Others ~ Selected Correspondence

Identity

May I jump in for a moment? <snipped from Peter Re: Dissociation>

Or is my identity bullshitting me again?

Peter – Speaking personally, I never saw any sense at all in splitting ‘me’ and ‘my identity’ into two parts. I had tried that in my spiritual years and saw that it was a wank.

Sometimes I use incorrect terminology, all those identities, self’s, me’s, mine, I’s... I will try to refer to the AG glossary in the future. The intent was something like:

Or is my identity attempting to maintain its existence at all costs?

No 38, the problem isn’t ‘terminology’. I can’t speak for Peter – but it appears that what he is pointing out is that you are using the words ‘my identity’ – which implies two. Who does the identity belong to – if not to ‘me?’ If so, then you’ve got ‘me’ and ‘my identity’ which makes two. ‘I’ don’t ‘have’ an identity – ‘I’ am an identity. Unfortunately, you’ve only succeeded in continuing to divide ‘me’ into two parts. When you see that – you will stop asking whether ‘my identity’ is trying to maintain its existence at all costs. ‘My identity’ is nothing but an imaginary construct. All you have to do is look for yourself – no-one else can do it for you – not even an actualist. No 37 to No 38

I notice a recurring theme for me that takes me away from happiness and well-being seems to be when I feel physically crowded, excessively warm, + certain noises (i.e. car alarms, certain people’s voices). I notice I am tense, uncomfortable and feel very aggressive & violent. I don’t notice any beliefs or thought streams outside of wanting the interference to stop. I’m always ripe for an upset when I’m overtired. I really don’t know what beliefs are present outside of the world shouldn’t be like this. Any comments welcome.

It seems to me that you are well on your way to investigating what stands in the way of perfection.

I can well relate to what you write as I have had these experiences myself many times. I find it interesting what pushes me to become ‘overtired’, as you say and I think the condition of ‘overtiredness’ results in many unhappy consequences oftentimes, including aggression, anger, moodiness, etc. Speaking personally, the overtiredness results from my social identity, that part of ‘me’ that relates to my ambitions, my aspirations, my ‘work ethic’, my compulsive need to be busy, etc, etc. The further I delve into the social identity, the more I run into beliefs and ideals that ‘I’ try to live by, like ‘You’ve got to keep your nose to the grindstone’ or ‘You’ve got to work hard and be a success’ and other like statements. These inner beliefs sometimes almost take the form of parental admonitions to do such and so. I can almost hear my parents saying these things inside my head sometimes.

To give a personal example, when I am tired, often I just want to be left alone and I tend to isolate myself. But a more basic question is why am I pushing myself to get into this state of being overtired in the first place? Many people, including myself, have very busy jobs where there are almost constant demands on ‘my’ time and ‘my’ attention. I find that there is a part of me that craves this constant busyness but there is a downside too in terms of exhaustion, moodiness, and other negative states, what most people call ‘stress’ or ‘burnout’.

I can add to the states that you mentioned – like feeling physically crowded, certain noises, certain temperatures, etc- that sometimes I feel uncomfortable with people coming up behind me: I sometimes feel cornered, especially when I think that people are sneaking up on me.

I think these are basically emotional reactions that stem from the primitive survival mechanism of the human creature, in this case ‘me’. I think the old ‘flight or fight’ survival instincts are being triggered, sometimes by emotional memories. It may not be an actual conscious memory of something but it may be non-verbal. I think for instance my uncomfortableness with other people touching me has to do with the emotional memory system pertaining to physical touch. Many people, including myself, were touched in some very hurtful ways, and all these experiences are in the emotional memory centre and can be triggered by things, which seem to have no connection to what is going on in the present moment.

I think the important thing to realize is that these are emotional reactions, and as such they can be investigated and pumped further for information about yourself and how you react emotionally and what makes you tick. We have often talked on this list about the difference between ignoring or suppressing an emotional experience and experiencing one’s emotions and feelings. With further practice and dedication to the method of actualism, these reactions clearly diminish in strength and intensity.

In short, what I am trying to say is that, in my experience, there is always a primitive ‘self’ behind emotional reactions, and this is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, and it requires the ‘nerves of steel’ to stick with your investigations into the instincts. Obviously you have to find ways of dealing with feeling ‘very aggressive and violent’, as you put it in your own words.

