Yesterday, October 23rd, I watched Reflections on the Elusive I - The Cognitive Science Show. Previously, over a period of months, I watched all twelve videos in John Vervaeke’s The Elusive I playlist. As best I can I will now capture a few of my thoughts before moving on to other things.
The Elusive I is a series of conversations amongst John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Gregg Henriques about the nature of the self. Both the style and content of this dialogos is very impressive, truly the leading edge of thought at this time. I am in awe of the intellectual capacity of these men and their ability to articulate their ideas. And I am impressed by their attitude of humble exploration and their desire to do good. In contrast, I know that I can only absorb and retain a few small bits and pieces of all they have shared.
The last section of Reflections on the Elusive I focuses on what is at stake in an attempt to formulate a significantly more robust conceptualization of the self. A lot, in a sense, everything. To fulfill the ancient adage “know thyself” we need a better understanding of the self. To address the current mental health crisis better models of the self are important. Vervaeke, Mastropietro and Henriques also link their ideas to the task of personal and societal transformation which, they assert, should be one of the objectives of education. Clearly, the current narratives of selves are grossly inadequate as evidenced by extreme polarization in society and the escalation of culture wars.
Two concepts useful for building a better model of the self are emergence and complex systems. I am, everyone is, a complex system from which my current self is emerging. It is only in the last couple of years that I have begun to think of myself this way.
The implications of this view of self are profound. Complex systems cannot be totally reduced to component parts. At the same time these parts are significant. I am something more than the sum of all the parts from which I am constructed. I am something beyond the categories which describe me. I am an unresolvable paradox. To understand myself I must deconstruct myself into pieces I understand whilst simultaneously being aware that such reductionism fails.
It is also during the last couple of years that I have begun to learn about hyperobjects. However, I feel within me resistance to the assertion that human beings are hyperobjects. I know where my intuition takes me. Hyperobjects are not locally bound and I am unconvinced that human beings are not locally bound. But I want to hold my current opinion lightly. I have much more learning and thinking to do in this direction.
I greatly admire John Vervaeke’s drive to unify a spiritual and scientific view of the self. But I remain skeptical. It seems to me that physicists are hitting impenetrable walls in their efforts to develop a theory of everything. Likewise, I doubt that spiritual and scientific views can be fully reconciled or transcended. However, I applaud these efforts because a lot is at stake.
I appreciated the efforts of Christopher Mastropietro to highlight the need to deeply confront death as necessary for our personal transformation into a healthier self. Here too I see paradox. We must confront death but it is impossible to do so through experience. A near death experience is not an experience of death. It is very difficult to find others with which to discuss this matter.
I have long been intrigued by the idea of self as narrative. Indeed, as a retirement project I am writing my own story. But the leading edge of thinking is pushing the narrative of the narrative self ever further. To have a stable society we need stable individuals. To be stable individuals requires that we all have a stable universal story about ourselves that we tell ourselves.
From time to time in this video series I thought I saw hints of a significant difference in the perspectives of Vervaeke and Mastropietro. One direction for a universal narrative, the end zone, is that a stable narrative must be ultimately grounded outside of the self. No other approach can fully satisfy. This thinking remains unattractive to me. At midlife I rejected the narrative of grounding myself by believing in GOD. However, I am trying to remain open minded. At this time, I continue to explore the idea that I can be grounded by accepting the idea of ultimate SOURCE, whatever that means. But I cannot shake my intuition that it is all stories all the way down which leaves me in a somewhat unstable condition.
I did like a thought expressed by one of the three main participants but I do not remember who. Best, he said, is to think of ourselves as poetry, always trying to express something which lies beyond the words. This seems like a beautiful way to capture our essence. I am a poem; I am poetry. I think I have come a long way from high school when I hated studying poetry.
Finally, The Elusive I has provoked me to think about The Elusive We. If we have an inadequate grasp of I, it must logically follow that we have an even more inadequate grasp of the dynamics of any group of individuals with incomplete models and narratives. This is territory where much useful work is ongoing with Collective Presencing by Ria Baeck being a favorite of mine.
Someone in the video said that we need to “see in the other what they have actualized of our potential.” That seems to me to be one of the objectives of We Space activities. I am doing my best, with my limited abilities, to move in that direction with Crafting Communitas. We need to hold space for ourselves and others to be all of ourselves with awareness that this is impossible.