Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

"In a world of certainties and grand narratives, I lost myself in the details and chose to observe.

Abstraction made more sense to me than fact or circumstance. So I learned to speak only in the language of self-expression, a path that quietly set me against convention, pushing me to redefine worth and value on my own terms.

This perspective can feel isolating, even hermetic at times, but it isn’t. It’s simply another way of reading the world: an invitation to create meaning beyond what’s already defined, finding harmony even within the noise."

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575012622495

“Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them or a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, brave, shabby existence. They are the sons of Adam, who was driven out of Paradise; the brothers of the animals, of innocence. Out of heaven's hand they accept what is given them from moment to moment: sun, rain, fog, snow, warmth, cold, comfort, and hardship; time does not exist for them and neither does history, or ambition, or that bizarre idol called progress and evolution, in which houseowners believe so desperately. A wayfarer may be delicate or crude, artful or awkward, brave or cowardly—he is always a child at heart, living in the first day of creation, before the beginning of the history of the world, his life always guided by a few simple instincts and needs. He may be intelligent or stupid; he may be deeply aware of the fleeting fragility of all living things, of how pettily and fearfully each living creature carries its bit of warm blood through the glaciers of cosmic space, or he may merely follow the commands of his poor stomach with childlike greed—he is always the opponent, the deadly enemy of the established proprietor, who hates him, despises him, or fears him, because he does not wish to be reminded that all existence is transitory, that life is constantly wilting, that merciless icy death fills the cosmos all around.”-------Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

A new metaphor for the seeming split between mind and matter:

"…We may live our lives in parallel, but at the most fundamental level we experience aliveness alone, in the solitary chamber of the self, our experience a Möbius strip of consciousness folded unto itself, our becoming the most private, most significant work we have…"

“Walt Whitman On Owning Your Life“, Maria Popova, The Marginalian

Think for a moment about a Mobius Strip. Seen initially as a strip of paper with two sides like all strips, upon closer inspection it is really a strip of paper with one side. It's the twist that allows this unity between the two seemingly opposite sides. Here is a concrete metaphor for viewing the split between mind and matter or between subjectivity and objectivity. Mind and matter viewed as one loop twisting back on itself. A loop that if traced out can be seen to have one surface instead of two. Mind and matter NOT as the opposites they seemed to be but as one unified structure or strange loop in Hofstadter's sense. What is inside becomes outside and what is outside becomes inside. There is no distinction here if one follows its 2D its looping trajectory.. A geometrically impossible form and yet an entirely real and seamless union of opposites as followed along back and forth forever and ever. The Cartesian split is solved! Mind and matter are ultimately the same exact thing, but only as a sort of paradoxical thing that includes itself and excludes itself at once! The split is resolved temporally but not spatially. In the tracing of the loop itself alternately over and under that simply makes what seemed impossible totally real! And we have only to imagine what a 3D Mobius shape would be like by likewise tracing its own two sides--inside and outside. The identity of both demonstrated only thru time and movement. A Klein Bottle should give you the idea:

..........

There is some inherently erotic about being objectified as just a physical body. It's why when complete strangers--who don't know the person we are at all--check us out it's always kind of stimulating. It's also why there is a noticeable underlying eroticism to being a patient in a hospital, immobilized and completely objectified by medical science as our physical anatomy to be experimented on and fiddled with like a gadget.

Objective existence, at least for human beings, is not something we have innately like a rock or a chair. We have to be objectified as a physical thing, subjective only to the degree of having reactive sensations that are being stimulated by a subject or subjects in our immediate environment. Objectification is the projected subjectivity of the Other as aimed at our own bodies--the voyeuristic Gaze that is evaluating us for its own mysterious needs.

Ironically, the only other time we are so completely embodied and de-subjectified is when we die and become a corpse. Eros and Thanatos—the life drive and death drive of Freudian psychology. The body as object of desire OR as object of revulsion.

We are not just discrete and passive subjects. Nor are we discrete and passive objects. We are also agents--engaged constantly in activity and future-directed projects that can only exist as a third state between subjectivity and objectivity. We know we already are both a subject, as our experience, and an object, as our bodies. This dichotomy is not absolute though. The two modes of being merge in bodily auto-motion and projective ideation. A pure subject could never be an agent having no physicality to cause with. Nor could a pure object be an agent, having no auto-mobility. Both are modes of being acted upon, cutoff from any form of originary action or purpose.

By becoming agents we intertwine in what M Merleau-Ponty called the Chiasm. This is the intertwining of being both object and experient at once, like when you put your hands together. At that moment you see clearly you are what experiences and what stimulates at the same time. There is no artificially abstract distinction any more between object and subject--between physicality and consciousness. They include each other in the one intentional act. We are what touches and what is touched. We are what sees and is seen. We are what hears and is heard. Outside and inside at once as the Between. The hybrid synthetic state between mind and matter we call Intent/Energy.

Addendum to post #265:

Even when standing before a mirror do we witness ourselves as objectified as just a body., We never express anything in front of the mirror, standing still and frozen of expression while we look and iteratively make improvements upon it. It is we ourselves as hidden subjects who are objectifying ourselves as our own body. And we always experience that body this way as being viewed by potential others, infusing an autoerotic flavor to the experience. We thus both subjectively identify with our reflected body as something we can move and pose with and also stand outside it looking at it as an object external to us.

Is it objectification of our own body when we appreciate the hard work and willpower we put in to achieve the results we see?
Seems the more we exercise agency over our external appearance the more that appearance reflects our inner will.

Quote:Is it objectification of our own body when we appreciate the hard work and willpower we put in to achieve the results we see?

What kind of results? Like losing weight or working out? That WOULD be an objectification of the body, of being viewed as an objective replica of the cultural ideal of beauty that everyone supposedly is attracted to and admires. In reality it is only your own ideal of beauty that you are replicating, which may or may not be shared by others. In the case of looking slimmer it probably would be. But in the case of working out and looking more buff, that isn't actually attractive to most women. Muscle men emit major narcissistic and homoerotic vibes.

Is there a difference in appreciating the personal effort to lose weight or build muscle?
Why would that appreciation necessary be related to cultural ideals?

Yeah, we're not taking a gay man tell us what women think seriously. 9_9