When that happens to me, I have to examine very closely what is actually happening in the situation. When I look into it further, I find that there is no actual threat to ‘my’ survival, I only think or imagine that I am threatened. Strong emotions of fear and aggression really cloud a person’s judgement of what is really happening in any given situation.

Given that there is no real threat, I may have to find other ways of dealing with these emotions and feelings. A hot bubble bath might help or a walk in the woods. Anything to keep you from reacting in a knee-jerk manner to the upset of the moment and getting back to being happy and harmless as soon as you can should work just fine. Of course, some things that I used to do are not helpful at all, like sedating myself with chemicals or praying and hoping for relief. Often though just the simple realization that there is something that is taking me away from enjoying the present moment and that that ‘something’ is in me and is ‘who’ I think I am, but that this ‘me’ is not what I am. Nobody can change that but me.

Nobody is getting in the way of my happiness and harmlessness but ‘me’ and this is where I crank up my pure intent to be free forever from the pernicious identity that inhabits this flesh and blood body. Gary to No 41

In the same vein, the prime minister of the country where I live recently announced a new initiative to promote harmony within the 200 odd ethnic groups that live in this country and suggested as part of this initiative that people should ‘celebrate their differences’. It obviously never occurred to him, or those who wrote his speech, that it is precisely because people cling to their differences – their old cultural, social and ethnic conditioning – that there is ethnic conflict and disharmony in the first place. In the case of your observation, the idea that encouraging people to continually air their grievances towards each other can achieve peace and harmony in the workplace makes no sense at all.

It is much the same in the US, a multi-ethnic society as is Australia. There is the same ‘celebrate diversity’ theme trotted out again and again as a means of promoting ‘tolerance’ for others of a different stripe ethnically or racially. Yet only because there is disharmony, hatred, intolerance, greed, aggression, expansionism, etc is there this need to promulgate the antidotal tolerance, love, and compassion for others different.

Differences are a simple fact of life for biological creatures. Biologically, we seem to share much more in common as human beings than we have different. Social differences are also apparent, whether differences in customs, mores, ethical practices, etc. I think it is not so much differences that are the root cause of hatred, intolerance, warfare and strife but identity in any form. It is the instinctual passions that form the rudimentary sense of identity in sentient creatures that are the root cause of our inability to get along with each other and live in peace and harmony. Once the root cause of the problem is eliminated, along with it go any sense of being unique, different from others, as well as any need to defend worn-out ideals, beliefs, truisms, and political, social, or religious systems of thought. The actualist’s solution to conflict and disharmony is self-immolation – the elimination of all that stands in the way of living with other human beings in peace and harmony. It is the end of ‘me’. With the end of ‘me’, there is no need to be defensive or even on my guard against possible encroachments. Gone too is any sense of insult and every form of grievance. Because any kind of identity for human beings seems to be a breeding ground for resentment and grievance, I think.

Every ethnic, religious or racial group has had its own nasty tale of historical grievances – every group has had its own dreary history of being discriminated against. Even so-called ‘dominant’ groups in society today were once in a position to be discriminated against and discriminated against others in their turn.

There recently was a retrospective of the Roots program of the 1970s on TV. I remember watching this back in those days. There was the interest at that time for people, particularly Americans, to find out their ‘roots’, and there was a proliferation of the uncovering or the discovering of ‘who I am’ as one’s ethnic identity. In any event, I was struck while watching the program by the anger of the people they were interviewing as they talked about their reactions to the program. There was this universal feeling of rage and anger among people they interviewed, this abhorrence of slavery, the realization that they were themselves descended from slaves and that these horrors were perpetrated against their own ancestors. But I was particularly struck by the anger, and it seemed to me that it makes no sense to be angry about these things because if one is angry and holds a grievance, then sooner or later that feeling is going to be expressed, it must be expressed, in some sort of action against others. If one is angry, then one essentially feels that someone is to blame for these horrors. In my personal experience, anger must always have a target. It always comes out one way or another.

It seemed as I listened to the anger of these people on the program, many the descendants of slaves, that the same sense of outrage, grievance, and resentment was unleashing itself afresh on those who are held to be responsible. I realize that I am on a bit shaky ground here as the issue of race is an extremely complicated one and an extremely volatile one to discuss in a public forum. But in a sense I am not really talking about race, although the topic does touch on the issue of race, but I am talking about identity. One identifies as a black person, or a white person, or a person of Italian ancestry, Polish ancestry, or what have you. One identifies as a member of a ‘dominant’ group in society, or as an oppressed person, a minority. Actualism is about the demolishment of all kinds of identity, and it is this that people find so difficult to stomach, because people really cling to these identities, even to the death.

