7 CREATURE
(SELF)–DESIGN
How the state of individual
and society depend on each other?
How the state of individual
and society depend on each other?
The Self has two pedestals to stand on, one representing the Self-cultivation, and the other one representing the social responsibility of Self. We have to stand somewhere between Self-design and being Self-designed by society, striving to find a balance. I believe there are 3 stages in this process.
The new Self–perception is adopted as one’s own, except the Animus which stays as the single component unaffected. This procedure is a never‑ending struggle to balance autonomy and connection with others. It felt difficult to accept the fact that by accepting the qualitative aspect of intellect as an exceptional advantage of humans, one cannot naturally undergo a metamorphosis into an animal. Instead, one can feel a constant stream of effects, emotional explosions between intellectual deductions.
Due to my incapability, I found in my inner Self five emblematic animals, they are the symbols of my animalistic features, of my basic impulses that direct the general instincts. Through this act, one can come back to one’s body, which behaves animally, physiologically, or mechanically in all aspects. This thesis is hopeful finalization of my narcissism.
Basically, I focused on the relation of the inner Self with society, specifically on impersonating myself, yet still functioning as a person. It is the process of Un-designing one’s Self, the autonomous freedom of choice. In fact, by that one will never achieve stage one of positive harmony, more likely one will lose the significance to play a social role. The Undesigning in our information age, where the Self–society relation is formed by influxes of given and received data, depends on one’s intention to direct those influxes.
Considering the massive use of media and globalization, the act of balancing is highly influenced by a common recognition of shared knowledge, along with the interests of a common society. The influxes that are directed by either political, sociological, or economic concern. At this point it is essential to realize the shape of collective knowledge, to recognize where it leads us, and to translate it to deliberate forms, that we avoid behavior based on just our post-animalistic instincts. This action requires ‘self–updating’ or ‘self–control’,
The trick is to trick, to maneuver, to de-automatize. The need, to be online and creative, changed information into an educational absurdity. Questioning the dependency of those two significancies made me think about the most significant tool of our times – the data. How can we now recognize what is educational versus plainly entertaining or at least partly control those influxes?