Selfless

✒️ Note-Making

🔗Connect

⬆️Topic:: personal identity (moc)

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. Our self is a social construct - We can't think of our "self" in a vacuum. We are social creatures embedded in a social world. Our self is a social construct, one made through and in every relationship we have. Our self is how we are reflected in the eyes of another, which is the combination of what we send out, and what is received. From our values, thoughts, emotions and tendencies, even genes, all is affected by our environment. There are no "objective facts" that permanently assign us certain attributes. Its about what we and others think about us. Believing makes it real.
2. Different context, different self - We have more than one self, because we have more than one set of relationships in life. For example, parent, worker, friend are examples of different "selves", each influenced by the relationships in each role, the social environment and expectations that affect how we think and behave.
3. Total freedom is detachment - Our "free will" or sense of agency is not and can't be detached from others, because what we want in life depends on how others will react to our desires. Kissing your partner = good, kissing a stranger = bad. Same action, different result, which influences our behavior and desires. . We live in a social world, so our goals and dreams have (if not completely) a social aspect to it. Similarly, relationship limit our potential self (from infinite to specificity), but also create space for us to grow and actualize ourselves.
4. Expanding self - Same as our self is defined by others, it is also highly connected to them. It is no surprise that our sense of meaning in the world, the way we make sense of it is through connection to others. To be a part of social group and share an identity, to leave a legacy and to live on through our relationships, to be a good person to others, to do something that matters to the world, and not just ourselves.

🗒️Relate

⛓ by following this method, what will happen? What is the goal of this book?

🔍Critique

✅ relevant research, metaphors or examples that helps to convey the argument

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style...

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

You'll Be My Mirror

Our identity is not something independent of the world, it's not only difficult to conceive of ourselves in a vacuum, it's impossible. We can't define ourselves without thinking about our relationships with others Oneness.

More than that, we are constructed by our interactions with others as we construct them interpersonal identity. There is no "self" without others, it's like trying to look at ourselves with our own eyes, it's just impossible. We need others to reflect our self to us. Meaning it's a combination of what we send out and how it's interpreted and reflected in the eyes of another. Mirroring.

Since our self is dependent on others, there's no surprise that we have more than one self. Who we are depends on the context. It's often the people around us who influence which self will come to life in each situation. For example, we can be a parent, a partner, a worker, each with different sets of norms and behaviors, and not just because we choose to act differently, but also because we are shaped by our relationships with others such that we act differently.

The effect can also be across time intertemporal identity. For example, we can be shaped by our ancestors who are long gone or acting differently today because we want to be better for our future (unborn) children. A writer edits differently depending on the audience that one day will read the book, while the audience is affected by the words of the writer, even if they are distant in the past.

We are a creature shaped by relationships, connections, and interactions, in a search for freedom that doesn't exist, like a leaf that wants freedom from the tree, separation is destruction.

Similarly, agency can't be perceived through the eyes of the individual alone, despite our best wishes to think of free will as something completely up to us, detached from any external influence. In our decision-making, we incorporate imagined or real expectations and Intention of others. If we know that our partner loves to receive loving texts, and we decide to do so because we enjoy being a good partner, is our action free? If our partner didn't like texts, then we wouldn't have done it (probably). Others are always on our minds and part of our preferences during decision-making.

Ironically, even being a rebel who does the opposite of what they're told is still highly affected by others, just in the opposite direction. What people ask of them still has a huge influence on what they eventually choose to do, even if it's not what they suggest.

The self is nothing more than a container of subjective reality, a "set" of thoughts, norms, preferences, and behaviors that help us operate in the specific society or situation we live in pragmatism. Like talking in different languages in different countries, we assume (and receive) different selves in different contexts.