One need only open one’s eyes, look around the world at what is happening, to see the havoc that identity is causing. Gary to Peter

Thank you for the lengthy post on animal instincts. You wrote, in part, and I’m snipping most of the post to zero in on one particular part:

This safety by numbers strategy by no means fosters harmonious interactions – au contraire, inter-group conflict is often as malicious as group-to-group conflicts. What could be seen initially as a herding or socializing instinct could well be no more than a reluctant fear-driven imperative arising from the necessity to successfully propagate the species.

The resulting alliances are more like expedient strategic pacts formed solely to increase the odds of survival. There appears to be no instinctual bonding per se within the group at large, other than a crude necessity to huddle in groups so as to increase the chances of propagating and rearing offspring as well as increase the odds when waging warfare against other members of the species.

This part here got me to thinking about the whole process of identification. As I have been focusing my awareness on how I am experiencing the present moment of being alive, I am sometimes aware of the movement of my thoughts and feelings in the direction of forming some sort of identification with other human beings. I think a very rudimentary form of instinctual programming is going on when this occurs. The lost, lonely, frightened entity that is ‘me’ – the self that is ‘Gary’- seeks this safety in numbers and attaches himself to all manner of groups, movements, ‘friendships’, and identifications with others. There are many, many layers to this identification process (ethnic identity, tribal identity, family identities, etc.) but I think what you have eloquently pointed out in your post is the biological imperative at work – the evolutionary advantage, perhaps, to identification – the propagation of the genetic material and the survival of the species.

I was sitting in a staff meeting yesterday afternoon, one of the rare times when the entire staff in the whole building gets together for a training, and I was sitting there looking at the other people and in my mind I was thinking about the whole issue of ‘fitting in’, where, if anyplace, I fit in. Or, don’t fit in, as the case may be. And I found myself looking at another man and thinking ‘Yes, I like him. I’m a lot like him’. And there was this process of identification with that other individual going on and it occurred to me that the whole thing was a bit absurd, you know.

Why does one identify to begin with? This is an extremely important question that I encountered in the actualism writings, a question originally posed by Richard, but one that I have often asked myself. And I have not encountered this question anywhere else, because seemingly no one wants to examine it at depth.

So I think there is this bonding or forming alliances process going on all the time with human beings and, like the animals you cite, these alliances shift and change with the shifting winds. And there is this importance that people place on ‘relationships’ with others. Whereas, the longer I am at this actualism thing the more my experience is one of freeing myself from this process of identification, freeing myself from this whole absurd business of identifying with others, and really for the first time in my life looking into what is actually going on in this business of identification. It is interesting to see how the socialization process unfolds and how society is constructed, but from a very early age we are taught that we are social creatures and that we ‘need’ other people, and that ‘no man is an island’.

I am finding this traditional wisdom to not be the case and I am finding that I ‘need’ other people less and less, but then that is considered pathological, according to the wisdom of humanity, and people who don’t need friends, or who don’t need to belong to a group, or a religion, or a social club or something are judged to be oddball loners or disgruntled misanthropes. A short while ago I found myself wondering whether I have ‘schizoid personality disorder’ and it was an unsettling experience because it was like being a college student again and reading the abnormal psychology text and wondering if you fit into these categories or not, you know, and it dawned on me that this too was a process of identification where I was judging my behaviour as either ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It is possible to live completely freely, completely autonomously, and in harmony with one’s fellow humans, but one must necessarily examine one’s identifications rigorously. They are part of the whole instinctual package needing deletion. Gary to Peter

I have become completely hooked on the de-construction of ‘myself’ as I see so clearly at this stage that said entity is the sole cause of every ill that exists in my or any human’s existence. This new ‘view that is dawning in my life is so different to any change that has come to my life previously as it is not a construct that is being added to ‘me’, but has resulted from a deliberate investigation of self and its motivations and modus operandi and is a personal reduction not a personal growth paradigm. In light of these investigations the self and the parts that make it up are seen in the true light of a PCE and its incumbent pure intent which is the experience of this body stripped of the human construct and the original soft ware that blind nature imbues all species with. I look at my view of life today as compared to my view 8 months ago and so much has changed. What started out to be what I described as the hardest year of my life has become the most refreshing change I have ever experienced. I would say I am a considerably cleaned up self at this stage.

