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waytogoal OP t1_jarqn7w wrote

Submission statement:

The modern world romanticizes finding yourself, your style, your type, etc. This “quest” is even glorified to the point that you would feel compelled to lie about what is “you” all the time, just so you could gain a foothold in society. Ironically, dwelling on this image of “self” neither helps you find your true nature, nor to find your role in the larger world. Feeding this ego of “what is me” limits your consciousness and freedom, it distracts you from the more important issues in life, from experiencing, endeavoring, and experimenting in the grand, holistic world in an unbiased way.

All in all, this article argues the futility of glorifying the “self” (giving it too much importance) from the point of view of Buddhism e.g., attachment to something impermanent and untrue must cause suffering, as the true essence of existence is a dynamic interconnected whole; from findings in biology and evolution: niche partitioning is an invariant evolutionary outcome of all life, everything continuously evolves and adapts, even within a single lifetime of the same individual, whatever you think is your "self" will be "forced" to change in no time; from the point of view of neuroscience and information: internally recycled beliefs are bad data for building a mental model, one has to obtain “experimental data” by learning from the real-world effect of your actions.

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Mustelafan t1_jascumk wrote

>The modern world romanticizes finding yourself, your style, your type, etc.

>Ironically, dwelling on this image of “self” neither helps you find your true nature, nor to find your role in the larger world.

I'm a bit confused, couldn't "your true nature" just be taken to mean "your true self"? The vibe I'm getting from this article is "there is no true self, that's an illusion, but if you acknowledge the self is plastic and changes over time it's actually totally real, also be nice to people."

It seems like you're just saying "the true self isn't static like many think, but evolves over time" which I would agree with, but you've muddied the point by using obfuscatory language to shoehorn in an attempt at dunking on ignorant, vain, shallow westerners (low hanging fruit) and glorifying Buddhism - and, ironically, it comes across like your own ego stroking. Not saying this is what you intended or that I 100% understood what your article is about, but this is what this comes across as to me.

In my view, given that at the end of the day everyone just wants to be satisfied with their own life, "finding your true self" just means finding the version of the self that is most satisfying now and putting yourself on the path to be satisfied even as the self evolves. (Of course the lay public fails miserably at that task, because they fail miserably at everything that requires careful contemplation - but that's not an indictment of whatever philosophy they're attempting to carry out IMO). And in this context finding the "true self" would then be extremely important. Of course we should attempt to experience the holistic world as it truly is - but are we not a part of said world? Can we truly understand the world if we don't understand ourselves, and vice versa?

>attachment to something impermanent and untrue must cause suffering

I totally agree with the Buddhists here. But the self doesn't need to be defined only in terms of who we are at the present, transient moment, which can result in suffering (not that I believe all suffering should be avoided, but that's beside the point). The self can also be defined in terms of our past (including the old "false" self that we were) and who we want to be and at one point wanted to be in the future, and whoever we end up being. Instead of arguing against the concept of self, perhaps we should be advocating a more holistic view of the self instead?

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waytogoal OP t1_jaskmhx wrote

You made some good points and you have understood my article very well. Sorry for sounding a bit condescending in the article (I understand this tone alone would inevitably generate some controversies).

But I would argue that if the nature of self is always changing quickly no matter what, then why would we need to emphasize on it, develop it in a particular way, or stroke it. Ultimately, it is a highly cultural thing, from my experience, even contemporary "Easterners" (since you use Westerners) don't care about the concept of "self" that much, it doesn't mean they starve themselves or they don't make themselves happy, it is just that the idea of caring about that mental construct of self never cross their minds i.e., we rarely talk about it.

I also respond to another commenter below embodying similar logic: "The main obstacle to finding your true nature, true "self" if you'd like to call it, is obsessing over it." I think nouns that deserve a "shoutout" or "emphasis" are things that are quite stable in the human sense of lifetime.

