Available techniques of self-reflection.

by KatyaFj, posted in Uncategorized

Evolution is not a species’

adjustment to a new environment but one’s memories’

triumph over reality.

Joseph Brodsky

 

Every now and then the human is born. 360 000 children a day according to the last data of the UN.1 Infants grow every day and are being governed by various psychic mechanisms which build up their identity. These mechanisms are or at least should be of no difference to any other age group be it childhood, adolescence, youth or adulthood. Although, often we automatically tend to think of a child as a separate being which should be saved from this world’s dangers for one day he will become an adult and will have to adjust to it. The major mechanism everybody is naturally governed by is an ability to relate oneself to something, and it is this “something” which, according to the etymology of the word, is “a thing worthy of consideration”2 .

There are many of such things. Technically we relate ourselves to something everyday in our present which immediately becomes our past and forms a memory. Depending on one’s age group and existential needs our relation to what is around us produces feelings and knowledge. Thus our childhood memories are of a big importance here for they consist of our relationship to the mother which “instills in the child the feeling that life is worth living”3 through loving and caring about her baby.

Love and care are very mysterious things, widely talked about in our society. Very often an impression is as if they exist only when one is satisfying specific needs of the other. In a way, we can assume so, when thinking about how mother satisfies the instant needs of her child, though she does so without any unconscious claim to possess this love back, which allows beautiful transitional space4.

Her care is being performed through the set of activities which, apart from being agents of eternal love also become agents of its own times, therefore consisting shatters of the socio-political order or “objects in transition”5. In other words, with acquisition of the possibility to be loved we also inherit a psycho-chain of cause-and-effect character, which possesses our logical thinking in certain way, which allows us to believe that “life is worth living”. Derrida calls the above-described process “pharmakon”, which is “the point of departure for the formation of a healthy psychic apparatus”6 as well as an origin of life of mind and consciousness- everything we produced and keep producing.

To relate oneself to “something” so that it can unblock its own etymological meaning in a sense of “a thing worthy of consideration” implies that one must be able to “consider” and reflect upon it. The question then is whether “something” I relate myself to gives an adequate amount of data which allows me to feel its “care in transition”, which relational nature therefore possess “reflection”, “consideration” and therefore one’s “free will” as  truth and real knowledge of life.

To make such introspection available it is therefore required to always “step above” and be able to foresee the potential loss of that, which always tries to slip away from one’s attention, thus testing and possessing one’s “bodily condition” and the destiny of such introspection itself in as much as still daring to identify the technologies and conditions of self-reflection within contemporary “means of relation” realized in and by socio-political order.

 

Where self-reflection takes its root?

There always is a seduction to investigate concepts against its historical background. Indeed, details about the past and its careful accountancy allows certain kind of security which makes us subordinate our feeling of “rightness” to that, what we learned is right in the way, which is more comfortable for us. Self-reflection in such a historically/popular way is a faculty permanently inherent to our nature as it allows humans to “exercise introspection and the willingness to learn more about their fundamental nature, purpose and essence.”7But how will such an introspection look like, and does it mean that a journey to the depths of thyself alone should help to understand one’s fundamental essence?

Wittgenstein’s notes on theories of the language come as support here. He looks at our language from Kantian/Humboldtian perspective affirming that “No thinking, not even the purest, can occur without the aid from the general forms of our sensibility (allgemeinen Formen unsrer Sinnlichkeit); only through them can it be apprehended and, as it were, arrested.”8 He uses “language game” metaphor where in order to understand the use of the ball in a game, one must not only concentrate on the object in alienation, but should investigate the rules of the game/s to understand same very object in its application, which will then open up its contextual movement. This is a mechanism which allows words in the language that we use to be “digested” within infants psyche apparatus in their own, individualistic way. An apple, for example then is not an apple which only consist its physical qualities, it is also an apple which registered itself in sensual category as an orchard where mother used to beat his child for disobedience. These words tied to each other indeed create our reality and our senses and possess them in unique for every human being way, but does it then mean that every one of us possess these linguistic signs in a private way?

Wittgenstein offers to start a sensual diary where it is possible to mark every sensation with its own unique sign, which would be responsible for one sensation only. He then develops it into a language which he will soon classify as pointless activity for the only thing this method pursues is to do with acknowledging the new sensation and pointing it to it self, rather than making it visible to others. We need a shared background of language, which we have, for we have all been infants first and we have learned to speak.

