What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity. | Sam Harris, Mark Epstein & more | Big Think
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- What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity.
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0:00 Gish Jen: The self in culture
3:22 Michael Puett & Mark Epstein: The self in Eastern philosophy
8:35 Sam Harris: The self in neuroscience
Who am I? It's a question that humans have grappled with since the dawn of time, and most of us are no closer to an answer.
Trying to pin down what makes you YOU depends on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some argue that the self is an illusion, while others believe that finding one's "true self" is about sincerity and authenticity.
In this video, author Gish Jen, Harvard professor Michael Puett, psychotherapist Mark Epstein, and neuroscientist Sam Harris discuss three layers of the self, looking through the lens of culture, philosophy, and neuroscience.
Check Bruce Hood's book "The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity" at amzn.to/3izeFQy
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TRANSCRIPT:
GISH JEN: In the West, we feel that we must differentiate ourselves from others, endlessly. We have a model of self where the self is kind of like an avocado. We have a pit inside of us. The pit is our self, our essence, our identity. It is the thing to which we must above all be true. And of course, very importantly, we see that pit as unique. So that everything we do we want to show, to reflect that pit, to reflect that self. And we want it to be unique. In Asia, people frequently have a flexi-self, so it's a different kind of self. It is a self that's oriented more to duty than to rights, for instance. And very importantly, it is not, it does not have a cultural mandate to be different and to be unique. So if you ask, are they individuals? Of course they're individuals. Are they different? Of course they are different. But of course, for them, it's like, well of course I'm different, why would I make a big deal of that, right?
The difference is, how much significance do we attach to that difference? In other words, do we think it's very important to differentiate ourselves from others? So one of the ways that we do that, of course, is through choice. Choice in the West is very, very important. Everyone is always making choices. And honestly, a lot of those choices make us a little anxious. If you do a study where you are just sitting in an empty room, and you're making a choice, and you come from a more individualistic culture, you actually show signs of a little anxiety. Every little choice that you make, even in private, because it's defining of who you are, is a little loaded. They feel like, they just choose. When they make those choices it doesn't have this overlay. And that's one of the reasons they feel that actually we are less free than they are. So they think that we are the ones who are kind of in this prison where, like I say, every moment we must define ourselves. Well, isn't that awful? And of course the way that we live, we feel that, we want to be freely electing to live the way that we live. And so even when we're doing things like taking care of the elderly, for example, we want to feel that it's an extension of our great love, and the nature of our being to be able to take care of the elderly. Well, the other day I was having dinner with somebody who said, I just don't feel that. And it's just very, very hard. So somebody from a more flexi-self, or interdependent culture, would say, it's just your duty. And so for them, it's like, they help their elderly parent. They just go take care of the elderly parent because that's their duty. For them, this is really liberating. You just go do it and you don't expect it to be an expression of yourself. It's just what people do. From their point of view, we have made things very, very hard for ourselves to demand that everything should be an expression of our inner nature.
MICHAEL PUETT: We often like to think that the way to become a good person is to look within, find one's true self, the sort of natural self that we have. And once you've found that self, that natural thing that you are, the goal is to be sincere and authentic to that true self. So if we stick to what we naturally are meant to be, the gifts that we're naturally endowed with, that's how we can be a sincere, authentic person. Now, a lot of our Chinese philosophers would say, that sounds good, but is on the contrary extremely restraining-and constraining-to what we could do. The fact is, if we're messy creatures, as many of them would say, what we perhaps are in our daily lives are simply people whose emotions are being pulled out all the time, by people we encounter, interactions...
To read the full transcript, please visit bigthink.com/videos/self-iden...
What do you think the self is?
The source of both pride and shame...
besides physical biology, the self is essentially an individual memory bank of experiences constantly applied to a cognitive schema generated by sensory awareness that ultimately motivates goal-seeking behavior.
@ozymandias nullifidian uh no, because his self is significantly impacted by his impairment.
@ozymandias nullifidian Good answer. I wouldn't trust anyone who claims to know for sure.
@ozymandias nullifidian . regardless, his self meets my definition. now go troll someone else.
I found that after about age 25, I've really been thirsting for Philosophy and a deeper understanding of the world. I love conversations like this.
That's probably because your brain finally finished developing. There's an arguement to be made out there that 25 should really be considered the age of maturity.
That's why I laugh when people want 16 year olds to be able to vote in government. Imagine deciding important stuff about the entire country and every life in it, when you're only half way to maturity and can barely handle deciding what to eat for dinner?
@@Anne_Onymous LOL they'd be a more informed group of voters than many adults today, sadly.
@@Anne_Onymous one of my favorite philosophers had said a similar thing to you. I definitely agree.
Especially with the lack of regard for past wisdom us younger people have (that seems to be getting worse too btw). It'd be one thing if we valued and appreciated our elders, and stood on their shoulders to reach higher ground. Separated the wheat from the chaff... but a lot of youth want to throw the baby out with the bath water. As complex and difficult as the world is, we're arrogant enough to believe we'll do better by starting from scratch. It's a damn shame. The utility of old age, experience, and the accumulation of knowledge over time is criminally under-appreciated.
Because you have been indoctrinated for ignorance by a malevolent system. You're intelligence is breaking the barriers.
I grew up in between eastern and western cultures. Granted having too much choices and overly focused of self in the “west” makes people anxious and self-indulgent. But people get anxious performing “duties” in the “east”, and people make “safe choices” hiding in social expectations secretly hate themselves too. This lady in the beginning makes it sound like everything would be better if you give up choice and just do what the culture demands you unthinkingly, while in fact, both extremes are toxic.
