I don't think I need to state that this is a complex and personal topic. I've taken almost a month to finish this off.
Character is one of those words I know but have never explored. It's vague and mysterious to me, and I hate ambiguity (personality trait!). I am more familiar with words like personality, values, ethics. That's why I am drawn to it.
I certainly do feel the desire, to construct my own identify and behaviour according to some to ideal or principle; ...
I certainly do too. When I read Ayn Rand, I want to be an industrialist, like John Galt. When I read Chomsky, I thought linguistics to be what I want to study, and I should be a polymath. When I read about Alan Turing, I thought AI was what I wanted to do. and that being a nerd is a virtue.
It's all good.
yet I end up saying what I think and act on my gut feeling.
Yup. That's what we all do. It's the cliche/fact that the conscious mind is far slower than the unconscious mind. (This is only natural, because the conscious experience is but the product of a vast amount of unconscious processes. Every conscious entity must have a far larger unconscious in the background). I often wish I was more in control of my behavior, but I can only handle so much cognitive load, over which performance drops precipitously.
Welcome to the human experience!
"The gut feeling". It's up there with "the ghost in the shell", "soul" and "closed source software" in ambiguity. Our gut feelings are but the subconscious, shaped by the past.
Not in a bad way. Everyone has their own character, and there's no need to explicitly change who you are. From a Christian perspective, I am a special creation by God, with all my strengths and blunders. For the postmodernist, everyone can have their own different yet equally valid ideal - so why not just try to be myself?
I've tried to try being someone else other than me too! It's hard work and demotivating. It looks fake from the outside, it's manipulative, deceptive and ultimately a waste of time. So why do we do it?
For me, it was a fear of not "fitting in". The fear of rejection is extremely powerful stuff. It can cause self-sabotage, self-attack, self-censorship self-denial, all of which makes the fear worse, because when I realized I was doing this, I realized other people could see this too. And so I need to deny myself some more.
Like one time I was on exchange, and I was asked, just about every night, to go clubbing. I guess the social part of me really wanted to go check out Korean nightlife, but overall, I felt anxiety, tiredness and the prospect of window-shopping excited me more. My social part would start with "hmmm I wonder what it's like..." but then move on to "You won't go because you're just scared." At the end of the day, I took a compromise and tried it. That night turned out to be fun but I wouldn't want to do it any more than monthly.
Sometimes, I find that one has to do what feels best overall, even if you feel peer pressure or "abnormal" or whatever self-rejecting occurs. (For the latter - go seek professional help.)
Like one time I was on exchange, and I was asked, just about every night, to go clubbing. I guess the social part of me really wanted to go check out Korean nightlife, but overall, I felt anxiety, tiredness and the prospect of window-shopping excited me more. My social part would start with "hmmm I wonder what it's like..." but then move on to "You won't go because you're just scared." At the end of the day, I took a compromise and tried it. That night turned out to be fun but I wouldn't want to do it any more than monthly.
Sometimes, I find that one has to do what feels best overall, even if you feel peer pressure or "abnormal" or whatever self-rejecting occurs. (For the latter - go seek professional help.)
Perhaps others value my true self, rather than me trying to be someone I'm not.
Hmmm...you got me thinking on this one. It sounds absolutely correct, but my gut says otherwise.
Firstly, what is the true self? It's elusive. Multi-layered, multi-dimensional, seamless. What is Eugene's true self? Is it when he is blogging, working or hiking?
How about a conundrum? What if you trying to be someone you're not IS in fact part of your "true self"? Because then, the two would hardly be a dilemma.
Secondly, you will always find people who value you, whatever you are. It's like
There are customers for just about everything, and goods that satisfy demand you might not have even dreamt of. At the same time, I think what we value in others goes on so many levels. I may value my doctor for skill and expertise, but not care at all about his character. Or like how I have the occasional sports friend, whose skills, fitness and humor are great, but whom I don't know much about. We rarely like someone because every aspect of their character were valuable to us.
On another level, you need others to value you. That's perfectly fine. Humans generally do need to feel valued by others. But I would say that is not why you should be honest - it is inherently in your self-interest and the interest of others to be honest, because it ensures harmony and happiness.
Hmmm...you got me thinking on this one. It sounds absolutely correct, but my gut says otherwise.
Firstly, what is the true self? It's elusive. Multi-layered, multi-dimensional, seamless. What is Eugene's true self? Is it when he is blogging, working or hiking?
How about a conundrum? What if you trying to be someone you're not IS in fact part of your "true self"? Because then, the two would hardly be a dilemma.
Secondly, you will always find people who value you, whatever you are. It's like
There are customers for just about everything, and goods that satisfy demand you might not have even dreamt of. At the same time, I think what we value in others goes on so many levels. I may value my doctor for skill and expertise, but not care at all about his character. Or like how I have the occasional sports friend, whose skills, fitness and humor are great, but whom I don't know much about. We rarely like someone because every aspect of their character were valuable to us.
On another level, you need others to value you. That's perfectly fine. Humans generally do need to feel valued by others. But I would say that is not why you should be honest - it is inherently in your self-interest and the interest of others to be honest, because it ensures harmony and happiness.
"It will help you not to expect that fulfilment from people who you already know are incapable of giving it." Henri Nouwen.
OK. All in all, it's an interesting, to-the-point piece. I have a question. What was it that inspired/caused you to write this?
3 comments:
Well, my motivation for writing was due to making some mistake that made me question my self-worth and worth to others.
I've probably forgotten what it is now, and it would have been really minor, but the feelings were real.
Oh. What mistake? What happened? What's /was your def of self-worth? Feel free to share!
My approach would be to file a bug report and ponder it in my idle time until it disappears.
......
Self-worth... I have questioned a lot of things...like ability as a student, ability to think, develop... but it's never been about self-worth. My intuition is to treat them as separate issues until I can trace them. Self-worth, to me, is like existence. I just exist, until I don't. I assume existence in my current form (and hence self and self-worth).
"Existence exists."
As for worth to others, well, try as I might, I am no island. I exist thanks to others. That implies non-zero worth to others.
Oh, and this, my friend, these crisis of worth, identity, security, etc. etc. is how thinkers become thinkers.
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