A child’s symbolic action world is built from the outside in. We are sad because we cry; we do not cry because we are sad. Only when we ‘look’ at our self do we know what is going on.
A vital fact about all objects is that there is both an inside and an outside. We are born recognizing our self as a ‘me’. The ‘me’ is an object before ‘me’ becomes ‘I’, i.e. an executive subject. Only after this happens in an infant’s life can s/he “back away†from her or him self.
The child discovers first that s/he is a social product. Perhaps this will show us why we are so often mere puppets jerked around by alien symbols and sounds. Perhaps this is why we are so often just blind ideologues (blindly partisan).
In order to separate the ego from the world it seems that the ego must have a rallying point. It must have a flag about which to rally. That flag is the “Iâ€. The pronoun ‘I’ is the symbolic rallying point for the human’s ego; it is the precise designation of self-hood. It is concluded by those who study such matters that the ‘I’ “must take shape linguisticallyâ€. The self or ego “is largely a verbal edificeâ€.
“The “I†signals nothing less than the beginning of the birth of values into a world of powerful caprice…The personal pronoun is the rallying point for self-consciousness.†The wedding of the nervous ability to delay response, with the pronoun “Iâ€, unleashed a new type of animal; the human species began. The ‘I’ represents the birth of values.
Upon the discovery of the “I†the infant human becomes a precise form, which is the focus of self-control. The creatures previous to the arrival of humans in the chain of evolution had an instinctive center within itself. When our species discovered the “I†and its associated self-control centers a dual reality occurred. “The animal not only loses its instinctive center within itself; it also becomes somewhat split against itself.â€
Becker, the winner of the Pulitzer for “The Birth and Death of Meaningâ€, notes that Kant was perhaps the first to impress upon us the importance of the fact that the infant becomes conscious first of itself as a “me†and then only as “Iâ€. This order of discover has been shown to be universal.
I have noticed when an infant becomes an I, when all of a sudden they behave in a self-conscious manner. Have you noticed such a change taking place in a child?
Why is ‘I’ capitalized and ‘me’ is not?
Quotes from “The Birth and Death of Meaningâ€â€”Ernest Becker
yes
it is like a new born is placed in a lit theatre, the movie is running but the child takes no more notice of it than the theatre itself.
over the next few months the movie gets noticed more and more and as the lights dim in the theatre the movie is all that is left to exist.
The theatre is the natural world, the infant sees it, breaths it, touches it and so on but doesn’t have relativity to think it, —you know----relative to what???
What is the mind being relative to before it was relative to what it learns?
What was the theatre? Maybe before we learned to ignore it, we did know this relativity.
I could only imagine it is not affected by immaturity.
I don’t believe in magic or BS so what could it be?
Maybe something in such abundance, something found everwhere and in everything that everything is relative somewhere.
I think the psychologists missed the toilet with this one Chuck; and they’ve got it all over their shoes. I agree there is a point at which “me” becomes “I” but to suggest it is a common occurrence is erroneous. For “me” to become “I” we have to ask the last why, the one that discovers the void. All preceding ‘whys’ only give us a successively greater awareness of “me”. The evidence that the vast majority of humanity has not gotten beyond “me” and “us” is indisputable. “I” and “we”, we are quite content to leave undiscovered.
I am not sure where you got “end of life” unless you interpret “The Last Why” as meaning the last question we ever ask which is not my intent. What I am saying is that from birth we become increasingly conscious of the “self”, to use your word, we inherit from “society” to use another of your words. I suggest what we inherit is a collection of used efforts to give unnatural meaning to life, to fill the void with religions, philosophies, material possessions etc; and most of us are satisfied with this “I” that is a reflection of how society sees “Me”. It is only after we discover and then begin to empty the void of our inherited ''Me" that we can become increasingly aware of our unique biological “I”. Incidentally, we will empty the void only with the sum of collected individual, serious, concentrated “critical thinking”. Thanks for a critical question.