“Now, what about the language which describes my inner experiences and which only I myself can understand? How do I use words to stand for my sensations?—As we ordinarily do? Then are my words for sensations tied up with my natural expressions of sensation? In that case my language is not a ‘private’ one. Someone else might understand it as well as 1.—But suppose I didn’t have any natural expression for the sensation, but only had the sensation? And now I simply associate names with sensations and use these names in descriptions”9

The whole process of self-reflection with this in mind is tightly knotted with our sensorial understanding of the language. Self-reflection then is not an introspection per-se, as it allows the body of thought to be governed by mere purposeless meander. The process of self-reflection and thinking in general is best described in Humboldt:

“The nature of thinking consists therefore in segmenting its own processes, thereby forming whole units out of certain portions of its activity, and in setting these formations separately in opposition to one another, collectively, however, as objects, in opposition to the thinking subject”10

So, to think/ to reflect and thus self-reflect in its authentic sense, one must be able to take control of the chaotic scatterings of thoughts and continuous flow of impressions11. But how can one take control in this context if it is precisely “control” that made it possible per se? The very inquiry into investigation of this kind then is impossible without its “bodily realization” and its inherited knowledge of care, which is actualized in and by one’s ability to “pay attention” in order to take care without control. This in turn manifests one’s true relation to “Freedom”.

That is also a Deleuzian principle of pharmakon- a technique of “self-reflection” actualized in and by one’s desire, where the means of translating the language of one’s desire always belong to the outside, for when we are born we can’t speak, we learn to speak and possess the knowledge of the “word” by the means of a shared language and what we produce in order to take care of it.

 

The official explanation of “self-reflection” given at Wikipedia (free encyclopedia which takes the 5th place among the top ten most popular sites of 2018) thus comes across austere in its general sense. It registers “self-reflection” historically and in “Comparison to other species”13 where self-reflection appears in learning environments as “an important part of the loop to go through in order to maximise the utility of having experiences. Rather than moving on to the next ‘task’ we can review the process and outcome of the task and – with the benefit of a little distance (lapsed time) we can reconsider what the value of experience might be for us and for the context of which it was a part”14.

It turns out that “something” I relate myself to in order to get a general knowledge i.e. relevant conceptual framework (which would then help me to proceed safely in my research) appears disguised.

So, why does it appear disguised if “more people use Wikipedia worldwide than any other knowledge-based resource on the Web.”15? Is it to do with how we as humanity collectively define our language and what platforms we create to relate ourselves to in order to experience the genuine meaning of a language- the language in use?

 

ATTENTION PLEASE!

Activating popular definition of the concept of “self-reflection” one’s brainstorming can easily come down to a crank-out, high browed metaphors and aphorisms used in our everyday. “Philosophical” metaphors and Lao Tzu teachings today are more popular than ever before especially amongst social media users who signed up for an everyday life teaching to appear in their news feed. Internet is one of the first global “matters of relation” available to majority of people on this planet. Availability of the internet promised development of social knowledge although it doesn’t seem to be the only knowledge produced. Internet being an open theoretical storage of everything man produces thus represents our consciousness and possesses it in a two-fold way. That is the source of providing a “ready-made” object of a knowledge desire and its control by attaching it means of relation to the mere satisfaction of the desire itself. This kind of industrialization came to be popular with Google, which literally carry humans’ memory. Humans psyche and his “scattering mind” submerged into the domain of its virtual production strengtheners feeling of anxiety and its desire to be sublimated in popular ways. Social networks then appear as another product of comfortable self-relation where the desire is sublimed through myriads of apps which function is to hold attention and satisfy desires fixation. The very will to start thinking about self-reflection, which involves a necessity to “google” then appears corrupted, showing its dependency and difficulty to recall the real knowledge of oneself, it appears to be “bodily absent”. Who has taken it away?

 

If one dares to indulge in philosophizing beyond its clichéd sense (when philosophy is understood as empty talks which change nothing) he will soon find out about many philosophy giants that exist on the historical arena of “the virtual”.

The whole industry of producing and publishing “historical knowledge” i.e. historical magazines, TV channels, articles in newspapers/internet are indeed doing really well in collection of historical facts which are meant to make sense of our past. There is also sufficient amount of airtime to support this action for it is believed to carry educational purposes and is based on another presumption that ‘Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.’16, which, to put the historical record straight, belongs to philosopher George Santayana and originally reads as “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”17

Really the original saying and the way it has been popularized and consumed is just another example of an object of thinking taken and realized to its absolute. In his “Reason in Common Sense” (Volume One of “The Life of Reason”) he explains how our faculty of retention functions under the three stages of human’s ageing. When child is born his mind is easily distracted and frivolous, he compares this condition to barbarian where governed instincts doesn’t learn from gained experience. In the practice of constant relation men learns to become plastic and docile to the new events and surrounding, yet “able to graft them on original instincts, which they thus bring to fuller satisfaction”18. Then Santayana finishes his observation with rather depressive scenario saying that with age retentiveness is getting exhausted to the point that “all that happens is at once forgotten”19 because in its unpractical repetition of the past events the brain atrophies human’s capacity of plasticity and re-adaptation.

