What about this: Would it be fair to say that you have just one self, but that the various people in your life (and especially on Substack) only experience a sliver of that larger self, which can make it feel like you have multiple selves depending on who you’re interacting with?
Then again, maybe we’re mysteries to ourselves too. I started watching Shogun on Fox last night and the first episode repeats a 16th century European observation about the Japanese psyche: “a false one in their mouths for all the world to see, another within their breasts only for their friends, and third in the depths of their hearts, reserved for themselves alone and never manifested to anyone.”
I’ve never messed around with Internal Family Systems therapy but my understanding is that (despite the misleading name) it claims we all have multiple sub-personalities and we feel anxious or depressed when those sub-personalities are in conflict. The goal, as I’ve heard it, is to accept and eventually harmonize all versions of our self.
I like to think that I’m the same me in all situations, though I’m sure that’s not true. And I certainly have yet to find the platonic ideal of a friend who engages with all the versions of me. I’ve come to assume that is too much to ask from just one person.
As always, I appreciate your monthly missives and playlists.
Aha see that brings up another point of who latches on to which pieces of you.. and it leads me to wonder what parts Iris engages with and what parts she detaches from. Bc like yoh said, it’s too much to ask and nearly impossible to find someone that engages with all the versions of me.
And then it’s some esoteric employment of Multiple Personality Disorder to embody certain versions of ourself with certain people. Which is pretty much your initial statement is true and I’ve come full circle. But I’ll just click post anyways lol
(Let me know how Shogun is after a couple episodes, I’ve been meaning to watch it!)
who are we, really? or does it even matter if we start focusing on the ways we live our lives instead of spending too much thinking about how we are going to live. seems oftentimes I was trapped by my past-self while new identity of who I am emerges in the present that I have a hard time understanding. then all the past-self got rolled up into our facebook and instagram feeds yet I found looking at myself from 10 years ago strange because I forget who that guy was. might be that is a constant we will face no matter in which point in time?
mmmyeah the time aspect does really change the way introspection works, especially dependent on your general mental health and how clean the mirror is.. I think we look back on past identities with such foggy lenses, either with romantic nostalgia or stained regret - both inaccurate for what the present was. And then that ofcourse influences the future’s plans to be just as inaccurate, so a vicious cycle.
But I don’t blame us, it’s hard to use only the present to live a predictive life - historians and statisticians would be out of jobs. Seems like you’re right, it’s a constant that we just have to adapt to and minimize the discrepancies between the identities that live in past/present/future.
"You can probably write a more accurate biography about me than I can."
Social media, our blogs, really anything that we curate for the consumption of an external audience, is a description of how we *want* to be seen rather than a description of how we are. Sometimes these depictions are accurate but that's only incidental congruence of what we want to be like aligning with what we are actually doing.
In that case, what makes this digital audience any difference than the one in our heads or the one across the coffee table? I think we're blending the reality between who we want to be seen as and who we actually are. I think the ratios and authenticity between portrayal/embodiment are vastly different for folks - especially when you compare celebrities to a silly lil boy on Substack (me) but the idea is that these identites are not as far apart as we think. I find myself referencing my newsletters in therapy all the time and it's a reassurance that the person that I *want* people to know is the person I am (or trying to be).
Rereading my comment I think it comes across as more cynical than I meant it to be. "Who you want to be" and "who want to be seen as" are ideally approaching a correlation of 1, but as you say I reckon that coefficient is different for different people.
In Book 3 of the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote: "You must habituate yourself only to thoughts about which if some one were suddenly to ask: 'What is in your mind now?', you would at once reply, quite frankly, this or that; and so from the answer it would immediately be plain that all was simplicity and kindness, the thoughts of a social being, who disregards pleasurable, or to speak more generally luxurious imaginings or rivalry of any kind, or envy and suspicion or anything else about which you would blush to put into words that you had it in your head." He was aspiring to the correlation of 1.
Aha the correlation of 1 makes sense, or at least in theory. I guess this asks two things from each person: to live in the absolute present and to be as ‘authentic’ as possible. Both tough, but like you said, that coefficient is different for people and I’m sure we ebb and flow away from 1 depending on those factors: authenticity and presentness.
