Essay Isn’t Really About Writing

negativegeographyLeave a comment

Maybe what I’m really after in speaking of an imaginary “you” and “Me” is a rapport with these persistent thoughts of self and other, these imaginary beings that occupy center stage in life. I’m not interested in being a writer, it’s not my career. But in looking at the dishonesty of thought honestly I’m dealing with a communal mess. And part of the resolution of a communal mess will necessarily involve communication of this sort.

Writing provides the opportunity for an elongated span of attention on these matters.  But it’s not the only way to approach all this. So it’s not about writing, it’s about the communal movement of thought. In any communicative case (speaking, fighting, using sign language, doing math) the same issue looms that I was trying to contend with — what to do about the self-image that insists on acting like a middle-man at all times, even poking its ugly little head between two embracing lovers more often than not in the form of anxieties and worries. This spoiled brat of thought has to be the center of attention and is constantly driven by insecurities, because it is by nature a deception, a projection posing as a reality.

So the question tends to be, how do I look at thought honestly knowing full well that a fictitious “I” or “me” will inevitably intrude on the scene demanding to play a central role?

There are a million ways to handle this and all have been tried in these essays, with varying effects. The one is to do what is being done in this paragraph, which is to refuse to use personal language and speak from the third person’s perch.

Read More »

Starving the Tree of Racism

negativegeography6 Comments
Photo by Nadezhda Moryak on Pexels.com

“We know the predator. We see them feed on us. We are aware to starve the beast is our destiny.”
— John Trudell

Dear fellow white men, but I hope others stick around as a Greek chorus.

An honest recognition of this culture’s history of treachery, kidnapping, torture, and murder is needed to read this — an acceptance of the need for cultural and psychological (personal) reparations. This is my starting point. So, I’m essentially only speaking to those white men who recognize this.

But I’m not going to speak of the need for cultural reparations, but only psychological or epistemological repairs. Without this primary reparation of our own damaged psyche, any cultural reparations will be undermined or at least resisted by this lingering sickness.

In other words, I’m arguing that we can’t solely focus on stopping overt racists, or eliminating the racism and sexism baked into our institutions. These are necessary goals of course. But ultimately, we won’t be very helpful if we don’t simultaneously (and primarily) work to expose the subtlest roots of racism in ourselves — in those of us willing to face ourselves or our conflation with a larger system that is still fundamentally corrupt.

And when we dig deeper, we do, in fact, discover that we’re contributing to this violence through our identification with many of this society’s seemingly benign (but in fact toxic) values.


Read More »

The Radical Derelict: Giving Up the Work Ethic for Peace

negativegeography11 Comments
by thegetty is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

This appeared on Counterpunch and Dissidentvoice.

The same relentless energy driving a toddler in its Terrible Twos still drives that voice in my head. However, when I see a toddler, I know I’m in the presence of a genius, albeit a naïve one. It’s not the size of the intellect, but the velocity of learning that describes its intelligence. I, on the other hand, tend to move in well-worn circles, constrained by prejudice and vested interest. I’ve learned to “circle the wagons”, so to speak, around particular conclusions.

Essentially, I’m what happens when a toddler’s unstoppable urge to learn gets diverted into supporting a predatory status quo. Open-ended learning gets replaced by a narrowing framework of instruction as the driving force; and a dawning sense of some innate order or intelligence in the world gets short-circuited by dependence on authority and by conformity to the culture’s creeds and isms.Read More »