“The hard shell, far from protecting the vital principle, condemns it to die down slowly and be gradually chilled; immortality in such a case must have been secured earlier, by giving birth to a generation plastic to the contemporary world and able to retain its lessons. Thus old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird’s chirp.”20 This exquisite data collection governed by rather pessimistic belief that there is no other way for human than to graft one’s existential knowledge and experience on original instincts, which will then inevitably lead to our memory atrophy is arguable. It invites us to share an idea that the objects of relation are designed the way that always refer us back to our “natural desires”, which are in turn grounded in a solipsistic understanding of transcendental logic. Such invitation exists as a battlefield of Santayana and Kant (with a clear victory of the latter) 21 practically belonging to the academic institutions.

It is important to regard Santayana’s contribution in emphasizing the importance of catastrophic effects contemporary “means of relation” might bring. Indeed, today’s ageing, that is, moving into childhood, adolescence or adulthood is accompanied by side-effects of contemporary socio/political order-attention deficit disorder. The amount of people suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease has increased over the last five years from 1.2 to 1.5 million people worldwide. Memory loss becomes a ubiquitous disease which finds no clear explanation in medical institutions, suggesting that such a phenomena might be resulting from “stress, depression, grief and vitamin deficiencies”22 as well as it “affects mood, judgment and personality”23. There are also methods of prevention of early memory loss. It should be noted that apart from a vast choice of medicaments known under “Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors” doctors also advise “Reminiscence Therapy” which by continuous practice of recalling past events and activities and its discussion with other people “has been shown to have beneficial effects on both understanding and knowledge (cognition), and in reducing the strain on carers.”24 It is indeed hard to argue about the efficiency of such pharmacological approach, especially when dealing with severe or neglected cases of mental spectrum disorders. But something should have delivered us to this point to start with, and it is exactly a self-reflection/awareness, which posited language in such a way, that deemed anxiety’s taking over the persistence of a newborn pattern of thinking.

In his “What makes life worth living” Bernard Stiegler refers to such memory-related problems as a result of a constant necessity to existentially pulverize ones “attention”. The “scattering energy” of self-reflection which seeks to overcome ready-made, acquainted meanings (described as techniques of “self-reflection” in the first part of the essay) appears in Stiegler’s context as “libidinal energy” through which by means of its relation to the external objects produced by capitalist apparatus this energy destroys itself by not being able to possess its transitional character. The “means of relation” is what we pay our attention to. It exist as our psychic understanding of an object and its external, social use which allows taking care of this very object, “or of the object of the other” and is grounded in “socialized libidinal energy”24i.e. in constant learning about how to moderate “scattering energy” and sit astride its transitional situation.

Attention deficit disorder manifests a social trauma as a result of denoting function of the “means of relation”, and it is important in this condition to outline the points by which “self-reflection”  is available within the range of experiences created by government that assert to provide it.

 

Self-reflection corrupted.

Since school we possess the knowledge that history with its careful maintenance of all possible data is a faculty which explains why certain events happened in the past by careful examination of that very data. We are also being trained to remember more information to do well when it comes to make a final verdict about whether we digested the knowledge according to the data set by authorities. We learn to use knowledge to compete by maintaining “friendly atmosphere” and “teamwork”. We rely on institution to provide us with knowledge which would help us to orient ourselves better in the world, for it is exactly what institution is advertised to be doing. When we finish school we are advised to carry on education where others possessing “more knowledge” share it with us in exchange for money and career promise, and those who can afford it take it. There is no time to wait, for the expectation is that pupil should know what he wants. It is being advertised and commonly-known that compulsory and higher education should train pupils enough so that they can get to an open job-market, where by the matter of their “free will” they will choose their “better future”. Meaning that they will be able to choose what “really enjoy” from what is available according to their education, personal qualities and experience. Education then becomes a ladled privilege for people whose psychic and financial apparatus is ready to satisfy intellectual and monetary expectations set by an institution. In other words, one technically receives “a knowledge” (which is advertised as real, worthy knowledge of the world) in exchange for money (which suppose to keep economic balance), as well as the real knowledge which shows its worldly use. Therefore the only knowledge governmental institutions technically produce becomes a product which supports its economic circulation- a human capital based on selling what is more profitable. Sophisticated etymology of today’s (higher) education can be found in Milton Friedman’s “The Role for Government in Education” where he states that education is “a form of investment in human capital precisely analogous to investment machinery, buildings, or other forms of non-human capital” where “its function is to raise the economic productivity of human being” and “if it does so, the individual is rewarded in a free enterprise society by receiving a higher return for his services”25.

