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+--- Thread: How does selfness happen? (/thread-19881.html)
How does selfness happen? - Magical Realist - Mar 3, 2026
Not as though from the top down, as if it were something already existing in-itself and perceived from some hypothetically selfless and outside gaze. No..selfness as it occurs to us, as it is felt, from the ground up, as how it happens out of an already in place discourse of meanings and concepts ingrained into us from our culture. This persistent sense of centeredness and ownership behind all our experiences, but only in a world that itself lacks all centeredness. The "I" as the propositional source of all our thoughts and actions and words, but whose identity, if it even exists at all, in principle constantly eludes us.
"The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret?”― Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death
RE: How does selfness happen? - confused2 - Mar 3, 2026
Watch a Mickey Mouse cartoon. It's exactly like Mickey exists. Is it deeply philosophical - nah - it's a cartoon. I'm not sure where I'm going with this .. any thoughts?
RE: How does selfness happen? - Magical Realist - Mar 3, 2026
Mickey Mouse was more of a branding mascot than a beloved cartoon character. I know I never watched any Mickey Mouse cartoons. So when kids go to Disneyland and see someone dressed up like him wanting to hug them, they are probably wondering who the fuck is this?
Still, I'd say Mickey Mouse DOES exist as a branding mascot. Perhaps that is what the self is too. A mere mascot for our brand--an amusing cartoon character we emulate to manipulate and deceive people with for our own profit.
RE: How does selfness happen? - Syne - Mar 3, 2026
If you're only a culturally construction, like Mickey Mouse, it's probably because you have no self-determination. Like a cartoon character, you're a caricature of self. An external locus of identity.
RE: How does selfness happen? - Magical Realist - Mar 3, 2026
Just because something is a construct doesn't mean it isn't real. We are surrounded by constructed things all day long. One might even say that constructs are the realist and nearest and dearest things to us. At least to us. Such is the self, which we more or less inherit whole cloth from the discourse of our culture--a dynamic mish mash of movies, books, TV, pop psychology, social programming, schooling, language, relationships, religion, etc. It is nothing that we just ARE innately like an apple is just an apple. It is a completely learned and imitated way of fitting in and getting by in the world. And it seems to function pretty well. If we don't identify with it too literally that is.
RE: How does selfness happen? - Syne - Mar 3, 2026
You said it yourself. "Constructed things." If you see self as a "thing," that's even more illustration of an external locus of identity.
An external locus of identity occurs when a person's self-worth and identity are defined by outside factors, such as others' perceptions, possessions, or achievements, leading to a "thing-like" view of the self. This perspective often results in chasing external validation, constant comparison, and a feeling that identity is an object to be managed rather than an internal experience.
External Locus of Identity
Definition: Identity is constructed based on external factors rather than internal values.
Characteristics: Dependence on social approval, material possessions (e.g., buying items for status), and social media feedback.
Consequences: A fragile self-esteem, feeling that happiness is controlled by others, and a tendency to feel like a pawn of circumstances, sometimes leading to learned helplessness.
- Google AI
Compare that to:
In psychological terms, an internal locus of identity (or control) typically leads individuals to view themselves as active agents rather than static "things" or passive objects. Viewing the self as a "thing" (objectification) is more closely associated with an external perspective where individuals internalize an observer's viewpoint, reducing their own sense of agency.
An internal locus of identity allows an individual to process external cultural influences through a core psychological framework of personal values and self-defined purpose, rather than being passively shaped by societal norms or other people's opinions. Individuals with an internal orientation primarily identify with personal achievements or internally held values, making them less likely to be manipulated by external pressures or cultural shifts.
- Google AI
Hence:
Jacques Derrida's philosophy reflects an external, relational locus of identity, arguing that the self is not an autonomous internal essence but a product of pre-existing external frameworks. In his view, identity is derivative—an effect of symbolic, cultural, and linguistic structures that prefigure the individual before self-consciousness even arises.
- Google AI
Of course, if you also have an external locus of identity, you will obviously agree with Derrida... and may not be able to fathom an internal locus of identity sufficiently to acknowledge its existence.
RE: How does selfness happen? - confused2 - Mar 3, 2026
Does empathy make a difference? Without empathy we might believe we are alone, special, unique whereas as with it we are just another member of a herd. I'd guess military training takes empathy into account and perhaps modify it. Cultural norms are a factor too. A male ordering men to fight might sound 'like a leader' .. a female saying exactly the same things might sound like she's insane.
RE: How does selfness happen? - C C - Mar 3, 2026
(Mar 3, 2026 12:00 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: [....] The "I" as the propositional source of all our thoughts and actions and words, but whose identity, if it even exists at all, in principle constantly eludes us.
"The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret?”― Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death
The language-mediated and culture-provided concept of self or ego is grounded in a biological and evolutionary situation of an organism being a distinct entity that needs to survive. The latter is not going to happen without biased investment in protecting that specific body and accommodating its requirements and interests.
For creatures with complex brains, there's a stored history of events and interactions unique to that individual which provides personal preferences, motivations, and goals. One's identity revolves around that, and if it was expunged by total amnesia, then one reboots to the sapient blankness of a newborn that has no clue what's going on, no meaning apprehension of the parade of qualitative presentations.
Even if we accepted Aldous Huxley's idea that general existence was a "mind at large"[1], and our own privacy and isolation fell out of a "reducing valve" situation, there's no getting around that the island is indeed the case. Temporal change itself is a procession of increments of cognition where each distinct set of manifestations (sensations and thoughts) quasi-solipsistically deems only itself and its current agenda to be real. The passions and understandings of the child in the past at the age of eight is only distantly relevant to this Now, having less knowledge and expertise in contrast, with an identity relationship between the two flimsily maintained by brain memory and information records retained in the environment.
In everyday conversation contexts, the pronoun "I" is ultimately referring to "this body" because that public object is what's available to other observers (not the internal phenomenal affairs traditionally construed as belonging to an immaterial soul or whatever).
- - - footnote - - -
[1] Aldous Huxley: "In the final stage of egolessness there is an 'obscure knowledge' that All is in all—that All is actually each. This is as near, I take it, as a finite mind can ever come to 'perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe."
RE: How does selfness happen? - Magical Realist - Mar 3, 2026
Quote:You said it yourself. "Constructed things." If you see self as a "thing," that's even more illustration of an external locus of identity.
Most things, if not all of them, are constructs in that they are composed of smaller parts and spacings and relationships. They are things in the sense of being composites, assemblages, and structures. But they are not substantial things---things existing in themselves. The self is no exception.. It is a pure form deriving its character from its wholeness or gestalt not some irreducible substance or elements. We are a bricolage of experiences, memories, ideas, and events all loosely cohering as an idealized phantom or cloud--the black hole of nothingness at the center of the galaxy. The virtual center of the cohering structure:
"This centre, in controlling the structure, in making it cohere, must both be part of the structure and lie outside it. A structure, therefore, is “contradictorily coherent” and relies on an “invariable presence” to determine its existence. That presence, Derrida argued, has been given many different names throughout history – essence, being, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man and so on – but all have relied on this idea of there being something unchanging beneath it all."
RE: How does selfness happen? - Syne - Mar 3, 2026
Yes, we get it. You have an external locus of identity.