Re: personality

Jerry Blaz (ffdog@earthlink.net)
Wed, 7 Feb 1996 00:57:24 -0800

At 10:29 PM 2/6/96 -0600, you wrote:
We see ourselves differently than others
>see us. Others see us differently than we try to present our "self." Is our
>goal to reconcile the "I" and the "me" into a consistent thing or is our
goal to
>reconcile how we try to present our "self" and how it is received? As much
as I
>would like to think that there is the possibility of a unified self (that is
>that our inner self is what we present to the actors we encounter) I don't
think
>this is a possibility. Each person's perspective is unique. This is what is
>truly limiting (although the limitations of language don't help either).
>Everyone has different personal goals in an interaction. Even if there are
>shared goals, the preferred means of achieving this goal may vary. The
only way
>to remedy the inconsistencies (that I can think of) would be to be virtual
>robots where everyone shared the exact same thought process, goals, means etc.

I believe that what we are describing has very fundamental significance, for
propelling this description is a deep questioning of the objectivity of any
reality. Ah, you say, you mean social reality, right?

Well, I guess so, only I know of few realities that not social. And the
first problem confronting participants in a social reality is to reach
agreement that they are within the same social reality. A social reality
exists in situs and all its participants are engaged in creating this social
reality for all of its indexicality, and they generally succeed in creating
an intersubjective reality that is sustainable.

One of the problems with dealing with a social reality is its evanescence.
We often find ourselves considering a social reality in retrospect, and a
retrospective consideration is never able to capture what was in situs at
the instance of the reality's unfolding. The best we can go for is a
recreation, and using the best tools available to the social scientist does
not permeate the wall between a reality past and reality present.

We are all sort of in the straits of the teen-age male who, in the
locker-room at school, attempts to verbally recapitulate his "make-out" the
night before. Only our motives are slightly different.

Jerry Blaz
Jerry Blaz/The BOOKie Joint
7246 Reseda Blvd.
Reseda, CA 91335
(818)345-2983/(818)343-1055
ffdog@earthlink.net
Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a good book.
Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.
G. Marx