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I’ve just started this section on memory. He gives it as the foundation to being a self. What I have been exploring recently is the possibility that consciousness itself precedes memory,indeed that memory can be thought of as a content of consciousness. A memory is extremely personal; it is our individual narrative. Normally we think of the self with his story, his narrative, possesses consciousness. Sam Harris has been saying that such a conception of the self is an illusion which will be dissolved if consciousness is directed towards that self; it won’t be found. So A qualitative difference between memory or narrative and consciousness is that the former is personal and the latter is impersonal. If it even make sense talking this way the goal of meditation seems to be to lose a personal sense of memory or history and the illusion of a bound autonomous self. Is James moving in an opposite direction, substituting an improved illusion for an inferior one?
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It seems as though there may be at least one desire that we don’t get from the other. At about 17 he says we have a need to be which drives us to imitate. If for the moment I call that ‘need to be’ a desire then we might say we have inherently and built into our nature – prior to any external environment – a desire to desire? We desire to desire after the other.
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Today Francis taught against a magical reading of the creation accounts in Genesis. This section fleshes out just how much magic must be read into the creation of Adam and Eve for them to suddenly appear complete selves without the benefit of any prior ‘other’ whatsoever. Along with the rest of the cosmos humans magically appear with ‘apparent age’ (or we might now say with an apparent other). I suppose it can be fun to be deceived!
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Is “listening for the unheard voice” that part of the mimetic that describes the usual rivalry we fall into with those from whom we have been receiving? The voice is there; we owe our existence to it; we now desire according to that other voice (or the voice of the other) but seek to appropriate or grasp or possess the desired object. Somehow that grasping wants to believe that the desire itself only comes from within – and that’s why we don’t hear the other voice, rather we suppress that other voice: it has become our adversary. We claim for outsells not merely the desired object but also the desire itself. So, ironically, we don’t hear the other voice because we did hear the other voice.
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I’m coming out of a reformed tradition. Calvimist. So I wonder if the question about grasping a doctrine and then performing up to standards reflects what I’ve always been taught about Catholics, namely, that they’re legalists trying to climb the ladder of performance to heaven. We knew that was impossible, but our way out took a very dark and more terrible turn. The measure of how awful a failure to perform God’s demand for absolute perfection was not the deed itself but the status and nature of the one whom you offended thereby. God is infinitely holy so that the slightest disobedience or disrespect is infinitely offensive to God. Gods firestorm of wrath against any and all sin was exhausted on Christ. Had to be human; had to be divine. So while we Protestants escaped the presumption of ever being able to please God through our own efforts that escape was accomplished through something even worse then blackmail: a hostage exchange. We were done with anthropology right from the beginning. It’s a dead issue. Don’t waste your time. We are utterly abominable to God and only the sacrifice of Jesus could satisfy God’s infinite wrath.
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(couldn’t make EDIT work, so I just copy and paste and made my correction)
Sheelah, am I right that if mimetic theory is applied to the teaching of mimetic theory this long, evolutionary ‘osmosis’ can be described with a little more definition and sharpness: You and James must succeed as attractive, imitatable models, right? You and James cannot with consistency merely lay out some propositions for us to grasp snd act out. I think the relaxed intimacy of the video and James’ friendly demeanor work well. It’s begun to become clear that it’s those who I admire and am attracted to with whom I have ALWAYS gotten into rivalry and verbal fights. It helps me to realize that if I feel the need to correct and disagree it’s good evidence that I’m feeling in competition with someone who has become a model! (“You always hurt the one you love”). That realization makes it less ‘counter-intuitive, perhaps less of a ‘long process’. -
Sheela, am I right that if mimetic theory is applied to the teaching of mimetic theory this long, evolutionary ‘osmosis’ can be described with a little more definition and sharpness: You and James must succeed as attractive, imitatable models, right? You and James cannot with consistency merely lay out some propositions for us to grasp snd act out. I think the relaxed intimacy of the video and James’ friendly demeanor work well. It’s begun to become clear that it’s those who I admire and am attracted to with whom I have ALWAYS gotten into rivalry and verbal fights. It helps me to realize that if I feel the need to correct and disagree it’s good evidence that I’m feeling in competition with someone who has become a model! (“You always hurt the one you love”). That realization makes it less ‘counter-intuitive, perhaps a ‘long process’.
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So, anonymous, why did the Other Other let things get so out of control? You’re a human parent and expected to make mistakes; what’s God’s excuse?
Mario, according to James you don’t independently have a desire to belong to a group which then caused you to ‘operate a bit differently’, rather, your desire to belong to a group was itself given to you by the group, by the other. It began with the anterior, prior existent group, not some autonomous ‘you’ desiring the group on your own.
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Maginel, since James defines the social other as everything in or about your environment that isn’t you (God not part of that environment) perhaps you are not any less the creation of that other, rather, your other was unpeopled, or better, peopled by models from a distance, not in intimate, face to face contact. Your models were not often in the same room (or car seat) but you speak/write well – and, interestingly, taught you about the difference between face to face and more distant models. You have desires, including to be more intimately taught (or to teach?) – who are you then imitating?
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Yes, I like the links. Sometimes James sounds like he is trying to establish the ‘I’ though imitating not the other but the other other. He wants through the reception of forgiveness to find ourself inducted into a new, non-rivalistic (same as ‘impersonal’?) narrative, whereas Sam seems to be pointing to a consciousness that has no ‘narrative’ at all. I’ll be listening with these questions in mind.
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This sounds similar to a question I have as I listen. I’m also reading Sam Harris who shows the self – as normally conceived – as illusion. James says that there is no knowledge outside of the revived narrative, and he illustrates with the example of total amnesia. But isn’t there a consciousness that is prior to knowledge? Isn’t knowledge the content of consciousness rather than consciousness itself. Wouldn’t a total amnesic still be fully conscious? I watching to see it James stress with Sam and modern neurophysiology that the “I” is an illusion, a content of consciousness, but not constitutive of consciousness itself which is prior and non- personal.
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