The Self/Other Imperative of Wisdom

ucarr

Reality boils down to the self/other binary. It is the essential platform supporting all empirical experience and abstract thought.

As such, it permeates all of metaphysics.

Given these truths, Philosophy, and its subset metaphysics in particular, presents as the myriad navigations and manipulations of the self/other binary.

The self can pursue its own apotheosis up to the point of redundance, then it must fall back into social engagement. Self-love must be counter-balanced by social engagement.

Ingrid Goes West

• Writer
o David Branson Smith
o Matt Spicer

• Director
o Matt Spicer

These guys have created a movie that expresses the premise* of this conversation in terms of action. The plot shows how today’s youth who spend lots of time on social media run risk of losing their identities in a reverberating hall of mirrors enclosing the isolated self.

Movie critic Sheila O'Malley clarifies the loss of self in isolation that occurs when ego centrism becomes excessive.

• If the whole world is a mirror, then how do you develop a self in the first place?

• If everything is public, then where is the Self? Is turning yourself into a "brand" really a good idea? If you don't take a picture of it and - crucially - share it with the world, did it really happen?

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ingrid-goes-west-2017

*The self disappears when outside of creative conflict with the other.

180 Proof

Sumus, ergo sum. (Spinoza ... Buber, Levinas)

Wayfarer

Reality boils down to the self/other binary. It is the essential platform supporting all empirical experience and abstract thought. — ucarr

Well, it's a bit glib. There's a classic Python sketch, now unfortunately paywalled, where Cleese says 'this week, we'll learn to play the flute. You blow in this end, here, and you move your fingers around on the bottom half, there. Next week, we'll show you how to create peace between Russia and China, and how to build a box girder bridge.'

Yes, self-and-other are the fundamental dynamic underneath all living things. The first thing an organism has to do is NOT succumb to physical laws. Otherwise, it's the same as all the dumb stuff around it. It has one scintilla of smartness - 'no, this is ME. I am going to STAY like this', Voila, a living thing. But there's a lot in that.

ucarr

↪Wayfarer

↪180 Proof

Reality boils down to the self/other binary. It is the essential platform supporting all empirical experience and abstract thought. — ucarr

Well, it's a bit glib. — Wayfarer

Consider: Self/Other binary $→$ the limit of the non-local is consciousness.

Let me try to explain my hypothesis by referencing it for comparison to: photons have minute rest mass and, light speed is a limit.

Premise - As mass is the waveform of matter, consciousness is the waveform of self/other.

The self/other binary, understood to be non-local, suggests itself to our understanding as consciousness emergent from an interweave of interacting gravitational fields.

Premise - Gravitational energy is the inverse of massive energy; whereas the former waveforms position, the latter localizes position.

When Emmanuel Levinas says, “Ethics is First Philosophy,” he describes the mutual warpage of spacetime around the self/other binary as consciousness. My being is warped by your being, and vice versa.

Premise - The gravitationality of consciousness leads to the matter funds thought ←→ thought funds matter puzzle.

Is this puzzle a bi-conditional parallel to “Ethics is First Philosophy?”

The Self/Other Imperative of Wisdom

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions