Imagine if you had to redefine the word, the letter, the concept, “I”. Try going a week without saying or hearing “I”. Try to go an hour. Listen to when people say “I”. Imagine there is no “I”. Imagine that “I” is a computer program. Imagine that it doesn’t exist. Imagine that what you call “I”, what you know of “I”, is not what you think at all. Imagine that “I” was put there, installed, by somebody else, your parents, your society.
Try to delete all the “I” out of your brain, can you do this? What are you, after you try? What is left of you? What remains after “I” am gone? After I is gone?
The problem with “I” is that it can be seen as Self alone while it’s constituency includes the Other. We define each other. Some religious mystics claim the “I” can be absorbed into the Godhead or in Ultimate reality.
Having just finished writing a post in the ‘What are you doing’ thread made me remember about my English teacher making me write from the perspective of ‘I’ because I didn’t… and hadn’t in this post until now.
It covers the impersonal influences on what is personal. The human I am includes all exposure to science, religion, philosophy, persons, places, things. Perhaps the I am is dependent on the Other, the not Self that becomes personal.
I have to take the kids to school, but I will try to answer you in about an hour, Irrelius.
An example I thought of is historical but with modern relevance. Queen Antoinette had the bad taste of ordering a diamond necklace at a time when the French Treasury was depleted. The gesture was unbecoming of her, to the starving population of France at the time. Neither the king, nor his ministers were very much aware of the gravity of the political situation, nothwitstanding the fact, that Louis XVI's own father had managed to sustain power by relying on concessions.
That marie was naive beyond description, was well known practically everywhere, but was ascribed to the fact, that after all, she was a Hapsburg Princess, the daughter of Maria Theresa, a regency as notable in kind to say that of Queen Victoria. The daughter’s immaturity was probably due to the unapproachable magnanimous stature of victoria, added to marie’s very sheltered life.
It was becoming of marie to act the way she did in the Viennese court, because the Hapsburg were much more undemocratic at the time and held on, much more effectively for a much longer time.
In France, she was disliked, not only for her naivete,, extravagance, but simply for being Austrian.
Her unbecoming taste and indulgences, contributed to the french Revolution, at least created the spark upon which, the rallying cries of the becoming, changing disenfranchised masses could be heard.
Unbecoming as a fashion statement, had relevance in an unbecoming, an unraveling,of the whole social structure.
I is active in this thread. I is appearing in the guise of a variety of different posters and responses. I is making its presence known, impersonally and intimidatingly. I is refusing to let go of I.