You’ll Be My Mirror

• We’re actually not very good at predicting the way we will feel in new situations. We tend to overestimate in both directions: we think terrible things will feel worse than they turn out to and expect good things to feel better than they do. (Location 38)
• People want and need social engagement, which means we can’t live completely free of external influences and constraints. (Location 59)
• Our self is a construction of relationships and interactions, constrained and yet in search of the feeling of freedom. This tension, the need to exist in a coherent way and the desire to do and be whatever we want at any time, defines much of what it means to be human. (Location 68)
• We bring multifaceted selves to our interactions, and in these interactions co-create each other again and again. Selves don’t emanate from some ineffable light within people. Instead, selves are created in relationships. (Location 86)
• In the hall of mirrors, we see our selves reflected, or perhaps refracted, in the multitude of people who surround us. (Location 94)
• The self is what others reflect back to us. (Location 126)
• Being a completely free self isn’t possible because without the constraint imposed by relationships you wouldn’t have a self at all. You can’t be yourself by yourself. (Location 131)
• There is tension between our desire for autonomy and free will, and the constraints necessary to produce a coherent self in the first place. (Location 133)
• We need self, at least in part, because unfiltered reality overwhelms us. Self provides order that helps us function. Self is a point of view. Self helps us manage a world that exceeds what we can imagine. Self is a social structure that allows you access to the ultimately unfathomable, blooming, buzzing chaos of reality. A well-functioning self provides a sense of predictability, stability, and certainty. (Location 199)
• your self is constructed and reconstructed in a swirl of ever-evolving relationships. The ideas that live in these relationships and interactions provide the social identities—for example, gender, ethnicity, professional identity—that we use to make sense of ourselves and others. (Location 219)
• You are the product of the social world you inhabit. As such, there is no simple formula, no paint-by-numbers route to “fixing” your life. To change your circumstance—to take care of your self—is a collective effort. Others create us and we create them. If we want to understand our selves, we must first understand this give-and-take. (Location 252)

You and Your Self

The search for Self

Who we are depends a lot on how we are treated. If suddenly everyone would stop obeying the rules of traffic, we would also drive very differently. A person who is always treated with either respect it suspension will treat others differently in return. It as if we all carry a sign on ourselves that we can't read, but we guess is based on how others respond. This is our self.

The self, like a nation, is defined not by its borders (a physical body), but rather the social interaction within, the shared Narratives, as a state it continues after the death of its current citizens, like a tradition that lives on from one generation to another.

This is in opposition to the notion of Self-awareness, that there's something in there that we can discover, something fixed that defines who we are, our beliefs, values and tendencies. While some genetic dispositions exist, even they are based on the environment and past experiences genetic switches. An angry person might have different ways of expressing their anger. Even our core values change over time, and even if they weren't, their meaning usually stems from the social implication it has. What does it mean to be kind, and courageous, to believe in equality or justice in a detached way from others and our community?

Our sense of self is affected by our:

1. Body - it affects both our potential (what we can do and how we see the world) and also how we are treated (an ugly person will be treated differently than a beautiful one)
2. Inanimate objects - we can extend our sense of self to intimate objects, like a feeling of connection with a journal.
3. Economical status - the lifestyle we can afford (and choose) affect our self indirectly through our body, and directly socially. For example poor people have worse health conditions which affect their dispositions, while also their attitude to others
4. Social status - how we are perceived and acted upon by others, and also our interactions and relationships with others

A small change in either one is "acceptable", we might see ourselves as the same self, but a large change in one or many changes in all will cause a change in self.

We see life through subjective lenses. Truth is based on the watcher contextualism.

We are sense seeking creatures, we need structure to not be overwhelmed by the world and to interact with people without exhausting ourselves. Since We can't read minds, we have to use some mental shortcuts, such as:

1. Stereotypes - we use Stereotypes to group together people based on external or easy-to-measure attributes so that it would be easy to categorize and assume their behavior
2. Similarly - for simplicity, we assume that others think the way we do unless we receive a strong message to the contrary
3. Stories - we tell ourselves stories that provide explanations for what happened to make sense of it or follow the common belief about a topic

Since the self is a social construct, being perceived as normal or as a madman is a matter of quantity (the number of people who believe it), and not the degree (how "ridiculous it might sound). That's how conspiracy theories work, and why it's easy to believe them as long as somebody else does Herd Mentality.