When my mind is not concerned with necessary activity now it seems much more willing to simply relax and allow the senses to savour and delight in the perfection that one lives in. There are no more questions as to the meaning of life or need to use the imaginative facility to daydream of ways that my life could be better. There is a sense of more empty space inside that one no longer needs to fill. The change of perspective on my fears and judgements is also vastly different and the fact that there is easy progress in the desired direction is a joy after so many years in the spiritual paradigm where I was in seemingly constant guilt that I was not doing right or with enough resolve and devotion – all very trying – in both senses of the word. Now, when confronted with my fears and judgements instead of berating myself for my shortcomings one sees it as a new opportunity to investigate and explore and usually lose a few kilos of identity. Fear as an ally... who would ever think...  Mark

There is something that I have been realizing recently and, while it may seem to be rather obvious to some, I thought I would comment on it here while it is still fresh in my mind. In your next post to me (which I have not yet got around to responding to), you made the following observation:

We don’t live in caves and hunt like animals anymore, we just instinctually act as if we do because that is the way we have been programmed to act.

Recently it occurred to me that is exactly what happens to make life such a grim business. I was musing on why human beings are in such psychological and psychic warfare with each other, something you also commented on in the previous post. I was wondering why I feel so much strain each day, strain to do the ‘right thing’, to accomplish, to ‘succeed’. Life, which can be so enjoyable, so free and easy, under other circumstances, ordinarily becomes for ‘me’ a grim battle to survive. There is a striving and a strain introduced into the whole business of life which is really totally unnecessary. On the days that I go to work, I ordinarily feel this strain as a constant undercurrent to my activities. I am constantly weighting my actions, thinking about what I ‘should’ be doing, and how what I am actually doing is measuring up to this internal standard of what I ‘should’ be doing. I am sure this sounds quite neurotic, but perhaps some readers here may identity with this. And I really think what it amounts to is that there is this unceasing instinctual battle going on which causes one to never be quite satisfied, to always being struggling, striving, accomplishing, etc.

Sometimes I stop and look around me at other human beings scurrying around, always in a hurry to get somewhere, always driven on by some force, whether it be economic, social, or whatever. So many people so obviously unhappy with their lives. And I am unhappy with my life if I persist in living out my life as this ceaseless struggle, this constant battle. I guess what I am trying to point to is the striving and the strain introduced into life when the instincts are operative. Then fear rules the roost, rather than intelligence and sensibility. Gary to Peter

The process of actualism happens in two consecutive stages – firstly a period of deliberate active dismantling of one’s social and instinctual identity such that you diminish this identity to the point where you are virtually free of malice and sorrow. This reasonable stable plateau is known as Virtual Freedom, whereby one is happy and harmless for 99.9% of the time. Virtual Freedom, with the bulk of the active work having largely been done, is a period of becoming accustomed to living in increasingly long periods of near self’-lessness. In this stage, apart from a few remaining issues and investigations, one’s social and instinctual identity, or ‘self’ – who I think and feel I am – has increasingly nothing left to do but to get out of the road. Eventually the ‘self’ becomes so thin and ethereal as to be understood, recognized and eventually unequivocally experienced as being non-substantial, i.e. non-actual.

The permanent experiencing of ‘self’-lessness is to be actually free of malice and sorrow – you then have arrived, sans ‘self’, permanently and irrevocably in the actual world.

In terms of my own process, and this should be pretty clear from what I write here, I am going through the initial phase of ‘deliberate active dismantling’ of the identity. This is still a fairly stormy period for me, with many ups and downs along the road. In this respect, it seems like little has changed. I have periods, sometimes lasting part of the day or most of a day, of ‘self’-less experiences, but then it seems like the malicious, resentful entity comes back in spades, even stronger the next time. Yesterday I actually felt quite depressed and discouraged by the end of the day – my partner and I were both in a terrible state- I being quite miserable, and she feeling very sick and tired out. She ended up balling her eyes out – I ended up ‘nurturing’ her – and then we both had an enormous laugh at the ridiculous state both of us were in. After that, things lightened up a bit.