Great insight. All extremes are toxic dude. That's why the Middle Way.
I 100% agree - balance is everything - living in an extreme of either view will produce anxiety and I would love to see how they pulled together their statistics because I would bet money that there was bias in the presentation.
I lived in Japan for a little while and saw how duty culture was oppressive to some people because they couldn't express themselves as they wanted to be able to. I never really got close enough to anyone in Japan to have deep conversations about how they felt about society, but it was more my observation based on random comments Japanese people made to me where they said they wished they could be as "free" as I was. In fact, as a westerner living in Japan, I received a lot more leniency than a Japanese person would, since they thought that I wouldn't fully understand duty culture and to an extent they're correct. I never received any questions about why I was close to 30 but still single and without children, yet, my single or divorced Japanese colleagues received these questions ALL the time and non-stop and while their responses were covered up by smiles, some were badgered to the point of tears (despite smiling through it) and it broke my heart.
I'm back in the US now, and in discussions with my Buddhist coworker who grew up in an east asian country, she's expressed the same. She has a mother that is very abusive to her and for the longest time she felt so much shame and guilt to fulfill her duty as a daughter and take care of her aging mother, yet, at the same time, her mother would say the most awful things to her, but she put up with it to fulfill her duty despite the damage it was doing to her mental health because she was made to feel that if she didn't, her worth as a human went down. She eventually sought out counseling and is now doing much better, and still has a relationship with her mother where she is a caretaker, but she's able to put up boundaries to protect her own mental health, which is something she had felt before was in conflict with her duty and would make her the "bad daughter" her mother told her she was.
I'm not saying that the western view of self is perfect, either. The pressure to be original and to "make your mark on the world before you die" is also suffocating, because you're left feeling like if you don't do something extraordinary, then your time on earth is worthless, and that is why a balance between the two is so important. You don't NEED to leave a lasting mark on the world - you CAN BE a cog in the machine and that does not make your worth any less than someone who revolutionizes the way something is done or the way people think, because while they're getting the recognition, they DID NOT get there all on their own, but thanks to the work of countless others that may never be known. It's important to understand both extremes so that you can figure out where along that spectrum you feel most comfortable, without society making you feel that you MUST act one way or the other to have worth as a human being.
@@MSPWrit3r DUDE! Exceptional post man. Eloquently put, but dare I say, probably pearls before swine in CZcams comments. Not that there's anything wrong with swine per se. Lovely creatures. Just no appreciation for pearls unfortunately.
So she did not really got into what real self is and the needs for a healthy and strong self? Furthermore I agree completely with your view on the matter. Thanks for your insights from experience.
Self-illusion or thinking is like a transparent curtain that adds an extra layer of information to our vision, we see our thoughts but they do not exist in front of us! This is the human ability to see things that do not exist! The problem that occurs in humans is that, when the nervous system contracts, the thinking process automatically begins to think! And because most people have more or less nervous system contractions, they have this extra thought! And in the long run, these thoughts almost become an additional operating system, and it makes its own decisions! If the nervous system relaxes, this process of extra thought will automatically stop and the new human being can see the world as it is without disturbing the mind! After that, it can be understood that creation is predetermined from the beginning to the end day! As consciousness we only understand the life story, and the rest is out of our control!
This is so interesting. I always thought that our sense of identity is one of the most important things we have because it affects feelings of self-worth and confidence which goes on to affect just about everything else, I never really thought about how the self could be an illusion.
It really determines what lens you look at it from.. the double slit experiment is a good example..
Reality is not always what it seems
@ozymandias nullifidian so are you saying philosophy is more opinion-based..
Well obviously.. because everybody has different points of view..
The interesting thing with Science is when you get down to Observation at the human level it gets difficult to determine if you're affecting it and if you weren't there would it even exist🤔
Keep in mind that while these are talented thinkers sharing a profound idea, it's not gospel. You could easily make the argument that your sense of identity is one of the most real aspects of being here, and approaching it that way tends to be more productive and pragmatic (that's certainly the case for those of us with less aptitude, of which we are the majority).
Think about it. Accept the proposition that your sense of self is an illusion... so then, now what? What change in behavior follows the acceptance of this concept? It's vague and leads most of us to an intellectual desert. The implications are too broad and undirected.
Compare that to the acceptance that your sense of identity affects your feelings of self-worth and confidence... the follow-up to that is natural and clear. If any of us hears something like that, then you'll obviously want to optimize your confidence and sense of worth so that you succeed at the things you want to succeed at.
I'm not saying I disagree with them or knocking their brilliance. I wish I was half as smart as someone like Sam Harris... But as a man who grew up in and lives in the hood, I think a lot of this stuff, at some point, gets away from the ball of dirt we live on and becomes an exercise in intellect.
@@austinjrb I'm probably not going to be is articulate or is eloquent with my comment as you just were but I think the simplest way I can say it is are human brains are not advancing at the level of technology/ science..
I don't know if humans were supposed to evolve to this point where were actually able to contemplate our existence because our basic functions are still the same...
So it would be less stressful to go with the theory of you have a "self" because that's what are primitive brains want to do because we're at the end of the day's still Hunter and gatherers biologically
@@igot5onit423 It seems to me in the moment that a population like humanity will in some part create a quantum wave of possibilities, though sparse I'm convinced. Without critical thought If you are asian, euopean or of pacific ethnicity your point on the wall maybe more predetermined than we may be willing to accept. Observation alone can't be enough, surely there must be a quantum delay as our worldview influences our perception? Having 3 speakers was a good choice for this video.
Modern life is full of isolation and lonliness. Not enough loving relationships where we feel noticed, acknowledged and known in depth by others.
