Unless you’re a hermit and content with it, you’ll have to deal with this thing called a reputation. People will pick up certain bits and pieces from the things you say and do publicly. And people talk to eachother, and like to talk to about other people. A public image will be formed and this will invariably be a skewed picture to some degree, pieced together by correct facts, but also facts pulled out of context, plain misinformation, communication is messy etc… and as the image start to get a more solid form it starts living a life of it’s own. More and more the things you do and say will be interpreted through this lense, and the image becomes more critalized. And no matter if the image is more or less true, or false, you can’t really ignore it. Because it has tangible effects in the real world, as people will usually base their reactions at least partly on your reputation. People will expect you to behave a certain way, to the extent that you’ll be pushed in a certain direction, and actions that are out of character will be laughed and booed away. An identity is given to you.
And so a lot of people are or become actors, and live in the eye of the other. What do you think?
Well, being a self-conscious entity inherently tends towards living in the eye of the other - that’s part of the postmodern condition - it’s like instant narrative of everything that happens - we’re all definitely acting our personalities - there’s no language without the other - to talk is to sbject oneself to the other’s gaze.
I think you are absolutely right. There is this tendency in society. My solution? Read Nietzsche. Read Foucault. Find a great thinker and follow him or her. And become… a fighter, a rebel against all that others think they know about you! You could live 100 lives and still, without books, you might never come into contact with minds as powerful as those lying on your bookshelf just waiting for you. And even if you did meet someone like that, you’d only have a bit of time with them. But in a book you can get to know a a great mind even better than you know your own parents, your family and friends. And then, when faced with the pressure to become someone you are not, you can draw upon these minds as if they were your very friends and supporters. You can take courage from them because, through them, you’ve come into contact with more subtle ideas than probably anyone around you can offer. It’s not a matter of being snobbish… it’s just reality. Thinkers have the advantage when it comes to the power of ideas… and the power to destroy them. Emerson once said, “Wherever one becomes a thinker, one threatens some part of society.”
Many of these thinkers have fought battles like yours… some of the great philosophers of the 20th century have made this one of their central problematics. They’ve seen this problem: society wants the individual, wants to control the individual, or at least bring him into a sphere where his existence is predictable and non-threatening to the larger order. And it is sad, but society is perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of individuals for its own benefit without much in the way of second thoughts. What do you think Socrates faced when he argued in public, always against the common opinion, against the appeal of mass ideas and quick judgements… at his trial and death where he was ultimately misunderstood… his story is the philosopher’s gospel…
But really, I don’t mean this in a juvenile sense. It’s not easy work… you’ve hit on one of THE main reasons why I read and love Nietzsche so much. Much of it is about establishing yourself as an individual, fighting the common opinion of what is supposed to be good and true and right… going your own way. It cannot be done without constant battle.
There are people who’ve read much philosophy in an academic sense. They’ve accumulated much technical knowledge. But I think the real value of it is when you begin to read because you have a NEED to read. I think people who read a lot and who read serious literature or philosophy (as opposed to popular fiction) often do so because they feel they must… they have nowhere else to turn but toward the exceptional cases who’ve left us their writings and records. Everyone has to have a source for their being… an inspiration or point wherefrom they can draw for the creation of their own unique self. Most people get that from society at large. They try not to worry too much about these subtle systems of social power and control. And many of them coast along without disturbances. But who knows… maybe you are one of the unlucky ones cursed with unusual perception for these things… unlucky yes, but more interesting… with more potential…
No matter what… you always have the power of dissent… the power to rebel… in some ways, I think that is almost what philosophy is… intellectual rebellion of the highest caliber. Look at the great examples of clearheaded, courageous, accessible thinkers: Socrates, Plato, Montaigne, Emerson, Nietzsche… they were almost invariably champions of the high-minded individual.
I would beg people to pay attention to the times they were misinformed about people, and came to realize it. It seems to me ideal to give people the benefit of a doubt.
but some people need others to make themselves look good. So they won’t give the benifit of a doubt, but the opposite.
What I do when I hear bad mouthing of others is to make excuses for them. I used to make excuses for this bad driver,… I’d say, he’s just ADD and always thinking three moves ahead. I saw this as an acceptable thing, but the bad learned behavior was very deeply rooted within finding freedom in driving when always been wrong in the eyes of others. It was a near impossiable situation when to deal with his driving you’d have to deal with his childhood abuse.
so, where do you start, you show human compassion to those who persecute you. A man I know was in a play durring high school. So, there was a scene with a popular, beautiful girl,… where the kiss,… in front of the school. He was accused of copping a feel. And there was a group of kids who took that as fact and made fun of him openly. This apathy is that they accused him of being a creep. Yet, the emotions he held back are the emotions that would have stopped him from apathetically useing this as an opertunity of useing her as a toy. maybe the acting was too real, and people were jealsous, so they turned him into something easier to deal with, even though it was all imagination.