There are three alternatives to dealing with one’s lot in life, i.e. being born with genetically encoded animal instinctual passions and being ensnared by one’s own social identity into forever remaining within the flock. Within Humanity there are only two alternatives – to remain normal and begrudgingly accept one’s lot, always feeling resentful, or to become spiritual and dwell in the world of fantasy, always in denial. There is now a third alternative – step out of the real world and into the actual world and leave your ‘self’ behind.

By actively doing something about your lot in life you give up either denying or accepting what ‘you’ are really thinking and feeling. You cut to the very quick of the problem that prevents humans from living together in peace and harmony. By doing so, any lingering feelings of resentment and shame, or any loitering desires for transcendence – to go ‘somewhere’ else – eventually wither as you incrementally eliminate malice and sorrow from your life.

There has been an incremental improvement in that I experience less malice and sorrow since I have been at this. That may seem inconsistent with what I wrote above (‘In this respect, it seems like little has changed’), but overall there has been improvement. It is very difficult and arduous to dismantle the social identity, and if anyone is fooled into thinking that this is an easy task, let me be the first to tell you that you are liable to experience some extreme reactions. You are also liable to be actively discouraged in this by your family, peers, and friends. At times, it feels quite crazy what I am doing, and there are times when I just go ahead, pull out the stops and do it anyway. Gary to Peter

I seem to be in the stage right now where I am reaping the rewards of practicing the method of actualism. Yesterday, for instance, I did experience first some irritation and then some anger. It was a rather uncomfortable experience. But the interesting thing is that I realized how seldom and how rare it is for me to experience this uncomfortable emotional state. I was interested to learn when this had all started, what had triggered it, and why I was apparently so down on myself. I made a rather stupid error at work, but actually the feeling of irritation had started some time before that. The ego kind of takes over first, and I start pouring responsibilities on myself, expecting myself to be perfect, and then KAPOW! ... irritation and anger. It is fascinating and interesting to see this process at work and it tells me where I get off track and what I can do about it. And, yes, the advice to ‘keep one’s hands in one’s pockets’ is invaluable, as the feeling of anger and irritation is so malignant and so deadly it is apt to spill over in interactions with other people if one is not careful of it. Also, I wanted to say that any kind of off-colour emotional experience of this sort is evidence of ‘me’ – all traceable to the sense of identity. One can find one’s identity writ large across any emotional experiences of this type. What I have found is that any emotions all boil down to one’s identity. It’s like Vineeto said in another post recently: ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ If there is any fuss, it is always about ‘me’ – that I am this type of person, or I must be treated this way by others, so on and so forth. Richard’s discovery that the Human Condition is typified by being an identity is a major groundbreaking discovery. I’ve never run across anyone anywhere saying it in quite this way with such radical implications. Eliminate the identity in toto and there is no more pain, no more suffering, no more malice and sorrow, and no more need to go off half-cocked into delusory spiritual and metaphysical realms. Gary to Peter

The religious or spiritual ways are for the preservation of species, no more, as they say the solution to be happy is in a master (a big strong dominant ape or a God, an imagination of a strong ape), to be a master, or after death, or in an hypnotic state of mind called samadhi or ecstasy; at last they justify themselves by unending contradictory affirmations. Politics and dictatorial system have always been fond of same kind of ‘reasoning’ (communism, nazism, fascism, Maoism, etc), they are all against the individuals, as the religious and spiritual systems are (be happy in being impersonal!!).The individual is the great danger for the group systems (from family to society), because he persists to think and see he has no interest to be appreciated, recognized and loved. He is only interested by truth and facts.

When you say ‘the individual’, you might consider defining that term more thoroughly.

The way I think of the individual is that he or she is the direct product of group systems, starting first with the family, then society at large as first experienced in the community, nation, and then world. You however are not using the term thusly. The trouble that I have with saying ‘the individual’ is that, in reality, there is no such thing as an individual. There are ‘unique’ individuals down through history, to be sure, but most of these sung or unsung cultural heroes have nevertheless been greatly influenced or are even products of their cultures. They may have been considered daring individuals precisely because they stepped outside of or deliberately defied prevailing social customs and mores. But show me one of these people who were free from the common instinctual heritage of the human species. In Actual Freedom I think we are talking about something radically different from any kind of Individualism – we are talking about eliminating the crude survival program sourced in the primitive parts of the brain. This goes way beyond being an individual, I would posit. I don’t mean to adopt a chiding tone in my comments here – I think there is an important point to consider and I would appreciate your comments on ‘the individual’. Gary to No 46

Hi Gary. Sure thing. Probably won’t be able to write as much or as clearly as I’d like to (lack of nicotine affects me badly), but I’ll do my best.