@iArt
Loneliness is at epidemic proportions, within Western Culture, sadly.
This is a major cause of depression, and, depression also causes loneliness....
Learning how to listen, properly, is something that we should teach our children, because we certainly can't trust the education system to be doing this...
The skill of being able to empathise, in an honest, helpful way, thus giving people a chance to vent, without jumping in with unsolicited advice... (This is my biggest challenge, lol!)
Effective communication skills should also be encouraged, and nurtured.
Humans need to remember that they evolved, successfully, as a Social species, it is not a 'dog eat dog' survival of the fittest model,
that has the most benefit in Nature, As we are now seeing that 'Symbiosis' is The most successful, least destructive paradigm...
Namaste 🙏
Andrea and Critter Family. XxX
I agree but I think this is also a confession. You may just need to find yourself
When a person says "finding one's true self" It sounds like a lost cause to me because that would mean going back to when you were a blank slate/canvas before any of the social and environmental influences imprinted themselves onto you. Nearly anything that you think you are is probably traceable to an experience you had (and/or a trait borrowed from your parents). I think it's probably better to recognize, manage and make use of those influences as we move through life.
Wow you have an interesting perspective but I don’t think the true self discounts lived experiences. I think it’s more so about what are the abstract elements that govern your behaviour through your life and really make you, you, as a distinct individual. Example: part of what uniquely defined Kobe was not basketball per say but learning. And that deep need to learn manifested itself in different areas of his life. (Basketball) & (Learning story telling).
@@silentmouse2136 You may be right but demonstrating a knack for learning might be traceable to a borrowed trait from a parent or it was taught. What if that trait was innate like you’re suggesting but suppressed? Unable to give us a clue about whom the person is. Exactly who you are is hard to figure out when you could be many different things if you were born to anyone and anywhere else on the planet.
That's why I've been going down this rabbithole. I feel the conditioning and influence and its like barriers to my greatest version.
Fun fact: do you know the average brain is running 30-50% of the optimal
"If there's an experiential internal qualitative dimension to any physical system, then that is consciousness." - Sam Harris
Never have I heard it put so simply and it just clicks. Brilliant, thanks for sharing, Sam.
Dude has way with words
Seriously? It doesn't mean anything!
"Experiential internal"? There is not "experiential EXTERNAL", so drop the second word.
"Dimension" just means "place". "Qualitative" just means "can't be measured, ineffable; a feeling" as opposed to "quantitative", which means "measurable".
And he starts it all with "if", which means it's an option, not a definition.
Then he talks about "physical system" by which he probably means "organic biological", although a car is also a physical system, so did that apply here too?
Naturally it boils down to, "if you feel something, that might be consciousness".
It does sound nice, but I don't really find it that helpful.
Sam Harris talk pretty.
@@itsROMPERS... Good point but i don't think he said it like that because it's "Oh so deep". It's just said in a formal language. Language someone like Dan Dennet would understand because someone like him is clearly so absorbed by their "intellect" that they probably don't "feel" anything (exaggerating here lol) and this kind of language works for these people and usually these are the kind of people who don't seem to "get" what is being talked about when someone says "consciousness". We all know these kind of people don't we, who just don't seem to get what people mean when they are taking about consciousness. So using this framing is not a bad take imo.Also physical system is probably used because currently, we don't really know what consciousness really is or what makes "anything" conscious. There could be A.I. out there right now who might just be conscious, just as trees might be conscious, but we have no way of knowing for sure.
I think all those words he used are necessary..most people start describing consciousness as "internal and experiential". Atleast most people that I have talked to. It may feel like he could do with just "experiential" but experiential or "experience" is already is synonymous with consciousness and if it was that obvious to most people, there would be no need to define consciousness all the time and everyone would know exactly what you were taking about. But sadly this is not the case. Like fish swimming in water may not know what water is, many people don't understand what is being talked about when when they hear "consciousness" because it's reality is so immediate (like water for fish) that you can miss it. That's not to say people don't feel anything or are not self aware. They surely are but they just don't immediately get what people are taking about when they are taking about consciousness and this is just an attempt to get through to those kind of people. Some people simply know exactly what is being talked about if you just say "awareness" or "experience". Consciousness is a tricky topic to talk about.
P.S. You don have to be that mad is what I mean. You seem pissed lol. Everything cool?
@@itsROMPERS... how do you define consciousness then?
@@itsROMPERS... yes Jeff, seriously. I think it is a brilliant observation and as an “IT guy” I see it as a potential path to creation of A.I. with self awareness.
Because when we have such a decent definition then application becomes easy.
We are working with AI machine learning etc but self-awareness remains a dream. I already discussed it with my inner circle and might actually spread it around IT community. Let’s see where the idea takes us. 🙂
I always thought of the self as something other than the ego. The ego is the organising principle that makes sense in a narrative way of past and future, while the self is the present true sensory perception which I dont think you really can not experience without filtering it through the ego in at least some degree
I couldnt agree more, and I believe that by attaching the idea of the "soul" to this self (as the first speaker talks about,) you are trying to bring ego to that self, and is a last grasp at "I am." It is rare to ever experience this self purely, as it is always diluted and changed by the only way we can access it, which is through our body, identity and mind. Trying to say that the pure self is unique is the work of the ego. Why do we have to claim the awareness at the center of us as us, if we all are made aware by the same phenomenon why would each instance be unique to the individual?
Yes! My SELF is all of humanity. There's no separation! No egos.
Finally!! An explanation that includes culture. Our selves can also be extended to our past, present, and future, both spiritually and physically. We all come and go. We all die a physical death, but our spiritual selves live on.
