for: self, constructing reality, constructed self, constructed reality, constructing the sense of self, self and other, nonduality, duality, insecurable, comment, question

paraphrase

• sense of self is a construct
• a psychological and social construct
• it's not something that infants are born with
  • it's actually something that develops as we grow up
• our caregivers look into our eyes
  • give us a name that we learned to identify with and
  • also basically we learn to see ourselves as they see us
    • we internalize that which is why we are so preoccupied with what other people think about
  • we learned to use language in certain ways
    • mine
    • you
    • yours
    • his
    • hers and so forth
  • that's all very essential to it
• so we could say that the sense of self is being a construct
• it's composed of mostly habitual ways of
  • thinking
  • feeling
  • acting
  • reacting
  • remembering
  • planning and
  • tending
• it's the way that these mostly habitual processes work together re-enforce each other
• but does that give us insight into what the fundamental problem is?

• because the sense of self is a construct
  • because it doesn't refer it
  • doesn't depend on it
  • doesn't point back to a real self that has any self-reality or or self-identity

this sense of self by virtue of its lack of essence is inherently uncomfortable

• we can say it's basically inherently insecure
• in fact it's not only insecure but it's insecurable

comment

• I agree with David's analysis but also have a question for him:
  • what about the biological, evolutionary definition of the self of a living organism. Is there a contradiction here?
  • reference
    • Major Evolutionary Transitions occur when a group of individuated living organisms achieve greater fitness by mutualism and begin to reproduce together as a new unit
      • How do we harmonize the claim of a psychologically constructed self with this evolutionary formation of new biological SELF units through MET?