#narrative self

Now you no longer believe in the illusion, but you can wield it. Marriage becomes rhythm-alignment, religion becomes awe-structuring, art becomes clarity transmission. This is lucid participation. You use the form without being used. No longer believer, nor rebel but operator.

We see, then, that the self too is an imaginary story, just like nations, gods and money. Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we saw, novels we read, speeches we heard, and from our own daydreams, and weaves out of all that jumble a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.

-TZ

(note also, that this theory is held by Dennett, of new-atheist fame but something very similar is proposed by Ricoeur, a prominent Christian philosopher, on the becoming self. For those even more philosophically inclined, look into becoming vs. being and the philosophy of self. That rabbit hole goes very, very far down and leads you to the fundamentals of ontology and epistemology, so be warned.)