That goes exactly against what Sam explained...
That is absolutely ANTI-THETICAL (opposed to) anything said here.
They don't say our "spiritual selves live on" which is good, because they do not.
You have no past life, and you do not go on to be someone else after you die.
Think about it: what point is there to being someone else that you can't remember?
For that matter, maybe, besides being yourself, you're also living as someone else RIGHT NOW! Couldn't "soul sharing" be a thing?
MAYBE WE'RE ALL JUST THE SAME PERSON, but if we are, what difference does it make, you'll still feel just like you do. It's not like you can still speak Swahili from another life.
Basically, there just no reason to think we have "souls" that live on, there's no reason to think we have souls at all. But even if we did, we can't knows it, so what good would it be?
If you can overcome your fear of death my thinking that you continue to live as a stranger, great. But it's meaningless. Sorry.
Culture is learned. It's not our SELF. Culture is flexible and therefore fake attribute, like clothes or physical body. My SELF is all of humanity. There's no separation or death. Life keeps on going and evolving, I am all of life and all of this universe. I am everything. I am ONE.
Very interesting. I guess the one upside to being undefined in identity like I have been with BPD, I haven't been restricted in choosing who I can become if I work on it and redefining who "me" is without the same rigidity that others have. The worst was dealing with the empty spot that was there and fear of making a leap to moving toward individuation away from codependence as the self. At 31 years, I've barely begun inching toward my start.
Want to learn about your "self" and grow? Do what makes you uncomfortable and doesn't come naturally to you as long as there aren't any physical dangers involved or moral lines you are crossing. We are wired to survive not to thrive, so this has you pushing into the unknown like surviving. In doing this you will learn an immense amount about your "self", grow, and learn new skills in the process. The uncomfortable things are only uncomfortable at first right before you start and/or do them, but then it gets less uncomfortable as you learn nothing bad is happening to you. You learn to conquer the fear of the unknown within. An easy way to go about this is to prepare first before doing the uncomfortable thing, ie. Speaking in Public: first, you start small, like teaching a class of some sort. You prepare to teach the class and then teach the class. Then, after a while, you plan and prepare to give a speech or presentation to a larger group of people. Finally, you give that speech or presentation. Continue to do this more times. Throughout this process, you will learn a lot about public speaking through planning, studying, preparing, and experiences giving public speaking. In the end, you will have learned much about your "self", whatever uncomfortable thing you took on, and the lesson that it wasn't what your mind made it out to be. It was less uncomfortable than you thought! What makes you uncomfortable reveals a lot about you to yourself. You have to be willing to look exactly where you don't want to! There lie the treasures that are within; which is in and is the "self"! Your "Self"!
If you liked this video, I highly highly recommend Michael Puett's introductory course on Chinese philosophy. It's free on edX and really easy to follow even if you're not a philosophy nut.
Thanks will check it out!
Sam Harris made a comment about many feeling as if they were a self being carries by a body....paraphrase......never felt that. Maybe because I’m a musician and we know that sometimes the fingers take over and we are just part of the ride. I’ve finished a tune and looked around wondering how we got there.
Our hands and feet are so involved in ourselves they can’t be separated.
The sale is true about your brain. Every bit of conscious deliberation "you" have ever done was just physical processes of cause and effect. That's what most people don't realize. They assume there's an ego doing the thinking. There isn't.
Love it! Learned some valuable insights into being more culturally responsive. The self is so interesting in a social or individual context. My thought for the moment is that freewill is proportional to the amount of world views we can willingly act on.
So, animals aren't free? It seems to me that animals make choices, but are not at all aware of other world views.
@@earthjustice01 Hi Charles, animals are certainly free to make choices but the motivations connected to those choices are not as diverse as our own because of metacognition / our ability to think about our thinking. Said another way, the more information, knowledge, experience or wisdom we have to draw upon, the more combinations of new ideas we can potentially create.
@@HeathSawyerisHeheboy I don't know if you can plausibly argue that the degree of freewill is proportional to the amount of world views we can act on. The most significant choices we make are sometimes intuitive or gut reactions that have nothing to do with world views.
@@earthjustice01 I get what you're saying but every single person has at least one world view and that will influence them even subconsciously and that view will likely effect the choice they make. It is a basic instinct to want to live for example whether animal or human but given the circumstance and belief system a person may choose to die. Suicide bombers, terrorists or even pacifists that choose not to fight back when their life is in danger are examples of this. Gut instinct may actually be more social conditioning than we think. What we say is acting on instinct is likely a statistically predictable response for most of our own social / ethnic group and can be measured. I think there is more than enough science, psychology and philosophy out there to argue the point.
@@HeathSawyerisHeheboy There is a difference between free will, which one could argue that you either have or you don't, and deliberation about choices based on reasons. We have more reasons than animals and thus richer and more varied choices. Free will does not go by degrees because it is more a conceptual framework. We must assume freewill in order to understand what we do and why we do it, as well as why we judge behaviour in moral terms. whereas a lot of animal behaviour can be explained simply by instincts.
Hey, that's a nice self vid . Concise, no music, strait up good stuff about the cosmic noodle. thanks
Our sense of 'self' is the context of humanity that has helped shape meaning to this experience called life.
its been there of a long time, a product of countless struggles and victories. i wonder if it has outlived its usefulness.
The "self" as people think they have (this is going to bake your noodle) derives from the myth of free will.
I think there is a core feeling of self that is consistently present, although it gets camouflaged by various moods. We can certainly get far away from the self that resides within us. Emotional problems will blot out this core self, however. Once the chaos is resolved, we find our true core, again. At least this is what I think and believe today. I wonder how I will feel tomorrow; hopefully the same. I can evaluate my sense of presence, daily by thinking of the Polyvagal Theory, using the three different levels. High. Mid. Low. It's an accurate tool that I happened onto.
