Re: Self-defense

From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 13 2000 - 00:42:06 GMT

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Subject: Re: Self-defense
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 19:42:06 -0500
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From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
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    Hi Robin Faichney --

    >> To me, the personal investment is more on the side of those who defend
    >> the 'not-self'. They are the ones who want to disinvest the human of his
    >> origins and command him to some divine distinction.
    >
    >That's exactly the opposite of the way I see it.

    Now, why did I know you would say that...?

    >Surely the self is
    >distinct, figure as opposed to ground, while the concept of no-self
    >denies any objective basis for that distinction.

    Distinction seems to be the key here. I would say that, yes, the 'self'
    is, with caveats, distinct to the human species, but, no, I would offer
    no other distinction, nor see the need for any. The self is the way we
    happened. I see it as a developmental construct of the human organism. To
    remove it, (or suggest that the groundwork for its existence, life on
    this earth itself, could happen without its eventual presence) would seem
    to me to demand that we as homo sapiens are somehow removed from the
    general case of evolution, and somehow made distinct from what we
    actually are, and I see that as an attempt at a divine distinction, and
    I, for one and always, would never defend that.

    The 'not-self' of transcendental ideologies, such as buddhism and
    psychedelic shamanism, has always seemed to me to be, not an erasure, or
    an attempt at erasure, of the _material_ reality of the self, but an
    attempt to 'de-egotize' it- divide it into constituent psychological
    parts. It's a social/communal identity, this attempt at non-identity, and
    not one that I, for one and always, would ever condemn.

    - Wade

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