I think there’s a difference between, placing yourself in the shoes of the other to try to figure out what the best way to communicate some idea is (empathy, or using the common narrative to communicate), and looking at yourself thought the eyes of the other with the goal to manipulate your image (narcissisme).
I can’t say I really like the latter when it become the prevailing mode, things just become devoid of any content other than the image.
Okay, I know it refers to berkeley’s idealism, I know what it means, and I can see there are some possible connections with my OP… but what you meant with I can’t tell.
Yes, it’s an uncomfortable and anxiety producing perspective, one can forget oneself in the other but often one loses oneself entirely, then when one finds oneself again, one is simply the image of oneself in the other’s eyes, there’s none of the reassuring feelings of authenticity behind the self-image - fortunately, it’s not usually a permanent state, but one that comes and goes . . .
I’ve always thought we are more plurals than individuals. We ‘use’ people, particularly those in our social circles, to store bits of ‘ourselves’ in. We are gestault, alone we wither, become mad.
— An identity is given to you.
O- Not necessarly just one but it can be many, which is how many can live a double life.
— And so a lot of people are or become actors, and live in the eye of the other. What do you think?
O- That it is not as bleak as you paint it. People will create ideas about you…it just makes it easier to say “I know so and so”, but one can and some do manipulate other people’s ideas…every lie we tell is the attempt at manufacturing an identity in the eyes of another, to affect our eventual reputation.
— My solution? Read Nietzsche. Read Foucault.
O- Nietzsche doesn’t offer solutions…he only tells you what the condition is. The difficulty with shedding a reputation is that it often rests of facts about you. The impossibility for a reputation can only exists if one believes in the freedom of the person’s will, which Nietzsche does not, and so a reputation is inevitable. The only thing one can do is manipulate one’s reflection in someone else mirror and one does this by creating a style.
— Find a great thinker and follow him or her.
O- Follow? So that your identity can be adquired from them?
— And become… a fighter, a rebel against all that others think they know about you!
O- …and that will become then your reputation.
— They’ve seen this problem: society wants the individual, wants to control the individual, or at least bring him into a sphere where his existence is predictable and non-threatening to the larger order.
O- Talk about abstraction. Who is this “society”? It is ourselves. Society is made by men, women and children in every way as human as we are. So when we say that “society” wants the individual to X we should ask why would men and women want to control the “individual”, which each of us remains even when within a “society”. The truth may be that we are as Aristotle postulated, social animals and as such have an innate desire to belong to societies even if societies are about control. We are placed under someone’s control within society BUT ALSO IN CONTROL OF SOMEONE AS WELL, so we have to look at selfish motives that render “society” not a master and owner but a tool for individuals.
— And it is sad, but society is perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of individuals for its own benefit without much in the way of second thoughts. What do you think Socrates faced when he argued in public, always against the common opinion, against the appeal of mass ideas and quick judgements… at his trial and death where he was ultimately misunderstood… his story is the philosopher’s gospel…
O- That is how it is normally seen, but Athens received no benefits and both Socrates and Athens knew this; that is why Socrates chose to drink the poison. And that is the what Athenian government did to Socrates. What if it had been Socrates’ “Republic”, where total power rest in the hands of a few? And who are above the reproches of the herd for they are guided by the Truth and only they decide what that looks like.
— But really, I don’t mean this in a juvenile sense. It’s not easy work… you’ve hit on one of THE main reasons why I read and love Nietzsche so much. Much of it is about establishing yourself as an individual, fighting the common opinion of what is supposed to be good and true and right… going your own way. It cannot be done without constant battle.
O- The hero narrative often includes his chosen isolation into the wilderness, and then an eventful return, but most that read Nietzsche focus solely on the wilderness and not on any return.
— No matter what… you always have the power of dissent… the power to rebel…
O- If you rebel because you follow Nietzsche then then you have merely switched masters and cannot be a rebel, but a follower.
I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. By posting in this thread, I wasn’t interested in an argument. Everything can be interpreted on many levels. I wrote with the intention of being understood synthetically and intuitively. But you seem to be more interested in making my post into something of your own.