Can we appreciate for a moment the simplicity in which concepts that we are unable to even recognize about ourselves are being articulated?
I like the model of identity of it being a localization of consciousness that has its nature and drives effected by personal desires, external phenomena/environment. That seems to hold true whether that consciousness is located in what this video over-generalizes as the east or west. East or west can apply to anything. You can be different if you grow up on the rich east side of town or the poor west side of town.
Great distinctions of the self to kick off 2021❕💯
I believe that by attaching the idea of the "soul" to this self (as the first speaker talks about,) you are trying to bring ego to that self, and is a last grasp at "I am." It is rare to ever experience this self purely, as it is always diluted and changed by the only way we can access it, which is through our body, identity and mind. Trying to say that the pure self is unique is the work of the ego. Why do we have to claim the awareness at the center of us as us, if we all are made aware by the same phenomenon why would each instance be unique to the individual?
Soul is the opposite of ego! Ego is your body with its needs and desire to take and consume. Soul is in our connection to others, to evolution of life on earth, and everything in the universe. Soul is one humanity. Our SELF is all of us, together! There's no separation or death. Only one desire to give and create. Big difference!
i find that my perceptions of 'the self' have evolved .. now i see a 'laughing Buddha' behind things, i see myself as a culturohistorical palimpsest .. being in the world but not of the world .. free from desire, free from emotion .. an observer from another dimension .. yet steely in determination in THIS realm.
i'm just the fool on the hill watching mountains of clouds rise and fall
"palimpsest"? Nice.
I wanna be a palimpsest too!
hadn't you noticed .. you already ARE ! ;] ..
@That Guy .. what a nice and thoughtful guy .. don't worry yourself Amigo .. i am quite stoic and Zenlike in my attitude toward social media, it is a madhouse of exploding information, i like to get a little bit MAD MYSELF .. indulge myself in the flocking CHAOS :]
I loved the video, especially Gish Jen's part (why say "& more", mention her by name, too!), since I'm Indian, and we certainly have an interdependent society rather than an individualistic one.. And I'm certainly gonna read that book by Sam Harris, but the "3 layers of your identity"? Am I missing something, or is the title not relevant to the content?
If you are not gay, arranged marriage with a random girl is good, isn't it?... keep your duties Asian society, I need my rights.
@@MrOssyMoro you don't know what you're talking about, do you?
Ps. Arranged marriage isn't forced marriage.
@@brownie9620 I know VERY WELL what I'm talking about. Indian parents expect you to get marry and have a bunch of children, they put a lot of pressure on you, I saw it with my eyes! I know you are not forced to marry in arranged marriage, but your sexual life and love relationships should be your business, not a family business. In Italy no many people get married and have children nowadays and that's great! Life is better without those little monsters around, more time and money to spend for ourselves. We only have one life.
@@MrOssyMoro Go enslave someone or steal some lands..
@@Pluto102 I'm communist.
Gish Jen.
Why isn't the woman who speaks first in the title of the video?
Good question, I liked what she had to say the most.
Editor made an oopsie.
The others guys (i know harris is) are probably more famous, and they want more clicks on the video
@@money619er8 well that’s pretty shitty of them if true.
Nice. Thanks guys.
Excellent upload.
I wanted to comment "I feel a headache coming on" but after reading the comments I realized I'm just dumb.
There are really smart people.
Although I feel it's paradoxical that we're having a complex conversation about self when as Mark Epstein said; we take it more seriously than we should.
Even though the complex conversation is letting us know we shouldn't.
My head hurts.
“These are the people who will encourage you to go after your dreams and will inspire you to succeed. Stick to them like a barnacle to a rock.”
― Steve Backley
ถึงอย่างไร ขอมีคำไทยบ้างนะครับ จะได้เข้าใจตรงกันทั้งโลก
Wow, I haven't heard that music from Final Fantasy VII in forever🤣
I find myself being drawn more, and more to eastern philosophies.
Who’s to say we only have 3 layers? I’m more than sure this idea will change. It’s like how they used to say there were 5 stages of grief, but it’s now been updated to 7. Or how there only used to be the ‘fight, flight, or freeze response’ - but ‘fawn’ was added to that list of survival responses in more recent times. My point being, I think there’s DEFINITELY more than three layers to someone’s identity. It’s silly to attempt to measure that.
Appears a though the greatest societies are built in millions of individuals asserting ourselves... Life shouldn't be measured in how well one complied
For once I'm actually impressed with something Sam has to say, and find it very deep and thoughtful. Beautiful even. Makes me want to finally dive into his and Peterson's debates.
How does one choose when we, "just choose" [1:57s]? It is no longer a choice but an abdication to choices made by another entity(ies). A purely individual freedom based approach can make one feel more alone in a deep sense although socially we can form meaningful friendship and relationships with other like minded individuals. I would also argue that our perception of our selves in relation to the world is affected by a lot of noise from the volume of information fed to us using algorithms to skew our notion of ourselves wrt to the world around us. For me, value systems are important, once defined (and refined over time), I am free to frame my existence and information hitting me against my values and inner identity.
If I change my mind or beliefs am I still the same me (self)? Ship of Theseus.
I think the eastern notion of ego dissolution has to do with this and the attachments formed to the parts. Anything you identify with in order to define yourself ; job, country, beliefs, hobbies, muscles, money, etc, you will either lose or change at some point in your life and this will inevitably cause great suffering unless you learn to detach from the ego and it's identification with things that are impermanent.
