#narrative self

[theunstuffedpepper]

“Cat in the square, is peeking out of there, meow meow meow meow, cat in the square!”

Guys, I’ve had this dumb song from one of pep’s toys stuck in my head for what seems like forever now. These toys must drive all parents nuts, no? 🤪

I’ve been riding the struggle bus a bit more lately.. after stopping breastfeeding (which happened recently), of course my calorie burn dipped as a result. I continued eating more or less the same I had been, and I gained about 10 lbs back. Big bummer, big wake-up call. This week I’m getting my momentum and motivation back a little more and it feels good, but it’s annoying to still see 210 on the scale. I was so close to onederland, but I’ll get there again. I will. On the breastfeeding front in general, I feel at peace with my decision to transition him off breast milk and I just about made it to my goal of six months. For exclusive pumping, I feel like that’s a job well done, and I’m happy and grateful I could provide that for him as long as I did.

We've got a couple family things going on that are looming in my mind, a bit like a dark cloud. Brendan's uncle passed away yesterday and we'll be having a memorial service for him this weekend. He was very ill for a very long time. My grandfather was also back in the hospital recently after being diagnosed with cancer not too long ago. He's doing alright, for now. I'm struggling personally with not having had a closer relationship to him since I became an autonomous person, and from what his girlfriend tells me, he feels the same way. Why is it not easier to just pick up the phone and call someone important to you, and to change that relationship? Even though it's never been something we've done, I'm trying to work up the nerve to start now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the experiential self vs. the narrative self. If you're curious to learn more from the source, check out Daniel Kahneman and his TED Talk on it. For me, I've been living more in my experiential self - the self that wants the immediate happiness or pleasure right away, in the moment - rather than the narrative self - my "remembering" self, the narrative I tell myself about who I am and who I've been. I'm actively trying to focus on getting out of the experiential self so much and getting into my narrative self much more.. I want the narrative I tell myself each night when I'm laying in bed to be positive and reflective of the person I actually want to be. Easier said than done, I suppose, but.. baby steps. Eh?

[alunah-lalunah]

If you want to cross the matrix you have to go through these three phases:

1. Illusion (Immersion Phase)

You believe the system. Marriage means love, religion means truth, art means soul, math means intelligence, etc. You identify with your roles. You survive by merging with meaning. This is narrative self with ego-infusion. You don’t use the structure; it uses you.

2. Disillusionment (Exposure Phase)

You begin to see the cracks. It is not cynical. It is structural. You recognize survival mechanisms. You notice how meaning is constructed. You start to feel disgust, emptiness, alienation. This is ego-loss shock. You see but you are not yet free. This phase is often mistaken for transcendence.

3. Re-integration (Tool Phase)

Now you no longer believe in the illusion, but you can wield it. Marriage becomes rhythm-alignment, religion becomes awe-structuring, art becomes clarity transmission. This is lucid participation. You use the form without being used. No longer believer, nor rebel but operator.

[shadisthings]

When they say ‘I’, they mean the story in their head, not the stream of experiences they undergo. We identify with the inner system that takes the crazy chaos of life and spins out of it seemingly logical and consistent yarns. It doesn’t matter that the plot is full of lies and lacunas, and that it is rewritten again and again, so that today’s story flatly contradicts yesterday’s; the important thing is that we always retain the feeling that we have a single unchanging identity from birth to death (and perhaps even beyond the grave). This gives rise to the questionable liberal belief that I am an individual, and that I possess a consistent and clear inner voice, which provides meaning for the entire universe.

———

We see, then, that the self too is an imaginary story, just like nations, gods and money. Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we saw, novels we read, speeches we heard, and from our own daydreams, and weaves out of all that jumble a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.

[so-crates-johnson]

Without the stories we inhabit, we're just quivering configurations of cytoplasm. So, find a story that fits your particular quiverings, and wear it proudly! It's all you can do. If you're lucky, you might find others inhabiting complementary stories!

-TZ

[strangeloops]

More on Narrative Selves

I'll probably talk more about this subject later. See my last post for more. But if you want to preempt me, look into:

Dan Dennett on the Self as the Narrative Center of Gravity-

(note, I haven't read this in full, but I have read other things he's written on the subject and heard him speak about it)

(note also, that this theory is held by Dennett, of new-atheist fame but something very similar is proposed by Ricoeur, a prominent Christian philosopher, on the becoming self. For those even more philosophically inclined, look into becoming vs. being and the philosophy of self. That rabbit hole goes very, very far down and leads you to the fundamentals of ontology and epistemology, so be warned.)