On second thoughts, a lot of this stuff is covered by some private correspondence between me and No 33 a couple of weeks back. Since there’s nothing too ‘private’ about either me or No 33 here, I might as well post it.

Background: No 33 had asked a question of Richard concerning the ‘psychic web’. He seemed to be angling toward whether there is a purely physical basis for the intuitive inferences people make about each other (i.e. ‘mind-reading’ and empathy in everyday life). I sent him a link to an article about the discovery of ‘mirror neurons’ in the brains of primates which seems to offer a possible biological explanation for why and how people ‘feel’ each other’s emotions and share experiences.

In response, No 33 thanked me for the article, made a few personal comments, and asked me whether I ‘felt’ what he had intended to convey in his message. Here was the answer: [quote]:

Hmmm. More correct to say I intuit it. A few weeks ago when you started a fresh thread about the nature of social identity (which unfortunately never got off the ground), I was going to post a fairly detailed reply – but didn’t get around to it. This is a good opportunity to do it, because the issues involved are directly relevant to what you’re asking here. The way I see it is something like this:

Who are S and J (the ‘identities’, not the bodies)? Do they have any separate reality, or are they created by each other? I think there are not two participants here at all. There are a multitude of participants in our dialogue, although there are only two bodies. There are (at minimum): J as he is. J’s image of J (i.e. No 60 as he sees himself). S’s image of J (i.e. No 60 as No 33 sees him). S’s image of J’s image of J (i.e. How No 33 imagines No 60 perceives himself). J’s image of S’s image of J (i.e. How No 60 imagines No 33 perceives him). S as he is. S’s image of S (i.e. No 33 as he sees himself). J’s image of S (i.e. No 33 as No 60 sees him). S’s image of J’s image of S (i.e. How No 33 imagines No 60 perceives him) J’s image of S’s image of S (i.e. How No 60 imagines No 33 perceives himself). Then there are (at minimum): J’s image of the relationship between S and J. S’s image of the relationship between S and J. J’s image of S’s image of the relationship between S and J. S’s image of J’s image of the relationship between S and J.

What I see here is that there are two psyches interacting, two human beings with identities forming and re-forming images of one another. You started with the question ‘Who are S and J?’. In other words, who are the identities? I would say S and J are who they think they are in their head and who they feel they are in their hearts.

I think I tend to see identities as being grounded or established in one’s instinctual programming, and later added onto throughout life through one’s experiences, conditioning, etc. One’s rough and ready instinctual program has been formed through aeons of evolution and has essentially not changed in millions of years. In other words, one’s instinctual heritage is established before birth and genetically endowed. I would not tend to agree with your statement that there are a multitude of participants to the dialogue. Only two – two human beings with well-formed identities. I also wonder what you mean where you state ‘J as he is’ and ‘S as he is’. Do you mean J and S sans identity? Do you mean J and S as flesh-and-blood bodies?

To what do you refer here?

In real life I think there are several (probably two or three) more levels of indirection, depending on how intelligent / neurotic / empathetic / deranged we are ;-) The only two actualities are S and J, and there is no guarantee that the true nature of S and J are known to anyone, including S and J themselves. We have only images (impressions), and images of images, distributed between two minds.

This part here is a bit fuzzy to me. You say that the only two actualities are S and J, and that the ‘true nature’ of S and J may not be known to anyone. That leaves open the question what is a human beings ‘true nature’. There is a great deal more to human interaction than just images and images of images. There is evocation of emotional reactions, sharing of emotional feelings, etc. When one speaks of a human beings ‘true nature’ one could be referring to any number of things. If you believe in a soul, then you are talking about the soul or spirit.

It leaves the door open to a metaphysical explanation of ‘being’.

