The substance of the self (was Re: Shared mentality)

kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca
Sun Apr 2 07:13:02 PDT 2000


On Sat, 1 Apr 2000 20:45:19 -0500 Dace <edace at flinthills.com> wrote:


> >Language isn't abstract for the person using it!


> Yes, it is. Language is abstract. All words, whether they refer to concrete
things or abstractions, are themselves abstract.

But words can hurt, precisely because they *aren't* abstract for the person speaking or the person listening. Such, in grammatical and lexical analysis, words are abstracts - but they also injure. In short, language *constitutes* our being. Mere words? Never.


> If suffering didn't mean essentially the same thing for everyone, there would
be no such thing as empathy.

There is no such thing as empathy (transpersonalism). We're stuck with mimesis and identification/transference.


> When the listener has received a sufficient amount of pointers, the idea
suddenly appears in its totality in the mind. It's like sneezing. There's a gradual increase in the agitation of sinus cells until-- boom-- it happens all at once. If we were to try to communicate with "aliens" we would have to go about it in a painstaking, mechanical way. We would find out how hard it is to communicate with other "intelligent beings," those with whom we share no common mental background.

Like Walter Benjamin's "profane illumination" eh? I'd say that understanding indicates failed communication (because once one understands, the conversation ends).


> Between my personal consciousness and the shared unconscious mind of which I
am an expression there is a personal unconscious mind. Together, these three things-- taken as a whole-- are my true self, as opposed to my abstract self, which is produced by thinking and therefore has no self-existence.

Don't mean to knit-pick, this true self, this means "objective self" right? I think truth and objectivity are worth distinguishing. Truth being more (subjectively) conditional that objectivity.

ken?



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list