Upon a leisurely stroll in a bookstore, in spite of our prediction of the commercial future of books, it immediately throws our focus on the self-help section. If most readers favour self-help books, it is perhaps because deep down we all long to fathom our souls. The modern world has enforced us to abandon optimism of everyday life. Bombarded with financial concerns and romantic affairs, we often find ourselves in muddle of what solutions can be offered to fulfil our psychological needs. We start asking ourselves: What am I? Where can I find my own vision of happiness? What do I really need in life to sustain happiness? Questions about ourselves evoke in us a lack of self-understanding that perhaps we must consult self-help books for treatments designed accordingly to adapt to our different selves.
Folk wisdom assures us that we are the only ones who are capable of understanding ourselves. Thoughts and inner feelings are only confined within ourselves. They are only private affairs and granted access under psychological scrutiny. How could a stranger penetrate into our minds when he does not belong to our selves? How could he perform a clear-eyed investigation when he is physically distracted by our appearances?
Unfortunately, folk wisdoms do not always bear scientific scrutiny. Our faith in the ability to understand ourselves has risked inspiring a misguided narcissism and an unfair neglect of the people who surround us. In this scientifically progressive world, it seems sensible to cast aside societal conventions that have been left unsaid and favour a trust in science. Modern psychology reminds us of a contrary fact, that perhaps our friends, our lovers, or even strangers may know us better. If the people who surround us allow us to see ourselves in a proper perspective, it is because we seldom submit our own introspection to the rigours of rational examination. Instead, we tend to rely our judgements on intuition and emotions. All too often we tend to think of ourselves as admirable and consistent in thoughts. Rather than paining ourselves with truth, we like to seduce ourselves into the realm of psychological optimism, rendering us insusceptible to flaws.
As long as we are biased towards ourselves, the people around us often offer a more objective judgement about our characters. Our awareness of existence stems not from being able to perceive what is around us, but rather from what others think of us. The reason why friendship and romantic love are important is that we need them to legitimise our existence so they can ascribe to us a more "correct" and "just" identity. People allow us to be beautiful only when they look at us with an aesthetic eye. They allow us to be funny only when they have a cultivated sense of humour. They allow us to be compassionate only when they are as well compassionate. Without friendship and romantic love, we are stripped of the ability to realise who we are. Only through the recognition of friends and lovers, we find confirmations of our existence and identities.
Our identities are perhaps most exaggerated in a romantic relationship. In "The Symposium", the Greek philosopher Plato remarks that our familiarity with lovers stems from the fact we were originally joined as a whole. Which is why we constantly look for another half in order to complete ourselves. Love, according to Plato, conspires to impute similarities rather than investigate differences. It allows our opinions and tastes to be articulated with fluidity in our lovers. It suggests the possibility of us allowing intimacy with our souls. It offers consolations of the fact that someone actually understands what we think needs to be understood and feels what we think needs to be felt within us. Therefore, romantic love is not an ends, but rather a means to self-understanding because it enforces us to open up ourselves to someone who may know ourselves or even better.
In order to understand ourselves, we should consult our friends and lovers because they can evaluate us based on observation of our past behaviours. They will not be clouded by our tendency to make up terrible excuses to defend our deeply flawed psychological selves. Real friendship and romantic love are based on a pessimistic nature of being able to stab us in the front, paining us with the truth. But in this technological civilisation that wishes to destroy the most precious human sentiment, will we still be able to appreciate love?
W
Folk wisdom assures us that we are the only ones who are capable of understanding ourselves. Thoughts and inner feelings are only confined within ourselves. They are only private affairs and granted access under psychological scrutiny. How could a stranger penetrate into our minds when he does not belong to our selves? How could he perform a clear-eyed investigation when he is physically distracted by our appearances?
Unfortunately, folk wisdoms do not always bear scientific scrutiny. Our faith in the ability to understand ourselves has risked inspiring a misguided narcissism and an unfair neglect of the people who surround us. In this scientifically progressive world, it seems sensible to cast aside societal conventions that have been left unsaid and favour a trust in science. Modern psychology reminds us of a contrary fact, that perhaps our friends, our lovers, or even strangers may know us better. If the people who surround us allow us to see ourselves in a proper perspective, it is because we seldom submit our own introspection to the rigours of rational examination. Instead, we tend to rely our judgements on intuition and emotions. All too often we tend to think of ourselves as admirable and consistent in thoughts. Rather than paining ourselves with truth, we like to seduce ourselves into the realm of psychological optimism, rendering us insusceptible to flaws.
As long as we are biased towards ourselves, the people around us often offer a more objective judgement about our characters. Our awareness of existence stems not from being able to perceive what is around us, but rather from what others think of us. The reason why friendship and romantic love are important is that we need them to legitimise our existence so they can ascribe to us a more "correct" and "just" identity. People allow us to be beautiful only when they look at us with an aesthetic eye. They allow us to be funny only when they have a cultivated sense of humour. They allow us to be compassionate only when they are as well compassionate. Without friendship and romantic love, we are stripped of the ability to realise who we are. Only through the recognition of friends and lovers, we find confirmations of our existence and identities.
Our identities are perhaps most exaggerated in a romantic relationship. In "The Symposium", the Greek philosopher Plato remarks that our familiarity with lovers stems from the fact we were originally joined as a whole. Which is why we constantly look for another half in order to complete ourselves. Love, according to Plato, conspires to impute similarities rather than investigate differences. It allows our opinions and tastes to be articulated with fluidity in our lovers. It suggests the possibility of us allowing intimacy with our souls. It offers consolations of the fact that someone actually understands what we think needs to be understood and feels what we think needs to be felt within us. Therefore, romantic love is not an ends, but rather a means to self-understanding because it enforces us to open up ourselves to someone who may know ourselves or even better.
In order to understand ourselves, we should consult our friends and lovers because they can evaluate us based on observation of our past behaviours. They will not be clouded by our tendency to make up terrible excuses to defend our deeply flawed psychological selves. Real friendship and romantic love are based on a pessimistic nature of being able to stab us in the front, paining us with the truth. But in this technological civilisation that wishes to destroy the most precious human sentiment, will we still be able to appreciate love?
W
Posts
very true that we know ourselves by our true friend or loved ones,but it does not mean that without them we cannot recognize us,i believe that one who can be his or her best friend he is pretty much able to recognize him or her self,agreed that appreciation or criticism which comes to us by others mostly depends on their moods,but it is not always true that we are not such able as we think of ourselves even though some time we spent our whole life listening others and trusting that this or that is impossible for us but when we have to do it we do it as we used to do it for long and no one can do it better then us ,trust me it happens ,so never under estimate your self cause if we want we can,take care
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