Now if only there were an easy way to accomplish this. lol
Thank you for the video
I like Gish Jen, Michael Puett & Mark Epstein. I got lost in Sam Harris's turn - it was too deep for me.
The more I learn about human psychology, there's this mix sadness and clarity that I get. Is it just me?
I exist, and to know that you exist you have to be conscious of your existence, it is this knowing that you " be " or " am " that is the self.
Until neuroscience is more complete in the understanding of what consciousness is I will not believe everything in our mind is from physical interactions
Consciousness is our entire humanity, evolution of life on earth and everything in this universe. One connection and one consciousness. Science of Kabbalah already studied this, it's not new info. It's thousands of years old.
The self is the memories and the decisions we'd make based on them. Both body and mind are not self because they have their own agency (your body doesn't ask you for permission when it issues an immune response nor does it tell you what it did; your mind doesn't ask you for permission when it throws thoughts at you in "auto-complete smartphone" fashion.
If the self is the memories and the decisions we'd make based on them, does it mean you are no longer yourself if you have amnesia?
" I love you " the self is what love flows through.
Yes, we are one love. One life. One consciousness in this universe. Probably divided in many planets, and many individual bodies fully connected as one Creature!
The more "sophisticated" accounts of Buddhism I encounter, the more ridiculous the whole thing seems to me. Granted, our images of ourselves can be a source of illusion and self-deception. There are myriad sources of illusion and deception, so I wouldn't worry too much about our sense of self in particular. We have a sense of ourselves because it helps us to make sense of things. That's a good thing.
That's debatable. Most scientific evidence to support the opposite claim, which is that our sense of ego prevents us from making sense of things.
@@youknowwho9247 I guess that's why we've been so unsuccessful at populating the planet compared to other species.
Sooo... what exactly were the 3 layers again?
The three sea shells, don´t you know?
Believing nondualism ‘I’ think the Self is the idea that we are seperated from our others while we actually exist as one energy always in movement, living our lifes experiencing individualism in the west with ‘free will’ and in Asia more all together. Fortunately ‘I’ am both;)
@ozymandias nullifidian For me it means Awareness or Universal Love/Life
Did anyone have any books or articles or anything about eastern and western identity? Even studies or something
I’ve wondered for a while now it’s simply theoretical but if we were to slice away a human who could do die at what point exactly would our consciousness and sense of self be locked to, I suppose the head and the brain, like if we were to decapitate someone, their experience of self I imagine would still be in their head and not the body that’s been detached from them, if we started chopping away the ears, eyes lower jaw, your consciousness is still somewhere in the brain 🧠, I just wonder if we were to take apart different areas of the brain at what area is our sense of self tied to if that makes sense? I know we are able to function without certain areas of the brain, like is our sense of self tied to the hippocampus or another region? I suppose it’s a bit of an answer less question but yeah I’ve often wondered 🤷♀️
Big Think: What do you think the self is?
Me: googles the word self.
"The self is an individual person as the object of its own reflective consciousness."
Ah, got it. Thanks, Google!
If it has no significance to specify our differences then by that system similarities have no significance as well. They should both carry equal significance and be understood for the two sides they hold upon the same coin.
Nothing Is good or bad and nothing is right or wrong.we are born by love and should love with forgiveness and thankfulness and survive by taking geographical and seasonal foods is life.just live.❤️❤️❤️. this is all self, selfish and concious.❤️🙏
No, ego is body with its needs to consume. Soul is all of us and everything in this universe, as one. Soul is spiritual and giving. Ego only consumes. Huge difference! Soul is love. Ego is destruction.
True self is knowing there is only one. The only freedom we don’t have is living in a society. As more individuals act in groups more self choice you will have. My opinion
What is secular? What is religious? Within the usage here. Important and needs to be explained.
Gish gen makes a lot of interesting and insightful remarks
Just follow what you're told is great until it isn't.
We are processes but the processes that can be intelligible to scientific analysis are not all indentical, completely random, or infinite, no, to exist does not mean to be an indivisible unit, but that doesn't mean formless, shapeless, infinite either which is to say everything one has a definite self just most people mistake this for what they and others think about them.
As someone who grew up in a culture of duty, and obligation, I actually don't think it's entirely healthy. Sometimes, people are so engrossed in "duty" that they don't even talk about how they really feel, and that can lead to pretty unhealthy relationships. But at the same time, I feel like the over-obsession on the individual and one's own identity in the West is also not very healthy. We need a middle ground.
"Know thyself" was written at the top of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Of course, we are unique, and of course, we are not the interactions of our neurons.There is a tendency in modern societies to use all means even ancient religions or even science to make us feel and persuade us that we don't have a self and that we are all the same like the masses and so, that we need to behave like the masses because it is the best way to control the masses.
So, it is going to take a lifetime because people tend to repel what they don't like about themselves, or what they are even afraid to face about themselves and they repel it to the subconscious, as Carl Jung aptly stated. So know thyself!
I live in the west but never had the mindset, I naturally form a mindset similar to that in the east.
I find it strange that the first speaker, who happens to be the only woman, is not represented in the title.
Whatever your cultural beliefs, it's pretty clear that every individual is unique. Even if you have an identical twin, he or she has had at least some different experiences than you have. A culture that pressures people to conform instead of focusing on individuality isn't necessarily an improvement.
As much as each individual is unique, the SELF is still ONE creature. There's no separation between individuals. We are one with other people, our evolution of life on earth, and the entire universe. We are one consciousness. ONE. Our SELF never dies as well, only individual body dies. Not SELF.
