An Amazing Familiarity

Tales of Our Resemblances : Prologue

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our studies in cognitive experiments have been very revealing in their findings. We find in its pursuit, the basis of man's thoughts and his personal identity. This occupies us today on account of the way the world has grown and in some ways has come into our living rooms either through the TV, Internet or the working wife. It creates a curious phenomenon. It convinces us that what's in us is also in the world.

 

It comes to us in a personal way today. This is especially so due to the way we have come to brave the many travails of our lives and to form from them a new vision about ourselves. Hello world ! Perhaps we ought to say that and introduce ourselves anew to it.

 

And what's new about it? Well ... if its something new, we obviously need to catch our breath before we go on. Its like finding a new name for it ... to define it anew. Its like changing the name of the pet we have been raising for the last so many years. It will take a while for it to respond to its new name.

 

In the meantime, we wonder about our rising familiarity and find new ways to speak of them. It may be more than a matter of simply the name. From the Bhagavad Gita, the devotee sees the vision of God and describes the Viswaroopa with the words, ' your eyes and feet are everywhere.' Today the aspiring Indic experience with some training in science says ' he is everywhere. We are all HIM, in many different colours.'

 

Is there a better way to say that? Obviously we won't know if we don't try. Jean Piaget, in his research into cognitive development pointed to the symbolic, the intuitive and other stages of development to knowledge. Where we continue to rely on the symbolic, we speak rhetorically, of the fact that all things eventually lead to good. But in the intuitive development, we learn to be secretive about how we know and create a self obsession of the instruments of the intuition that essentially encompasses the bundle of our passions.

 

That identity that we keep away from everybody else may well define what we are in an ultimate understanding. However the social relations we undertake sometimes exposes that which we hide and after a period of trying to push it back in, we say, ' The hell with it.' And thereafter learn to live in the new light of exposure to our intuitive self identity.

 

What would we say about having hidden a part of ourselves from others? I'm sure we'll think of something.

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Tony Z Sienzant]

"It convinces us that what's in us is also in the world."

Okay. But you didn't come down on either side of that question. Is it? Is the stuff "in us" also "in the world?" How come and why or why not? You brought us to the edge of something, then back away.

This is a thought-provoking essay and in toto may have a particular definitive message and while I thoroughly enjoyed reading it I'm not sure you have completely done your work... in other words, is it finished? Well, obviously not, as this is just a prologue. But I feel somehow you've rambled into a corner of something that is just a small part of the bigger question in the first ensuing paragraph, the setup. You've ended with how we create our individual identities in a 'secretive' exclusive way... you seem to suggest there is a better way, the communal, cooperative, social way of the masses perhaps (?), the zeitgiest (?) (and if that is so, one must then take into account the effects of mass media).

In between, you suggest it may have something to do with more "than a name." In an essay such as this, I think it will benefit the reader to portray examples from our contemporary world news. For example, right now, there is a massive manhunt for a Christopher Dorner, a rogue cop who is killing former law enforcement brothers and sisters because he wishes to restore his "good name." Something like this would dovetail nicely within your critique, especially the part about 'is it just in a name.' It will also make it more real, more concrete, more significant than just some sort of pie-in-the-sky theoretical argument.

I would also look into the opposite viewpoint: that the impersonal effects of mass media makes it seem as though we are having a 'personal' experience with it. In other words, the obverse argument that we are easily convinced that what is portrayed out there in the world is also "in us." How many teen girls define themselves by the images of 'beauty' they see in the mass media and then practically starve themselves to death to become that perverse skinny ideal that has been thrust upon them?

You say that these things come us 'personally' now as if they have ever come to us in any other way. Our every experience is a 'personal' one, it will always be so. I think you touch the edges of things and create impressions and evoke certain qualities but you never really nail anything down. Define your terms. Be your own devil's advocate. Anticipate the counter argument. Otherwise, it will read on a level of floating evolving meaning (which is perhaps what you want?).

To my mind, you can make the argument that knowledge of 'who we are' comes to us more 'personally' when it is person-to-person experience. The internet, television, our entire social media, is a less 'personal' experience in that it is 'filtered' through the media itself. And of course, there are pervasive forces out there that wish to define our desires, our identities, to write the 'narrative of our lives' so-to-speak, that is the nature of advertising and marketing: corporations trying to sell us something, governments trying to keep us 'in line' for a stable workable economy which benefits the very few at the top. I just think you are easily brushing aside some very very very REAL things here.

All in all, good writing though. To be fair, I will have to read the subsequent entries when time permits. This is just my initial impression.

[Dayran]

Tony, many tks for your review. phew !... where do I start? Yes, the ideas are developed in the subsequent articles. And yes again, it works better by recognizing that these issues out there as relating to us on the street where we live.

Here's something else. I don't have all the answers. I'm as much helping myself to think as I verbalize on these issues in a public media. I look forward to my reviewers affirming or denying these comments. It helps me as well. And if you add to it, so much the better. tks Tony.

[The Rock And Roll Cowbo..]

You certain;y give us a lot to ponder... especially got me thinking, Are we a part of the world or is the world a part of us? Very interesting.

[Dayran]

Thanks Dale, sir.