The Idea or Image of Myself

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ow do I get the idea or image of myself, given the consciousness I have, and the speech and thought mechanisms that operate in me?  The recognition of any sensation, part of the body, object (or anything else) brings automatically with it the knowledge that it is my body part or my sensation. To accomplish this I tell myself that it is such and such using my speech muscles, while simultaneously I am also aware of the body part or sensation.

I put together the various sensations of the body as a body image.  Perhaps the same can be said about the various mental impressions or feelings put together (or synthesized, to use Kant’s term).  Now, suppose that instead of the Transcendental Ego, we say that just an assemblage of neurons automatically put these different components as the self or the mind or the body, and also somehow generate the notion of the ‘I’ (i.e., the transcendental ego).  I still wouldn’t know, for one thing, how the putting together takes places physiologically, or how the ‘I’, my self is really explained by this process, for another.

If, on the other hand, with UG we want to say that it is thought which puts these together, I make thought an agent, something which does the synthesizing, assuming we know what thought is in the first place, we still don’t know how exactly thought puts them together.  Also, if thought is a passive thing that happens to us, it’s not clear how it can actively put anything together.  The only thing we know here is that the synthesis is accomplished by means of memory and recognition.  (When UG says thought divides itself into two, he probably meant as the subject and the object of thought).  When we recall or remember or recognize a sensation or an experience, there is a concomitant awareness of myself as having these sensations, (especially if we say so to ourselves), but also a feeling that they are my feelings or sensations.  This memory of the sensation or impression has to be accompanied by a body feeling, especially of the speech muscles, of the mouth, the head, and what not.

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Of course, there is a lot more to the ego or self than this mere sense of ‘I’.  Here in this very feeling of ‘I’ is implied the background knowledge that operates in making judgments and drawing conclusions from what the ‘I’ sees.  It is this background knowledge, along with the sense of the ‘I’, that is responsible for the self-protectiveness, self-preservation, aggrandizement, offense and defense, inferiority and superiority, and such.  For, in the thought process that is initiated by the knowledge there is a constant comparison going on as well as a division between the self and the rest of existence, as for instance, when I say to myself, “I see this.”

Sub-vocal movements and verbalization:  The sense of the self, as well as the illusion of the self, are ultimately based on recognition.  And recognition, to repeat, most usually, but not always, takes place through verbalization, but we are aware of it as speech or subvocal movements. Indeed, recognition of an image or an experience or any other memory implies some sort of verbalization, even when we are not explicitly aware of the verbalization as such.  And this is also the basis of the inner dialogue we carry on with ourselves. One aspect of this verbalization is what we call “telling ourselves”.  We say things to ourselves and we also resolve in our minds to do various things, as if this is a preamble to our subsequent actions.  To be sure, there can be action without any explicit self-command one issues to oneself.  This verbalization (sub-vocally) is necessary for us to feel things as real, as also to assess any given person, situation or experience.

Self-image, Self-worth, Self-esteem, Pride and Superiority:  Basically we form our self-image on the basis of what we think or imagine others think about us.  Also, in our day-to-day dealings with ourselves and the world, there is a constant self-evaluation taking place.  We compare ourselves, what we say and do, and our performance with those of others, and feel good or not so good, depending on where we find ourselves on a scale of worthiness.  Feelings of elation, frustration, disappointment or depression necessarily follow these evaluations.  In the very comparative process, there is an inherent compensatory mechanism of trying to make up for feelings of lack and inadequacy or insufficiency or inferiority; hence the constant striving for self-fulfillment.  And it’s never enough to attain a certain level of performance.  There is always someone else to beat, whose performance level we must surpass.  In fact, feeling superior to others is one way we make up for our feelings of inferiority. We gain a sense of power in seeing ourselves outdoing or performing better than other.  If we don’t do as well, we could feel inferior, deprecate ourselves or feel useless.

How Do I Appear to Myself? In general, my self-image is formed by how I envision others view me, my appearance, performance, behavior, my treatment of them, my relationship to them, and so on.  This is subject constant revision, based on the ever-changing information I gather from around me, from what other people say or do, the way they look at me, and the way they react to me.  This revision can easily be noticed when we look at ourselves in the mirror, how we adjust, change and correct our appearance and looks, and so forth.  Only rarely do we arrive at a place where we say or act just as we wish we ought, without regard to others’ opinion. 

Shame, Self-loathing, guilt, remorse, suicide, inferiority and compensation: These are all related.  In each of them there is an awareness of the self as an object, either to be proud of, or to be ashamed of, to build up on, on to harm oneself, or even to try to eliminate oneself through the process of suicide.  What we normally do not realize is that what the self is trying to get rid of is no other than oneself, and thus one is caught various conflicts, dilemmas, shame, suicide, compensation and such other dramas. (As we generally are aware of such strategies of the self, I don’t need to go into their details.)

Morality:  Our sense of right and wrong is based on not only what we feel when others hurt us, but also when we judge others as right or wrong or guilty by switching positions and roles.  We place ourselves in the position of someone who is hurt or wronged and through that feeling judge someone else who did that to the person as wrong.  However, the switching of the roles, which is the basis of moral or legal contracts, is all polluted when our personal interests vitiate the picture.  More often than not, we don’t see ourselves (and can’t) as someone who hurt another person, especially in moments we are driven by our desires and act through them, for there is no awareness of ourselves or what I am doing, but only the other person and what he or she has done to me. However, on after some thought or reflection, we look at what we have done rather in an objective fashion, at least sometimes, and tend to not only admit it to ourselves, but to feel guilty. We now have a different picture of ourselves.  At other moments, our dealings which start with mutual exchange of favors or goods on equal or fair terms soon become corrupt when we start digging the ground under each other.  Indeed, much of human generated evil and mutually caused suffering stem from our inability to put ourselves in each other’s shoes.

Summary: Here is where the interplay between the subjective and objective approaches to the self occurs:  On the one hand, I am talking about the neuroscience aspect of the self, the Default Mode Network (DMN) and such, and at the same time I am also talking about from my own introspection how the self is formed and how it functions.  But what’s interesting is that both these approaches are ultimately from my point of view, and are, in that sense, subjective. Instead of saying subjective, perhaps it’s more appropriate to say that they both represent my thinking process, as they could also be someone else’s. 

 Furthermore, the ‘I’, the real subject is never explained by either of these approaches, because it is not something that can be explained by any method. Thus, there is an ambiguity in the very notion of the self.