It is also supported by analysts whose collected data states that subjects like History in Primary Schools are being gradually diminished from the National Curriculum structure as they need “to appeal to a wider student audience than just the academic streams.” 26 Students as customers become more aware of their future investment, therefore more careful with their choices, which is again supported by collected data and manifests in the rise of choosing “practically useful” degrees.

The knowledge and “self-reflection” of today teaches us to know to manifest power, where by the means of psychic individuation “to compete” is replaced with “teamwork” and “manifestation of power” with “cognitive submission to the common knowledge of proletariat”. The knowledge that is suggested to be sold is seizing its remaining authentic capacity to be felt and sensed, whilst we keep multiplying means for possessing our attention in an alienated, inward-looking way when the “word that is no longer present: the beginning of the sentence has already been uttered and is as such already past, and yet it is still present in the meaning that unfolds speech” 27. In time when society’s cure is knowledge, we still invest in its further corruption.

 

Historical genocide and Free Will.

The pre-determined movement of “scattering mind” is pre-determined insofar as one strives to possess it once and for all times. Now Self-reflection which is able to sustain its qualities has to witness the condition of Historical genocide, which is linguistically and absurdly destroying its race and itself.

Today, majority of our experience is practically available through the means of social sublimation to the “economic needs” that secures financial flow; this is the Spirit of the World and the result of the occasion of “unfolding the idea of Spirit speculatively” as well as it is a product of “speculative Philosophy”, which confined “Freedom” in a “sole truth of Spirit”29.

Hegel’s “Philosophy of History” teaches us to maintain our knowledge about the world likewise matter holds the gravity “in virtue of its tendency toward a central point”30. It always reaches out for “invisible point” that potentially might destroy it. This process of seeking for Unity by reaching out for the opposite is itself a “matter”, “scattering mind”. Libidinal energy which forces “scattering mind” to use comfortable patterns of a ready-made order is itself Spirit, which is contained in itself. And it is exactly when one feels that nothing is known when everything is there, freedom becomes available.

“For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else, which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external”31

One can then sense responsibility, with the next arising question- the question of care.

“Scattering mind” then is looking for security again by asking whether this landscape implies faculties of Destiny, which would in turn inform one’s decision of care. Though,

“Destiny” in Hegel is always an “evolution of oneself”32 and therefore one’s experience of sensed responsibility. It is continuous practice of self-reflection which is being actualized in and by one’s knowledge of Freedom within our individual psycho-pathologic dimensions of life. The condition of “Destiny” of the Spiritual World, that is of the World in its idealistically maintained sense is grounded in “language speculation”, which itself possesses no truth “as against the spiritual”33, which in turn actualizes in “language speculation” which by its careful observation and actualization becomes critique grounded on Spirit. This is when self-reflection and free will are available.

References:

 