What about this: Would it be fair to say that you have just one self, but that the various people in your life (and especially on Substack) only experience a sliver of that larger self, which can make it feel like you have multiple selves depending on who you’re interacting with?
Then again, maybe we’re mysteries to ourselves too. I started watching Shogun on Fox last night and the first episode repeats a 16th century European observation about the Japanese psyche: “a false one in their mouths for all the world to see, another within their breasts only for their friends, and third in the depths of their hearts, reserved for themselves alone and never manifested to anyone.”
I’ve never messed around with Internal Family Systems therapy but my understanding is that (despite the misleading name) it claims we all have multiple sub-personalities and we feel anxious or depressed when those sub-personalities are in conflict. The goal, as I’ve heard it, is to accept and eventually harmonize all versions of our self.
I like to think that I’m the same me in all situations, though I’m sure that’s not true. And I certainly have yet to find the platonic ideal of a friend who engages with all the versions of me. I’ve come to assume that is too much to ask from just one person.
As always, I appreciate your monthly missives and playlists.
Aha see that brings up another point of who latches on to which pieces of you.. and it leads me to wonder what parts Iris engages with and what parts she detaches from. Bc like yoh said, it’s too much to ask and nearly impossible to find someone that engages with all the versions of me.
And then it’s some esoteric employment of Multiple Personality Disorder to embody certain versions of ourself with certain people. Which is pretty much your initial statement is true and I’ve come full circle. But I’ll just click post anyways lol
(Let me know how Shogun is after a couple episodes, I’ve been meaning to watch it!)
who are we, really? or does it even matter if we start focusing on the ways we live our lives instead of spending too much thinking about how we are going to live. seems oftentimes I was trapped by my past-self while new identity of who I am emerges in the present that I have a hard time understanding. then all the past-self got rolled up into our facebook and instagram feeds yet I found looking at myself from 10 years ago strange because I forget who that guy was. might be that is a constant we will face no matter in which point in time?
mmmyeah the time aspect does really change the way introspection works, especially dependent on your general mental health and how clean the mirror is.. I think we look back on past identities with such foggy lenses, either with romantic nostalgia or stained regret - both inaccurate for what the present was. And then that ofcourse influences the future’s plans to be just as inaccurate, so a vicious cycle.
But I don’t blame us, it’s hard to use only the present to live a predictive life - historians and statisticians would be out of jobs. Seems like you’re right, it’s a constant that we just have to adapt to and minimize the discrepancies between the identities that live in past/present/future.
Love your writing and happy early birthday
thank you sir!
"You can probably write a more accurate biography about me than I can."
Social media, our blogs, really anything that we curate for the consumption of an external audience, is a description of how we *want* to be seen rather than a description of how we are. Sometimes these depictions are accurate but that's only incidental congruence of what we want to be like aligning with what we are actually doing.
In that case, what makes this digital audience any difference than the one in our heads or the one across the coffee table? I think we're blending the reality between who we want to be seen as and who we actually are. I think the ratios and authenticity between portrayal/embodiment are vastly different for folks - especially when you compare celebrities to a silly lil boy on Substack (me) but the idea is that these identites are not as far apart as we think. I find myself referencing my newsletters in therapy all the time and it's a reassurance that the person that I *want* people to know is the person I am (or trying to be).
Rereading my comment I think it comes across as more cynical than I meant it to be. "Who you want to be" and "who want to be seen as" are ideally approaching a correlation of 1, but as you say I reckon that coefficient is different for different people.
In Book 3 of the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote: "You must habituate yourself only to thoughts about which if some one were suddenly to ask: 'What is in your mind now?', you would at once reply, quite frankly, this or that; and so from the answer it would immediately be plain that all was simplicity and kindness, the thoughts of a social being, who disregards pleasurable, or to speak more generally luxurious imaginings or rivalry of any kind, or envy and suspicion or anything else about which you would blush to put into words that you had it in your head." He was aspiring to the correlation of 1.
Aha the correlation of 1 makes sense, or at least in theory. I guess this asks two things from each person: to live in the absolute present and to be as ‘authentic’ as possible. Both tough, but like you said, that coefficient is different for people and I’m sure we ebb and flow away from 1 depending on those factors: authenticity and presentness.