This is so important love it! my self is growing every day. I don't like avocado's so I'm gonna say I'm not an avocado though...
Huh?
@@pattonjeffrey6 they say the self is like an avocado 🥑 😂 and I don’t like them. 🤣
@@OlleyThorpe Well I chuckled Olley. :p
No problem, just be a nut!
@@russb24 Nuts are healthy!
Hello selfs
Asian philosophy and culture is on point for living a happy and fulfilled life.
Important!
Me, Myself & I. 😊
My opinion: the “selfless” philosophies of the “east” seem conveniently tailored to authoritarian rule.. it seems it would be much easier to rule over a population focused on “duty” and being part of the herd.
While “western” individualism can lead to some angst in life, it also seems to promote creativity on a number of levels not seen as much in the “east” … who is creating new smartphones, software, fashion, etc, and who is copying?
Couldn't agree more.West experience life and the world actively while East experience them passively but it is such passivity that brought out a variety of esoteric physical disciplines such as martial arts and yoga.
Soul consciousness is complex and quantum, not defined by the intellect or any culture. It’s a dynamic expression of thought, emotion and experience which originates from within our nature. Listening to people intellectualize the self as if they’re experts just shows me they are not experiencing or expressing their true nature bc they’re trying to define it. The self is..explore it from the inside out
If the self were real, it would be right there with us when we are born. How come we got a sense of self after 2 years old?
Is this the ultimate coincidence that triggered the fan to shut down just when I thought about it and all other appliances were running smoothly
The ego is a master of deception. It will tell you everything you want to hear.
What buddha had said are beyond our imagination and yet so true, are we really exist and what left if we are really exist in this universe
In Buddhism, the self is not negated. In Buddhism, meditation and enlightenment called nirvana is focused on. Nirvana is achieved when we realize that the self is not separated from the others. The realization is that I am you and you are me. The self is not negated but heightened to the higher self through the realization. All is me and I become all. All is nothing and nothing is all. All things visible is temporary and void invisible is everything. It is consistent with the quantum mechanics. Everything transforms into everything. Everything is in everything. Everything is another version of me. But choice also matters. We could be pigs. We could be cows. We could be a Buddha if we could get to the truth. ^^
I am a strange loop, an illusion, an anomaly, a temporary aqueous solution in a gaseous environment.
"We are a process". Bravo.
Hey guys, I currently have this identity of being socially awkward. However I am trying to rewrite this belief. After speaking to my cousin who spends hours a day talking on the phone to his friends I was wondering if I can do the same. I'm in the UK, if anyone wants to get in touch for informal chat, feel free to ask for my insta and we can work from there.
Hello
I don't think self has an identity outside of the physical manifestations that we are and experience. Myself, himself, herself, ourselves. Self is not unique to the individual the individual is unique to self. Self physically manifest and self organizes into many different physical manifestations. Self finds personal identity through experience. Internally self has no identity at all. There is only one self and it lives inside of all of us. Take away our memory, experiences and our ability to look in a mirror and all we have left is an internal self peering out into the world searching for an identity. Without memory to reflect upon experience self can't identify.
I agree with this. We are all the same boring obvious mess, no matter how especial we try to make ourselves. We should just be human and die like everybody else. It's liberating.
Humanity has one soul and it never dies. Stop seeing yourself in fake isolation, we are ONE. There's no separation or death, evolution keeps on going! The only thing that dies is the body. But you are not your body!
🥑 So you’re calling me fat?
Eat Corolina reaper :D No place for ego when you look for the relief :D
In the post modern societies, the individualism is becoming more and more artificial instead of nature. People are deliberately making massive effort to be different but deep inside they want the same things. Sometimes the individualism has also manifested itself as being self-centred or being selfish.
Why they use avacado analogy instead of onions? 🥺
Min 230 - min 320
With regard to the elderly, we USED TO live like family and share intergenerational responsibility.
Then? We made a choice as a society hell bent on winning (winning what I do not know, but whatever) and then we raced off to nuclear families! We skipped passed healing between marriages and created turmoil for ourselves. We did, to a certain extent, leave a portion of "duty" behind.
But then we came up with an elderly home reality!
Yay! Our species is so smart!
And it worked for a little bit but then we ran into some snags. So then we ran back looking for family to solve the problem.
Well, skip a few generations of taking care of the family and YEAH! yer gonna get some conflict.
But it was a choice.
Some elderly didn't want to be cared for because they didn't believe the same thing as the person most capable of caring for them in their family. They PREFFERED taking the elder home option.
Its not just about the youth saying "i don't feel like it", its about all the individual realities we've been given permission to have. Not just as a society under a constitution, but as those who comprehend quantum physics and or who are in a free will relationship with their god or version of a higher power.
We're just now finding ways to blend duty and self.
I for one am entirely on board.
I am a single person with 1 child. And the likelihood of my ex and I dieing nearly at the same time is pretty high.
So why am I expecting my only child to care for me and her father at the same time generally speaking.
And then what is her reality?
Its being told to go be the happiest self FO A LITTLE WHILE and then,at the very end, do what you were born to do. Take care of mom and dad.
...yeah.
No.
So,as an AMERICAN 🇺🇸 with choice and free will, i do the duty I feel bound to IN MY WAY and remind everyone its their responsibility to take care of their own selves.
Now.
Because I was in that middle blendy wake up generation, what we have is 2 realities that don't match and its likely mostly due to americans rushing.
Because that's one thing we got really good at.
So,i have a great aunt and grandmother,and a slew of aunts and uncles ALL from that generation that didn't keep traditions going and didn't maintain learning together, and ALL OF A SUDDEN here we are in a relative quandry.
