On Monday we touched on a few different ways of knowing oneself. These were a couple claims made: 1. I know myself better than anyone else does. 2. We very often depend on other people teach us about ourselves. The given example for number two was something like this: Have you ever been talking with a friend and claimed something about yourself to which they responded, "wait, no you aren't" or "no you don't".
I do believe that I know more about myself than any other person does and that such is the case for the majority of people. People often tell us something about ourselves for whatever reason. Parents, friends, family, all telling us "You can be so selfish sometimes" or "You have a real talent for ______", or "You are very generous". The proper response for us to take for such comments is to look inside ourselves and say either, "Yeah, I guess I really can be pretty self-centered" or "Where did he get that idea?"
My question is, does the information about ourselves that we receive from outside sources actually teach us, or is it knowledge we already have? Is it possible that your best friend knows that you can be conceited but you don't? I ask because I believe that a lot of the information about ourselves that we "learn" from other people includes ideas and characteristics we already knew we had but ignored or forgot. Secondly, what we learn from others about ourselves tends to be things we do not want to be.
If I volunteer at a local nursing home because I care about the elderly, I don't think it would be difficult for me to realize that I am caring, kind, compassionate, whatever characteristic you would put on such actions. However, if I volunteer at the nursing home weekly BUT complain about it everyday at school and explain how I just need it for my college credit, I still may feel like I am a kind person for giving away my time to help others. In this case, it would take a friend to tell me, "No, you're not very caring at all. You just do it for the credit," for me to REALIZE that maybe I'm not the nice person I thought I was.
The key word is realize. I don't think it takes other people to teach us about ourselves. If I want to learn about myself, all I have to do is change my point of view a little and look to the inside for introspection. Sometimes it takes outside sources to make us go through that process of self-examination because someone will make a comment and we think "Am I really?" An extreme example, if someone were to say to me "Ali, you are extremely loud and talk out way too much in class", they would not be teaching me about myself at all. I may step outside myself for a moment and ponder whether I really am obnoxiously loud in class, which is where the actual learning process beings. I then learn by being honest with myself that, no, I am in fact typically quiet in class,and move on with my life.
Sometimes people who tell us about ourselves are correct, and sometimes they are not. However, most of what they tell us are things that we already knew but did not think about OR chose to ignore. As humans, we tend to be dishonest with ourselves, justifying actions so we won't be able to realize that we actually have negative characteristics. When we really can be honest, though, we learn what and who we really are and how we come across to others.
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5 comments:
Ali, this is very Platonic! Plato suggests that all that we learn is simply knowledge that we already had at birth. It simply needs to be recovered. Interesting thoughts!
Ali I agree with you. In my experience people tend to ignore or refuse to acknowledge that they possess a certain characteristic that their society deems negative. However that does not mean you know yourself well. Try as me might we cannot completely step outside ourselves and examine our actions. Your example "Ali, you are extremely loud and talk out way too much in class" is subjective. What you perceive as talking way to loud, somebody else or a different culture might perceive as being relatively quiet. It seems that by trying to step out and look at yourself objectively you may try to rationalize your actions so that they seem correct to you and rationalize your characteristics or thinking that is deemed negative; which defeats the point of trying to look at yourself objectively. So basically it is difficult to know if you really know yourself and whether your qualities are good or bad as they are relative to the society you live in.
since qualities are relative to the culture one lives in, it appears that there is no right or wrong answer. does this apply to ethics?
Stephanie, your last comment assumes that the relative ethical viewpoint is what we live by and that there is not an objective ethical truth. But is there? I wrote another post dealing with relative ethics that will respond to the comment.
Then we come to the question of "who am I"? Is there an objective "me", or am I subject to reputation and different people's opinions of me?
It seems to me that we (people of the world) live by a relative ethical viewpoint. Each culture or religion believes that their ethical values are correct. But as a whole world that creates many different views. who is to say which one is correct? how can you know that what you believe is ethical when millions of other people might say that what you believe is ethical is not ethical?
i believe that we are all subjective to the outside world and how we think. We as people conform with others and it is part of our nature. No one wants to be publicly humiliated and in order to avoid this we conform. Also as far as reputations go, it affects how you are treated. All people desire affection and if you have a bad reputation then you will be treated possibly in a bad way. In order to avoid this one will conform. You may not completely conform and keep some indivuality , but there cannot be an objective me. It seems an objective me implies that you as a person do not change, you have the same essence- but that is impossible.
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