This also explains why it's hard for us to gain self-knowledge to recognize our "self", because not only we don't have direct access to its objective nature, but also its objective nature doesn't even exist. It depends on the context and the social perception of it, beyond the individual, so trying to guess what we would do in different situations is difficult within a thought experiment.

Only by being in those situations, we can have any reliable insight as to who we are. Behavioralism

The Search for Self

• if this became your new normal—if the old social structure shimmered, shifted, and fell away—you would become a new self. (Location 275)
• We understand our selves based on the rules provided by our culture and the way we are treated. (Location 290)
• Nations and selves are defined by shared understandings within a network of relationships. Self, in other words, is a shifting structure of social relationships and interactions.2 (Location 302)
• What if the self isn’t something inside you, in your heart or anywhere else? What if the self is created in social interactions, in shared stories? If actions and beliefs define you, it’s only because they have social meaning. (Location 362)
• We don’t see the world objectively. Our prior knowledge, experiences, and need for structure affect what we experience. (Location 414)
• We are not blank slates. But neither is our destiny determined solely by DNA. Selves, unique constellations of relationships and social interactions, also affect bodies. (Location 543)
• each of our interactions, from childhood into old age, has ripple effects on our selves and others’. All selves push, pull, twist, and stretch the social structures they encounter. (Location 565)

False Promises

The concept of self has come a long way from the history of psychology to where it is today, to the vast Individualism that surrounds us. First, we had a more static and social sense of self during medieval times based on your role: you are a farmer, a king, a blacksmith. This is who you are, and you will never be someone else. Then, as the Renaissance came and later the Industrial Revolution came ideas of individualism as separate from society. The process continued until today when people believe in myths such as "the secret", where all you have to do is to believe positive thoughts and good things will happen and vice versa. Whatever happens in your life is the result of your thoughts and nothing else, not society, not nature, you.

The overpowering of the self was accompanied by the separation of the self. We are more than our bodies, perhaps even more than our minds. This is in contrast with the research that shows that we know nothing about our mind and that our self is nothing more than a trick played by our memories, a false feeling of continuity.

The concept of self has changed a lot during the last centuries, this is because the "self" doesn't wait there to be discovered, our definition of it changes its nature, and it's affected by our philosophical, and economic views.

False Promises

• When you believe that the self is defined individually—and when we elevate the needs of that self—you can end up both demonizing external constraints and glorifying selfish striving. (Location 774)
• First, the self is a complex idea. To say you know your self or understand your self often underestimates the complexity of self. Second, the self is not a thing that sits there in the world to be understood. Humans create the idea of self, and as such it is subject to change. Third, the idea of self matters. It affects the way we engage with the world, and as such is tightly tied to the way the world is organized. (Location 804)

Freedom, Really?

When we talk about freedom, we often mean Negative freedom, that to be free means to be rid of External Influence. These can be:

1. Overt limitations - a law stopping me from doing something, or worse being put to jail and being physically limited
2. Covert influences - ads and other expectations that try to influence our desires
3. Internal misalignment - when we fall pray for Temptations and we fail to act the way "we truly wanted to", or act in certain ways just to satisfy an urge (like needing coffee) Insight Gap

We don't always know that we are experiencing a case of negative freedom. We might feel that we act freely because we rationalize our behavior after the fact because who wants to claim that they're not free. But even if we could free ourselves from all forms of negative freedom, we still have to ask ourselves what do we really want? What about our Positive freedom? What do we wish to do with our agency?

Since being free means to act according to who you are, and who you are is highly affected by others (as shown previously), then we could say that to be free also depends on others, since our self is defined in such a way too.

The same relationships that expands us also limit us, we both grow and narrow our possibilities when in relationships. For example, a partner might cause us to act differently - sometimes we would do what they like, but we gain much more, the ability to connect, to love.

Freedom, Really?