If I remember rightly, your posting a few weeks back seemed to be angling toward the idea that we partially create each other. At least, that is the way I interpreted it based on my own reflections. In isolation we do not need a social identity (and yet we still have J’s image of J, and S’s image of S because, even when we are not directly engaged in socialising, we still spend a lot of our time imagining ourselves in social scenarios). Together we generate these identities in the form of images of self and other, images of other’s image of self, images of self’s image of other, and so on.

Again, I think you leaning a bit heavily on the image-making faculty of human beings. Perhaps there is a reason for this. I would say that one does not ‘need’ a social identity in any sense of the word, either in isolation or in interaction with other human beings. The only ‘need’ that I see for a social identity is to assuage the deep and abiding sense of loneliness and separation that is at the heart of one’s instinctual identity. A social identity is maintained either in isolation or in interaction with others because it is founded on the root animal instincts. (I know this probably sounds like standard Actualist stock-in trade but I really do think it is so).

Understanding each other is tortuously complex; our brains/minds have pretty effective ways for dealing with this complexity, but the potential for error is enormous. So let’s see how clever or deluded (or both!) these mirror neurons really are ... When No 60 sees a message from No 33, No 60 has certain expectations. Those expectations reveal something of No 60’s image of No 33. No 60 expects to read a message from a person whose public persona is polite, reasonable and friendly. He expects to read a message that always has at least some constructive content, i.e. content that is intended to further his own understanding, to help another understand something more clearly, or to seek greater mutual understanding by exploring a topic intelligently. Over time, No 60 forms in his mind an impression that, to him, represents No 33. That impression is of a person who has all the basic qualities of a generic human being, but the idiosyncratic features that make him ‘No 33’ to ‘No 60’ are: a person who wants to understand, and wants to help others understand the issues; a person who is deeply interested in (and at times very excited by) the possibilities he is discovering, and wants to help others to share them, or at least be able to share them, not hampered by misunderstanding; a person who has his fair human share of egoic motivations but is mainly motivated by the urge to get to the bottom of things for mutual benefit after many years of seeking without very much success. Thus, No 60 helps to ‘create’ ‘No 33’ by responding to the ‘No 33’ that No 60 imagines No 33 presents of himself ;-)

No 60 imagines that No 33 has fairly similar impressions of No 60 that No 60 has of No 33, with a few differences. No 60 imagines that No 33 images No 60 as somewhat more impatient, aggressive, and a little more unstable than No 33, but No 60 imagines that No 33 also ‘senses’ that No 60 is communicating with the good will and good intent which No 60 knows is real. This makes it possible for No 60 to ‘be himself’ with No 33, ‘knowing’ that mutual good will exists between them, and also knowing that whatever No 60 writes No 33 will be able to understand, whether he agrees or not. No 60 also ‘believes’ that No 33 ‘feels’ the same way. No 60 also believes that No 33 has noticed that No 60 tends to jump to conclusions, and No 60 suspects that No 33 suspects that No 33 is seeing something in actualism that No 60 has not yet understood because his emotional reaction to Richard and the Actualists prevents him from studying deeply, carefully and coolly. No 60 suspects that No 33 also suspects that some of No 60’s criticisms of Actualism may have some validity, and is probably concerned enough to investigate those for himself, but also knows that his (No 33’s) direct experience of life is getting better and better, and therefore he (No 33) is keen to find out for himself and draw his own conclusions. And No 60 respects this.

So a ‘psychic web’ is formed based on these images, and images of images, and images of images of images, and ‘No 60’ and ‘No 33’ are created partly by each other. It’s complicated, but the mirror neurons (if they are actually the mechanical basis of all this) makes the complexity manageable.

I think it might be more accurate to say that the psychic web is based on far more than mere images. The psychic web, formed through the aeons of physical evolution, is founded on lower brain structures that make us as human beings exquisitely in tune with the emotions and feelings of other human beings. There is also a psychic web between humans and animals. A dog, for instance, has an outstanding ability to pick up on human emotion. This is so, I understand, because they share remarkably similar limbic systems in their brains.

In a nutshell, I think/feel/sense/intuit we both understand that we are both people who are capable of understanding complex issues, not just the factual ones but the interpersonal ones too; and we have established a rapport that allows us to investigate these issues with mutual respect, liking, and an interesting mixture of affinity and complementarity. (If complementarity isn’t a word, it should be, and it is now).

Would it be stretching the point to say that a trust has developed between you and No 33? Is there a feeling of trust? Gary to No 60

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