The brain works most effectively when all regions are working in harmony with each other. This can be quite a challenge for the brain is an evolutionary, layered, organic system that will not necessarily function in unison all the time. This means we cannot expect ourselves to run on 'autopilot' to live a good life. Our species is not evolved to live in a community of 8 billion people. We have to take responsibility for the composition of our selves, elements that compose our consciousness, if we are going to be prepared to deal with the challenges that face us.
Similarly, the mind also works most effectively when it is coherent and unified. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling we get when we have competing thoughts and or behaviours. I have qualified different facets of our expression, action, roles, behaviour and more in terms of different selves to better understand how we exist and function with and within our mind and brain.
Authenticity
The concept of authenticity, from existentialist philosophy of Sartre and Fromm, is very relevant here. Authenticity allows us to understand how to express ourselves under the pressure of external forces and our own internal creative drive.
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, discussed authenticity as our commitment to our own personality, character and spirit despite external forces, pressures and influences.
In The War Diaries of Nov. 1939 - March 1940, Sartre gives an example of an upper class person who is drafted to war and must face the contrast of living an authentic life fighting on the front lines of the war.
...to think about those situations, to make resolutions for the future, and to establish guidelines for keeping authenticity as he moves on to other events. (Sartre EP 281)
Sartre discusses how being authentic allows us to prepare for unexpected situations and events in the future, knowing that our coherent character will guide us through unknown experiences.
...if one of those situations is assumed to reform unexpectedly around me, and if I’m authentic, I shall show myself to be authentic without stopping to think of this restored situation - without needing to prepare any transition - simply because I am so. (Sartre EP 281)
Eric Fromm, 1900-1980, added to Sartre's sense of resisting pressures that compromise the integrity of our character in his 1941 book Escape From Freedom, by creating a distinction between 'freedom from' something and 'freedom to' something. If a person is creating 'freedom from,' it would be the motioning away from things like authority and social pressures like conformity. Fromm's 'freedom to' is focused on an individuals motion towards creative expression.
To be authentic is to have a sense of our personal character and resist pressures that would compromise the integrity of our character. Authenticity is also creating experiences of positive expression of our character like music, art and things we are passionate about.
Acting authentically and establishing a oneness with ourselves will create coherence with our mind, habits and neurological structure. The different voices we hear in our minds can be understood as a qualified representational of different selves. By using critical thinking, the critical thinking self, we can bridge the gap between seemingly incoherent elements of our identity.
Self
Our identity is formed by the combination of our self-concept, the knowledge of our self, and our self-awareness, how we think about ourselves. The main purpose to is accurately assess our knowledge of our self with realistic thoughts of our self to create a coherent sense of identity.
As discussed in the Self-Awareness Tool, our internal audience, or the selves that make up our consciousness, has a great impact on how we view ourselves. It is important to create members of that audience that defend yourself against unnecessary criticism, disapproval or judgement that depreciates your ability to have self-worth or develop towards the person you want to become at the core of your identity.
This audience is composed of the meaningful individuals who you have spent time with in your life, what they have said to you, and how you internalized that information. There will need to be a balancing of the harmful selves in one's mind with healing and defending selves. Through the process of becoming aware of these negative selves, where ever they came from, we can begin to use the techniques have described in these posts to silence the negative input from them. Some of the techniques are listed in the Emotions, Reflective Mindful Map, and Self-Awareness Tools.
When we become adults, the Unity of Self in our minds becomes our responsibility. After childhood, we can discern people who are unsafe, see Social Safety Tool, and begin to not only surround ourselves with good Friends but begin to deconstruct the composition of the selves in our minds, see Socratic Deconstruction Tool. I have taken the time to write these Tools so that anyone who wants to become healthy of the mind can begin to engineer themselves so they can do that. I believe that the composition of these selves, created by those who influenced us a children and adults, is directly relative to our current mental state and mental health. If we can take control of these selves, then we have control over our lives.
We will need an understanding of some psychological science, an understanding of being philosophical, and the integration of information through the application of logic and inference to be equipped to manage our lives and our sense of self.
'We,' 'You,' and 'I' are made of selves. The feeler, the being who thinks and exists, the 'soul' is a mosaic of selves which is governed by the 'Meta-Self.'
Reflection
Sometimes we can act in a way, that when we reflect on later, we find that we don't like the outcome of our experience. Here, we had a present self that was unable to function to our optimal or ideal outcome. We can use the Reflective Mind Map Tool to identify an action plan to train habits that will yield a more identifiable outcome that we feel more comfortable with.
An understanding that there is some learning involved, a change in neurology, is necessary before we can act in a way to fully express the kind of self that we most identify with. Being compassionate to our own growth and learning to come to terms with our present reality is the best way to journey towards the kind of being we want to become.
Communicating with our different selves, as difficult as it may be to see or distinguish the variety of our conscious expressiveness, and coming to a unified identity is the best state for our growth individually and socially. There can be a variety of types of expression that a single individual has, but there exists a core within that variety where we do not experience the dissonance that will hold us back from our development.
Part of the challenge is learning new, more adaptable ways to function within the social, our minds and our environment. The control we do have is to not give up learning from ourselves and others. If we become stagnant or rigid, we lose our capacity to adapt and change. Different personality traits can come into conflict with present and future identity. The agent is best suited to begin practicing to modify certain types of personality expression. Both the Reflective Mind Map and Social Report Tools can greatly assist in this type of growth and balance.
The cosmos is an ever changing universe and we live within that universe. We are also changing with or without our consent. It is best if one learns to take control over as much that one can in life to become in unity with one's selves.
A Self...is not any old mathematical point, but an abstraction defined by the myriads of attributions and interpretations (including self-attributions and self-interpretations) that have composed the biography of the living body whose Center of Narrative Gravity it is...it plays a singularly important role in the ongoing cognitive economy of that living body, because, of all the things in the environment an active body must make mental models of, none is more crucial than the model the agent has of itself. (Dennett 1991, Consciousness Explained 426-427)
Our brain's have evolved to construct 'selves' as useful tools to navigate our environments. If we focus on the interrelation and composition of those selves, we can create greater coherence within our minds and find our own expression much more gratifying.
AJ 7.2.18, 25.2.18, 14.3.18, 9.8.18, 27.3.20
Amazon Link to Oaklander's 'Existentialist Philosophy':
https://www.amazon.ca/Existentialist-Philosophy-Introduction-Nathan-Oaklander/dp/0133738612/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519618726&sr=8-1&keywords=9780133738612
ISBN: 978-0-133-73861-2
Amazon Link to Daniel Dennett's 'Consciousness Explained':
https://www.amazon.ca/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-Dennett/dp/0140128670/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518057071&sr=1-1&keywords=9780140128673&dpID=51UHv5%252BPqzL&preST=_SY264_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
ISBN: 978-0-140-12867-3
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