• not only do relationships define our selves, they also affect our experience of freedom. (Location 915)
• If freedom is doing what is best for you, to know whether an action is free or not requires we know which self acted. (Location 954)
• Maybe true freedom is the ability to self-define, the freedom to decide who and what we are. (Location 1015)
• The relationships that sustain us also make demands of us. They simultaneously expand us and limit us. They tell us who we are and who we can and cannot be. (Location 1033)

You and Them

Hugs and Straitjackets

Each relationship is like theater, it subtlety demands us to play a part, and we really want to do it because of our innate desire to fit it human is a social being. Like smoothening a stone, we slightly adapt our behaviors and beliefs to be a better match with the other person.

Each relationship shapes in turn who we are, and how we act in other relationships. Therefore relationships shape the boundaries in which we form our self. They don't paint the picture, but they provide the frame. To be completely free means to break out of that frame, but that will leave us untethered to the world, and we would go mad. We need structure, something that connects us to the world around us,and relationships are the way we do that.

Hugs and Straitjackets

• Every relationship makes a demand of you; they demand that you play your part. We all co-construct the reality that constitutes the play of our lives, and in doing so we continually make and remake the selves, including our own, that are the players. (Location 1069)
• humans have a deep need for social connection and when that need is acute, like it is after the experience of exclusion, people adjust their behavior to increase the chance of connection. (Location 1107)
• To be friends with someone, to choose to interact with others, is to begin to agree with their views of the world. This work challenges the idea that your beliefs are simply your own. Who your friends are says a lot about who you are and will be. (Location 1137)
• You cannot be completely free in any relationship, but you can’t know or be your self without them. (Location 1193)

Building Selves

How do we treat the part of ourselves that overlap with others? Aka their influence on our selves?

1. Subtraction - each part that has originated from someone else is not my "true" self. Therefore my self is defined by negativity, it is the part that's left once you remove all that comes from others. This definition is strange (because its not positive) and weak
2. Extending - the more we overlap with others, the more we feel that this relationship is an extension of our selves. Perhaps we are the unique mix of all the relationships we have Extended Mind.

We can't avoid being affected by the relationships in our lives, for better or worse, especially the close ones. The only way to not be effected, to shed away the self that is generated through this relationship is to spend less time together, to be more with others who encourage the self you want to be. Distance and time are important factors for the level of influence in relationships.

When we are "in a bad relationship", it's not so much that we hate the other person, rather who we become because of them. It's their influence on us that's toxic.

Building Selves

• Perhaps we must let go of the idea that you can simply decide not to be affected by close others. The idea that you have control of some core of your self and can shield it from the effects of your relationships is flawed. (Location 1324)
• That’s what humans do: we lean on each other to make sense of the world around us. (Location 1347)
• This is the power of self as constructed in relationships: it reflects, projects, and creates worlds, based on the social realities that exist around it. (Location 1359)

I Am because We Are

Social identities (such as race, gender, political affiliation) exist because it's easier for us to categorize people instead of treating every one as a unique individual that has to be assessed from scratch. It's because our mind is lazy, and we want to quickly understand a social situation without much effort. Grouping people together and claim that they share similar properties is a method for a "close enough" calculation.

Essentialists claim that whatever rule used to group people together is based on real facts, there are shared attributes among women, black, asian, etc. however, when you dive deep you see the holes in the theory. It's very hard to accurately describe what makes one belong to a group, and the exceptions are numerous.

Social groups are not based on facts, rather the narratives we tell. We decide to use a narrative that groups people together, and if enough people believe it it becomes true, even at the eyes of the group members. This means that in order to be counted as a group member, the issue is not whether you posses some qualities, but rather whether you are perceived by others as a member of that group. Our social identities are based on how we are perceived by social and in our relationships.

Social identities don't just limit us, they also expand us. For example, the pride you feel when your country succeeds comes from the social identity you have as a citizen. A feeling of connection to a large group. Families, religion, citizenship - all are examples of socials identities that are important to us and bring meaning, beauty and connections to others, they are a significant part of our selves, so no wonder that we would be critical and protective as to who is allowed to join our group and who are imposters.