First, there is no ‘public Perspective’, there are unique individual Perspectives. A complete definition/description of ‘you’ is the sum-total of all Perspectives of 'you. Any single Perspective, whether your perceptions or another’s will be, not ‘skewed’ (as it is a true feature of the whole) but necessarily ‘limited’.
To a certain extend you’re right of course, a public image can’t float arround in thin air, and will differ from person to person. The rest of your thesis would hold only if people only relied on their own perceptions of you, then you could speak of truly unique perspectives. But people do compare notes on other people, and not allways entirely truthfully, this will likely skew the picture. Sometimes people will allready have an opinion on before you ever talked to them…
I don’t know, I’ve allways had a strong sense to act the same, no matter where I was and who I was with. I can see adapting to different situations, for instance work and social circles is necessary to a certan extent, but putting on different masks and playing different roles never really comes natural to me, which makes me think identity at least partly originates in the individual.
Yes, maybe different personality traits will come to the foreground in different social situations. But how healthy can it be to have two or more radically different identities? I just don’t see how you can have this traits in this social circle, and the opposite trait in another. What happens if the different social groups come together, what is your identity then?
Yeah, I guess i just don’t like the whole business of “identification” and looking after one reputation by acting a part. I never really took it serious, the acting, the posturing, it all so transparant to me, and i though to other people too. Some people get so bloated sometimes, and really start living their reputation, and even don’t seem to be able to act otherwise anymore… to the point I just want to punch them in the face, and have them tell me what they really think .
All Perspectives, definitionally, are unique.
All Perspectives, of you, are true in themselves. Whether a single initial perception or a ‘possee of Perspectives’ (wide included angle), it is still you, and from those Perspectives, accurate, moment a moment, is the Complete Picture.
Good, larger Perspective gained. More the merrier until the complete ‘data set of ‘you’’ is formed (by all possible Perspectives).
Even apparent lies are features of Truth/Reality.
Every additional ‘feature’ presents a different picture. If that is how you wish to define ‘skew’, as making ‘different then what you’re used to’…
when we communicate (even with ourselves) we are constantly projecting ourselves into others, unconsciously. this is because we seek justification for ourselves, our beliefs, actions, attitudes, etc. since we need the justification of others, our primary job in communication with others is to guage their body language, tone of voice, and infer this other person’s underlying paradigm and overall perception and meaning, and adjust ourselves accordingly to their views.
of course this process never completes 100%. our self-identity struggles to assert itself, i.e. we can never FULLY abandon our own self-image (our need to create our self-image, in otherwords our need to be INDEPENDENT of others), yet because most people lack the necessary self-esteem and confident strength to persist in their own personal self-image in the midst of conflicting images of ourselves in the eyes of others, and/or in the midst of internal cognitive dissonance, the dynamic of inter- and intra-personal communication is one of “back and forth”: we seek to assert our self-image in order to justify it, but we temper this assertion with the image of ourselves held by others (to seek further justification)-- when these two images are in conflict, we adjust our self-image partially toward the direction of the other person’s image of us, while at the same time “testing” our self-image’s strength by pushing it, implicitly (“between the lines” of communication) against and into the perceptions/mind of the other person… the reactions we get, in the form of the other person’s unconscious and inferred body langauage and tone of voice, determine how much we can cling to this self-assertion on our part in the face of the conflict, and how much we need to re-enforce our adjustment of our self-image to further match the image of ourselves held by the other person.
the degree to which this process of interplay is practiced, and the degree to which it is compulsory and/or unconscious, is the degree to which we are weak individuals, i.e. that we have a weak self-esteem and strength of character or confidence. the stronger sense of self-identity we have, the more we will be able to withstand an open and acknowledged conflict between our image of ourselves and the image others have of us.
You could live 100 lives and still, without books, you might never come into contact with minds as powerful as those lying on your bookshelf just waiting for you. And even if you did meet someone like that, you’d only have a bit of time with them. But in a book you can get to know a a great mind even better than you know your own parents, your family and friends. And then, when faced with the pressure to become someone you are not, you can draw upon these minds as if they were your very friends and supporters. You can take courage from them because, through them, you’ve come into contact with more subtle ideas than probably anyone around you can offer. It’s not a matter of being snobbish… it’s just reality. Thinkers have the advantage when it comes to the power of ideas… and the power to destroy them. Emerson once said, “Wherever one becomes a thinker, one threatens some part of society.”
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