Unmaking Sense

Episode 5.26: Is life a story? Is the self a narrative or a collection of unconnected episodes?

The narratives we tell about ourselves and that our societies tell about us serve to create a picture of the self that is both a prison and affection. Who are we? Are we our story or a sequence of largely unconnected events or episodes?

Episode 5.25: Calling something “Democracy” doesn’t establish it as such. Democracy must be created.

Things do not exist because we can give them names. Nor does the fact that we have a name for something mean that it is possible. In order to establish democracy we have to live collectively in ways that establish it and so create it out of our experiments in life. It does not come from some theoretical definition or some eternal realm any more than it grows on trees to be plucked by passers-by.

Episode 5.24: What’s in a Name?

We imagine that when we name things we name something substantial, perhaps even permanent. But if the access that we have consciously to our true selves, our nonconscious selves is only fragmentart through a window of very narrow bandwidth into our nonconscious minds, the names by which we refer to ourselves refer to something that is essentially unknown and unknown able: by you, by me, by everyone.

Episode 5.23: The conscious and nonconscious self; the energy and intensity of our self-awareness.

The window that consciousness has into our non-conscious selves is not of constant size, and the intensity of vividness of our sense of self varies accordingly. The amount of energy that is being generated by whatever we are doing will change the size of that window and therefore the intensity of our sense of self, of our self awareness.

Episode 5.22: Whatever energises us creates a framework within which all else comes to a focus.

How do you caters are very bad at identifying things that energise their pupils and using them as a means to integrate together all their other studies. One consequence of this is the disaster many children experience in education as a demotivating influence.

Episode 5.21: The vicious circle of working to live and living to work is broken by energising life.

It is dangerous to do things as a means to an end rather than because they are rewarding in themselves. A key indicator of this is that doing something or being with someone is energising, and the converse also applies.

Episode 5.20: An objection that proves the rule.

If what we do does not produce a net gain in energy, we live to work and work to live with nothing in reserve. So it is better to earn less but be energised than earn more and be drained by what we do. The former affirms our living and the latter denies it. But only those who experience being energised seem able to understand its importance.

Episode 5.19: The Kennedy Principle and mutually beneficial patterns of living.

Human beings commonly get hung up on questions such as how much they will be paid for what quality of comp qualifications they will earn. In both employment and in education these are the wrong considerations to put at the top of our concerns. What matters is whether we are net beneficiaries - ourselves and our employer, or our schools and the pupils - whether together we generate more energy than we consume. If we do, it is mutually beneficial; if we don’t, it isn’t, and we should respond accordingly.

Episode 5.18: Sources of the self.

If we only have access to our selves through a narrow band of consciousness in the now and it consists mostly of immediate experiences but no access to the deeper totality of our self, then where does our sense of self come from? There are at least three perhaps four answers: from memory and anticipation; from the interactions that we have with others and the stories that they tell about us; and lastly from the narrative that we weave about ourselves consisting of pieces of all those other features. There are also of course mistaken things and lies told about us that may constitute a fourth source, but I don’t deal much with that here.

Episode 5.17: Why I cannot recapture what it was, or anticipate what it will be like to be me.

We remember and anticipate in representations but not in existential experiences, so although we can recall how we represented past experiences and anticipate how we may describe future ones, we cannot know what it was or will be like to be “me” on such occasions.