I Am Because We Are

• We tell stories about people and groups, and then behave as if the story reflects the truth of the group. The truth is that it’s the other way around—the story created the group. (Location 1453)
• You can’t directly see an essence—because no such thing exists for social groups—so group membership must be divined from imperfect markers. People are members of groups when the relevant people accept them as members of the group. (Location 1665)
• This is what it means to be a part of a group: to know your self through communion with others, and to guard the boundaries of the community that define you. (Location 1709)
• The stories we tell allow us to transcend the absurdity and potential meaninglessness of life as a finite, isolated individual. (Location 1744)

In or out

Just as the membership of a social group is dependent on others, so does it's attributes. What it means to be a woman changes with time, and yet this group carries with it centuries of history as the concept changed over time Semantics of words. To be considered as a woman means not only to be perceived as a woman, but (perhaps unfortunately) to be assigned certain traits.

Social identities can change over time, and be fluid enough to encompass several sub communities within them, as long as there's little friction between the groups, and the changes are small and gradual. When a person wishes to redefine a social identity, this can cause reactance by the other members who now feel that their identity, their self is under attack. For example, if an artist now wishes to claim that only finger painting is true art and the rest is garbage, all those who paint differently now feel that their identity as an artist is under attack. A sub community might form, or the aggressor would be excluded us vs them. The intent doesn't have to be confrontational. For example, arguments for same sex marriage might encounter resistance because in the others eyes that counts as changing the nature of the institution of marriage, changing what it means for heteronormative couples as well, despite the fact that same sex couples have no Ill intent.

This is why personal identity is also a political matter, because the self is a social construct, made of social identities, which are a matter of public and political discourse. Me vs them

In or Out

• Identities conferred upon people by communities are not cost-free. Social identities are constraints. Not only do social identities demand that you adhere to your community’s standards, but the standards of the community also become standards for your self. (Location 1947)
• To challenge the social identities within a community is to challenge the relationships that constitute that community. (Location 1953)
• When we believe a person’s claim to an identity violates tenets that bind the group, it would be a surprise if it wasn’t taken personally and forcefully challenged. Every claim to a social identity becomes a communal claim. (Location 1991)
• The personal is political because the self is social. (Location 2005)

Rewriting Self

The dawn of the internet has amplified existing tendencies within human nature. The Conformation Bias and the availability bias tends to pull us towards what we empathize with, and not necessarily what's true. Instead of absolute freedom, we were pushed towards digital tribalism. Perhaps due to the endless amounts of information, we turned to those who are similar to us in hopes that they will be a trustworthy source to filter out the noise. These curators often show what we want to hear, rather than the truth.

More than just filling us with the wrong facts, they reshape our memories, since memories are not like files on a computer, they are rewritten every time we pull them, colored by the emotions and values we have now Rewriting. Reshaping our past also means to put limits on the possibilities of our future self.

Similarly they try to actively shape our future as well. Since people don't do well with infinite choices Analysis paralysis, software offer us content based on what they predict that we would like, which is similar to what we have seen before. Meaning that the probability of accessing something truly different and original from what we know is small.

Additionally, the internet has allowed creation of social identities across space and time, because you are no longer limited to the people around you, nor to people from your own generation. You can read a book from 300 years ago, or tweet to an audience half the world away.

However, the greatest influence of all is from the nation state, which has the power through laws "legitimate" use of violence, and soft power to enforce social identities, to determine what is accepted within the state, what's normal and what's excluded. Think about the power of patriotism, of how economics works, of national solidarity, rights and duties, all are based on the influential power and shared belief of a nation.

Nations has a lot of influence on who we are. Imagine being born "the same" but in a different country, your life (and your self) would be completely different. There is no meaning to view the self from "nowhere", we are always bound and affected by where we are.