  1. http://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/How-Many-Babies-Are-Born-Each-Day
  2. https://www.etymonline.com/word/something
  3. Bernard Stiegler “What Makes Life Worth Living; On Pharmacology”, pp 1-5 (Psychopower and Subjectivity Reader 2017-2018)
  4. Bernard Stiegler “What Makes Life Worth Living; On Pharmacology”, pp 1-5 (Psychopower and Subjectivity Reader 2017-2018)
  5. Bernard Stiegler “What Makes Life Worth Living; On Pharmacology”, pp 1-5 (Psychopower and Subjectivity Reader 2017-2018)
  6. Bernard Stiegler “What Makes Life Worth Living; On Pharmacology”, pp 1-5 (Psychopower and Subjectivity Reader 2017-2018)
  7. Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia “Self-Reflection” Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reflection (Accessed on 12 January 2018)
  8. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Wilhelm von Humboldt” Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-humboldt/ (Accessed 12 January 2018)
  9. Ludwig Wittgenstein “Philosophical investigations”; p 256 Available at: https://katyafj.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/b8acf-ludwig-wittgenstein-philosophical-investigations.pdf (Accessed on 13 January 2018)
  10.  Herder Today: Contributions from the International Herder Conference” pg 375, statement 4; Available at:  https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7mNZS_ZO4RoC&pg=PR5&lpg=PR5&dq=herder+today+contributions+from+the+international+herder+conference&source=bl&ots=atye0skpLN&sig=eRKVmIl8XUXmhS06dUoMS1E3OkI&hl=ru&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiuj-fl5trYAhWEKCwKHWzoDTYQ6AEIPDAE#v=onepage&q=herder%20today%20contributions%20from%20the%20international%20herder%20conference&f=false (Accessed on 14 January 2018)
  11. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Wilhelm von Humboldt” Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-humboldt/ (Accessed 12 January 2018)
  12. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Wilhelm von Humboldt” Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-humboldt/ (Accessed 12 January 2018)
  13. Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia “Self-Reflection” Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reflection (Accessed on 12 January 2018)
  14. Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia “Self-Reflection” Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reflection (Accessed on 12 January 2018)
  15. “The Top 10 Most Popular Sites of 2018” Available at: https://www.lifewire.com/most-popular-sites-3483140 (Accessed on 13 January 2018)
  16. Nicholas Clairmont, “”Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It.” Really?” Available at: http://bigthink.com/the-proverbial-skeptic/those-who-do-not-learn-history-doomed-to-repeat-it-really (Accessed on 13 January 2018)
  17. Nicholas Clairmont, “”Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It.” Really?” Available at: http://bigthink.com/the-proverbial-skeptic/those-who-do-not-learn-history-doomed-to-repeat-it-really (Accessed on 13 January 2018)
  18. George Santayana “The life of reason” Available at:http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15000?msg=welcome_stranger (Accessed on 12 of January 2018)
  19. George Santayana “The life of reason” Available at:http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15000?msg=welcome_stranger (Accessed on 12 of January 2018)
  20. George Santayana “The life of reason” Available at:http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15000?msg=welcome_stranger (Accessed on 12 of January 2018)
  21. Dr. Samuel J.M. Kahn “A Kantian Responds to Santayana” Available at: https://philarchive.org/archive/KAHAKR (Accessed on 13 of January 2018)
  22. Royal College of Psychiatrists “Dementia and memory problems” Available at: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsanddisorders/dementiaandmemoryproblems.aspx (Accessed on 14 January 2018)
  23. Royal College of Psychiatrists “Dementia and memory problems” Available at: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsanddisorders/dementiaandmemoryproblems.aspx (Accessed on 14 January 2018)
  24. Bernard Stiegler “What Makes Life Worth Living; On Pharmacology”, pp 82-97 (Psychopower and Subjectivity Reader 2017-2018)
  25. Milton Friedman “The role of Government in Education” Available at: https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEEFriedmanRoleOfGovttable.pdf (Accessed on 13 January)
  26. Trevor Fisher “History in Education fisher: An Ongoing Debate” Available at: http://www.historytoday.com/trevor-/history-education-ongoing-debate (Accessed on 13 January 2018)
  27. Bernard Stiegler “What Makes Life Worth Living; On Pharmacology”, pp 82-97 (Psychopower and Subjectivity Reader 2017-2018)
  28.  Goldsmiths University of London, Visual Cultures, MA Core Course reader 2016-2017 “Every Now and Then: Time and History” :Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel “The Philosophy of History” pp 11-20; A Hegel Dictionary by Michael Inwood;
  29. Goldsmiths University of London, Visual Cultures, MA Core Course reader 2016-2017 “Every Now and Then: Time and History” :Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel “The Philosophy of History” pp 11-20; A Hegel Dictionary by Michael Inwood;
  30. Goldsmiths University of London, Visual Cultures, MA Core Course reader 2016-2017 “Every Now and Then: Time and History” :Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel “The Philosophy of History” pp 11-20; A Hegel Dictionary by Michael Inwood;
  31. Goldsmiths University of London, Visual Cultures, MA Core Course reader 2016-2017 “Every Now and Then: Time and History” :Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel “The Philosophy of History” pp 11-20; A Hegel Dictionary by Michael Inwood;
  32. Goldsmiths University of London, Visual Cultures, MA Core Course reader 2016-2017 “Every Now and Then: Time and History” :Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel “The Philosophy of History” pp 11-20; A Hegel Dictionary by Michael Inwood;
  33. Goldsmiths University of London, Visual Cultures, MA Core Course reader 2016-2017 “Every Now and Then: Time and History” :Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel “The Philosophy of History” pp 11-20; A Hegel Dictionary by Michael Inwood;

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