No pun intended.
Will we solve it?
We want to.
Because as breeding beings, it willALWAYS BE TRUE, that humans will be born alone (yes even twins) and die alone. And its what we build today that matters.
America is in PROCESS.
CHINA IS NOT NOR HAS IT EVER BEEN IN ALL THE HISTORIES I'VE READ ON CHINA.
...well, except that one female who they nearly entirely erased, who actually did well and loved the people. ...
The third man....& i choose to like it...this is one algorithm..
Yeah, but many of the people around you will resist your changes no matter how beneficial those changes are for you and some of those people will resist aggressively or even violently. 5, 16, 73 and 74 on my sociopath list come to mind.
Condensed!
What the next person said is exactly what I have believed from childhood.
If every consciousness is an illusion then nobody exists effectively? Also is it an illusion to an illusion?🤔
True sense of freedom comes when we are no longer driven by ego. In Muslim religion the Quran says what we think is just an illusion and we are separated from the reality with a veil. The dreams we dream when we are sleep also seems real .. so who knows if like inception what we think is real actually is another layer of consciousness in our dreams.
choice might cause anxiety,
but duty causes depression
suicide rates in asian countries is much much higher than in the west.
South Korea employs people full time to patrol under bridges in boats for fucks sake.
first talker was a cultural warrior and not so much talking about self, but about macro cultural differences
All the people who have gender dysphoric discussions forced on them as if it was the zeitgeist norm of the age can really benefit people overcome the concept of over labeling themselves and the obsession with self
We are all prisoners of our own perspective.
But we don't have to be. Nothing is stopping us from trying out different perspectives to see what they are like.
@@earthjustice01 yes YES. And the internet can used to help with that but unfortunately, it’s has done the opposite as most individual are in ego chambers.
The body lives in the now. The heart is present . And the mind is the time traveller. Deal with it.
I cannot help but have the strongest impression that she only touches the outer surface of the real matter.
Recovery Mode: Engaged
and the last guy sam, the actual intelligence in this video, speaks of the scientific failings in understanding ourselves.
legitimate scientific vigour!
one out of four for this video
Study shows that there is a high possibility of existence after death. Proving the destination and the purpose is still work in progress.
But soon, we will realize that if there is a "continuum" of existence after the physical death, then that means your actions in life are not meaningless...
This goes to positive and also negative actions. There is always a cause and effect. The self is define by the "choices" you make.
To understand the self, one must remain still, and allow the self to speak.
What study? What bullshit are you talking about?
@@TheMasterhomaster If you approach this with that kind of bullshit attitude then you can forget about it.
Because you are just looking for a fight that doesn't exist.
But if you wise up and want to actually understand your life then start by reading about Carl Jung, and Professor Jim Tucker.
@@Icarusrider Jung and professor Tucker don’t offer any empirical evidence; only theories. Any theory can make anything possible. Problem with people like you is you take a grain of sand and make it a mountain.
@@TheMasterhomaster Don't worry, you will find your mountain once you cross over. Most of your bellicosity comes from your fear of the unknown.
Keep punching at everyone and everything, it will all come back to you at the end.
@@Icarusrider you know nothing of me. I have no fear of death or the unknown. Keep spouting garbage about karma and other delusional shit; your belief isn’t everyone’s reality yet you have the typical new age woo woo arrogance that it is. For someone who is so “enlightened” you’re so full of yourself. You’re probably some 25 year old kid who thinks he knows it all.
"Of course, I'm different. Why would I make a big deal of that?"
Who else wishes they lived in Asia? Baizuo is out of control.
The experience of self-transcendence and consciousness expansion is far more ordinary than many people want to give credit for, it has been hijacked by the religious and spiritual as the true self, which is in itself absurd, as there is no self to hold true and the experience itself transcends self and notions of a solid 'I'
Enlightenment is not about recognizing that this idea sold as a magical self-transcended state is the ultimate state of human experience, some kind of peak point, that would require still another layer of scrutiny via asking 'what is true' here. true enlightenment is seeing through all the illusions even the experiential transcendence to arrive at a point where the truth of what you are is an empty nothing with biological needs to survive for a period of time.
Good points, but they are being attributed to an incorrect cause. It's not a matter of "self"; It's a matter of discipline, or, more precisely, the lack of discipline being instilled by authority figures.
When children are not taught certain values at home, and that vacuum is left to be filled by society as a whole, and by the children's teachers for the most part, we have the end result that we currently have in our young "adults".
I was raised to be respectful and to work toward the goals of the family, the team, etc. But people of my age, from the same geographical and demographic groups (including literal next-door neighbors with whom I was raised), people who were not taught these values, are now those same self-centered people whose default position is their own gain.
It starts, or doesn't start, at home.
To sum this up.
1. Body
2. Mind
3. Soul
Body ..yes
Mind.. check.
Soul🙄🙋♂️
@ozymandias nullifidian a made-up concept so people will feel better about the end of their existence.
@ozymandias nullifidian 9 times Outta ten the most rational explanation is the right one..
Random is the word of the day.
It is interesting how people in the West view self in a post Christian world. No longer do we view ourselves in a Judeo Christian way. The Christian way of flourishing is being like Jesus Christ in one's own way as an individual creature living in community/ Church. We are to love God and then love neighbor as ourselves. Our true identity is found in God. We are made in His image and we are made to become sons of the Father in the Son (Jesus) by the power of the Spirit.
That is much different than looking inside yourself for some goodness that is your true self. It is very different than Buddhisim also. But what I find interesting is that as the western world has drifted away from Christianity, it has also drifted away from an objective understanding of identity and it seems to have become so muddled.