(Re)Writing Self

• In its current form, the internet seems better designed to give us the comfort of tribal connection over the freedom of possibility. (Location 2059)
• it’s possible that more information makes us more reliant on close relationships or trusted groups to make sense of it all, or at least, to not have to try to make sense of it on our own. (Location 2076)
• The creation and retrieval of memories is not simply a recording and replaying of sensations, pictures, sounds, or tastes; the process is affected by emotions and motivations present at their creation and recall. (Location 2113)
• If we are not careful, algorithms, and the companies that write them, will be in the business of curating our pasts for us. And the presentation of your past might limit what is possible in your present. (Location 2142)
• I am the sum of my circumstances, and the people who came into my life as a result of simply where I was at any time. (Location 2351)
• we are all—every one of us—located in social space. We all have social identities, and these identities affect our preferences. We all make judgments from somewhere. (Location 2387)

You and Everything

What's it All For?

There is two sense of meaning, one is the meaning we feel during our lives, and the other is the meaning that people give to our lives (usually after we are dead). Both are crafted, and while different they share a similar component.

Meaning is something we yearn for, and for meaning to emerge, the world has to "make sense", it has to have an order. Order in a chaotic world is the result of finding the connection between us and the world, a way in which we fit in the world that makes sense. This connection requires a self, and as we have seen before, a self is constructed through our relationship with others.

While our connection to others bring sense and structure to the world, it is not enough for a feeling of meaning. Intuitively we feel that we must do something meaningful, that we need a goal in life. First that requires a sense of freedom, of purposefulness, of choosing to act rather than being forced to do something. We have seen that our freedom must be tied somewhat to others, because otherwise we would lose all connection to the world, and with that it's meaning. We would feel the absurdity of existence.

Same as our connection to the world, and our feeling of freedom in it, the significance of our actions that is required for a sense of meaning also is tied to our social self. We want to do something that outlasts us, that extends the self across space and time. More than we want our body to last forever, we want to leave a legacy.

That's why it's no surprise that often people associate meaning with others, with being helpful, with making a meaningful change beyond themselves. Since our self is intertwined with others, so is our sense of meaning.

What’s It All For?

• We must be able to discern structure in the world around us for meaning to emerge, and we need to be able to relate to this structure in some way. This requires a point of view, and a point of view requires self. We construct selves to give coherence to a chaotic world, in order to create meaning. Selves tell a story about the ways we relate to others. When we need to make sense of the world we tell a story about our selves. (Location 2486)
• We enter life not at a beginning, but midstream. The currents and eddies that swirl around us—the stories about our physical place, groups we belong to, rights we enjoy, and responsibilities we must shoulder—don’t fully determine who and what we are, but they do nudge us as we make our way. (Location 2503)

The End?

Death happens twice, once when our body dies, and once when our self dies. Since our self is tied to our relationships, it lasts beyond our body, although not forever. As long as we are remembered, as we live on in others, our self still lives. Someday we will be forgotten, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Death pushes us towards making meaningful choices, to live our lives fully, to make the most of the limited opportunities that we have.

The End?

• You live well by choosing motivation and appreciation rather than resignation and fear. Death gives you the gift of limited possibility. (Location 2809)

Conclusion

Our self is a social construct, built by others, and in turn helps build theirs. What's true for personal relationships is also truth for us and our community. While this helps us understand the limits on our freedom, that to be completely detached from others is simply not possible, or more equivalent to a philosophical death, it also helps us realize our power over others and our community. Perhaps we would be more kind, more other-oriented, now that we know how much of ourselves is dependent on others.

Conclusion

• We are mirrors—cut by biology, polished and shaped by relationships, made meaningful by culture—reflecting our reality to others. (Location 2850)
• There is value in understanding the role you play in creating others. You exert influence on those around you. Your existence makes demands of others. There is power and responsibility in acknowledging and embracing this idea. (Location 2861)
• We, and the relationships that constitute our selves, exist in communities—networks of selves—connected to the past and projected into the future. (Location 2873)