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Mustelafan t1_jasrrt0 wrote

Oh no need to apologize for sounding condescending, I do that all the time lol

>But I would argue that if the nature of self is always changing quickly no matter what, then why would we need to emphasize on it, develop it in a particular way, or stroke it.

Well, I'd ask in return, if a river is always rushing why attempt to control its flow with dams and stabilize its banks to prevent erosion? Often letting the river just do whatever it does is the best thing to do, but sometimes it's also best to rein it in.

I'm going to continue with this terrible analogy because I like it. The "Easterners" might say, "why the hell did you build your house in a flood plain?" And the "Westerners" might say, "why the hell would I want to walk two miles to get water?" They're both perfectly valid questions and the answer depends on an individual's needs and, as you said, cultural factors. If Easterners can be satisfied without worrying about a Western conception of self, great. If a Westerner can be satisfied with their own concept of self, also great. I personally find a holistic concept of self to be useful for clarifying my path in life, speaking as someone who used to struggle with depression and derealization - I'm not even sure how I would function without such a concept.

>"The main obstacle to finding your true nature, true "self" if you'd like to call it, is obsessing over it."

This I would absolutely agree with. But I do think finding the self takes contemplation - I'm not sure if one can find it without thinking about it at all.

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waytogoal OP t1_jatadhj wrote

I really like your river analogy, it got me thinking a lot. And if it works for you, then please don't stop learning the "holistic self".

To go back to the river, perhaps the distinction is a high-risk-high-reward vs. low-risk-low-reward culture. But there is more nuance to that, I think the world is asymmetric, symmetry-breaking is what creates this world, otherwise it is a nothingness vaccuum state (this is hard-coded in the laws of nature in my opinion).

So what on earth am I talking about? In evolution, we seem to also have an asymmetry, everything that is done hastily without consideration of the surrounding (the whole) is almost guaranteed to destroy others and produce a net suffering (maybe you won't see it, but your grandkid will see the failure). So, there is this asymmetry here - High risk won't necessarily give you a high reward in the long-term sense (there is only a small stochastic chance others might be able to pick up from your mess); the greatest reward is found when you do things slowly (low-intervention) and considering the whole i.e. low-risk, high-reward.

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Mustelafan t1_jatd1c8 wrote

I agree with everything you just said, but I'm not sure I get the implication. Are you saying the "holistic self" as we're calling it, or the Western analog of it it is risky? Because I wouldn't necessarily disagree (I'd really have to think about it), but surely there's a best of both worlds here. Something like Jungian psychology or perhaps something based on Nietzschean philosophy that could potentially identify who would benefit from intentional "self-finding" and who would be better off not worrying much about the self at all. Just because something is high risk doesn't mean it's bad - it just takes a specific type of person.

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velcrodon t1_jasu743 wrote

One point that may help clarify some of the general thoughts on ‘self’ in terms of Buddhism - there is a concept of who is watching the watcher. Meaning, if you stop to pay attention to the various thoughts/biases/whatever that pop into your head and watch them flow in, who then is the true self? Are you those thoughts? Are you the watcher and not the thoughts? Are you both.

This is where the concept of self gets very sticky, and is why articles about self and Buddhism speak about the fleeting transitory nature of self and how we all evolve over time.

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waytogoal OP t1_jat5o2d wrote

Thanks for the clarification!

Too many people conflated that "watcher" as their consciousness. The former is much more limited than the latter.

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TheRoadsMustRoll t1_jasbqco wrote

> ...the futility of glorifying the “self” (giving it too much importance)...

and there are many great real world examples of this hubris in front of us right now.

i.e. world leaders who have wrapped the future of their political constituencies around themselves (without any thought given to what happens and who takes over after they die.)

i.e. corporate leaders who scrape every last bit of profit out of every market they can get their hands on (without any thought given to who is going to be able to buy anything if all the money is in a few bank accounts owned by the wealthiest people.)

pure hubris.

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