>The self is all we ever have. It is the only thing that can be depended upon to be real

I've never understood this logic

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I agree with everything you just said, but I'm not sure I get the implication. Are you saying the "holistic self" as we're calling it, or the Western analog of it it is risky? Because I wouldn't necessarily disagree (I'd really have to think about it), but surely there's a best of both worlds here. Something like Jungian psychology or perhaps something based on Nietzschean philosophy that could potentially identify who would benefit from intentional "self-finding" and who would be better off not worrying much about the self at all. Just because something is high risk doesn't mean it's bad - it just takes a specific type of person.

So, you agree this image of "self" is often just a reflection of societal norms and peer pressure? Thus agreeing with the assessment?

The problem is with the glorification, the dose is the poison, at what point in evolutionary history do we have the extent brought out by modern-day Instagram and Tiktok? Are the current societal norms ever seen in the history of human evolution? How do you know it will be advantageous?

This entire article is reductive and severely lacking in awareness.

"But here is the inconvenient truth: “I am a party/career, coffee/tea, outdoor/indoor, [insert any description] person” is largely a function of the desire to fit in some social groups, to follow what is considered socially “cool”, or the fear of being asked what you like and not knowing how to answer."

This reads as a totally self-influenced statement, ignoring all evolutionary advantages of social mimicry as well as the massive amount of variations in behaviour between people.

Why would you think you're looking at anything unless you believe there is something there to look at?

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There could be some crossover in pattern recognition behaviours that may be construed as 'leap-of-faith' adjacent. This possibly points more towards skewed expectations due to life events with a high impact influencing interpretations of stimuli, good or bad, perhaps more profoundly on the bad interpretations as a matter of experiential response.

I think we hit cognitive blindspots at times, where some thing like the idea of a 'leap of faith' has a specific impulse associated with it. Sometimes these ideas aren't so much a conscious thought process, but more of a 'taking for granted' that the next step is always there and positively reinforcing. An example might be thinking unconsciously 'I have been safe at all times in my life, therefore all times are safe' and pushing boundaries that can seem like leaps of faith in the everything-is-going-to-be-alright category, even though never consciously made.

>And persistent objective reality is why you can test and find illusions even though they deceive your senses.

Interesting, I wasn't aware there was proof of what objective reality is like to compare to, other than comparing to other flawed models.

I really like your river analogy, it got me thinking a lot. And if it works for you, then please don't stop learning the "holistic self".

To go back to the river, perhaps the distinction is a high-risk-high-reward vs. low-risk-low-reward culture. But there is more nuance to that, I think the world is asymmetric, symmetry-breaking is what creates this world, otherwise it is a nothingness vaccuum state (this is hard-coded in the laws of nature in my opinion).

So what on earth am I talking about? In evolution, we seem to also have an asymmetry, everything that is done hastily without consideration of the surrounding (the whole) is almost guaranteed to destroy others and produce a net suffering (maybe you won't see it, but your grandkid will see the failure). So, there is this asymmetry here - High risk won't necessarily give you a high reward in the long-term sense (there is only a small stochastic chance others might be able to pick up from your mess); the greatest reward is found when you do things slowly (low-intervention) and considering the whole i.e. low-risk, high-reward.

Well because the thing being done is being loved - that's not the same as oneself being loved. How can you feel 'you' are being loved if you wont formulate a sense of 'you'?

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The other person referred to self regulating self - it seems odd to then just push the idea of self as always being having no perception of self, like cancer cells have no perception of self. Seems like the author and your idea of 'self' involves no self regulation component at all.

Why?

The world harmfully romanticizes all kinds of things that are nevertheless worth understanding and pursuing. The corrective action is to stop romanticizing, not to romanticize the opposite extreme.

More clarification to help you understand: some of you seem to have conflated that only by giving importance to a "self" can one become a thinking, responsible person (that's why you think no emphasis of self = mindless). Whereas if we focus on our actions, we "stop thinking" anymore. Caring about your actions exactly makes you think about the right thing - the consequence of your actions. As humans we always think, but we need to prioritise thinking certain things over others, we have a limited amount of mental resources.

Another issue with math as precise language is that at that level of logic, only a few people would be able to untangle the symbolic logic. And it would take a long time for them to do, rendering the entire exercise useless as a language, albeit prefect in conveying info.

Thanks for the clarification!

Too many people conflated that "watcher" as their consciousness. The former is much more limited than the latter.

"Emotional intelligence": have you ever heard someone say "i don't know how / what to feel about something" ? At first it baffled me, for me it was something obvious, like an instant reaction. But then i understood they have no IDEEA about it and with the lack of an ideea came the lack of an apropriate emotional response.

Some of us have that "gut feeling" or intuition or some other predictive, associative mechanism that drives our emotions for us beyond learned experience.

As an excercise think about this: how would you feel / percieve the news that an alien ship landed on Earth but no communication has been established? What would your emotion default to?

Somehow you would have to think about it first. Are you intelligent enough to extrapolate instantly with the information you have ? Would your current knowledge drive you to joy? Fear?

This is just a ad, look beyond the message and you'll see it's reference faith in some form of belief. You don't need belief to be human you just are human.

"They each strike me as a collectives of units each behaving selflessly"They don't behave "selflessly", selfless means "concerned more with the needs and wishes of others". If they are selfless they would not go on to hurt and engulf others, I think you want to say "mindlessly" and may have been muddled because this discussion is being dragged into a strawman of "whether self exists" and "whether everyone is a Hitler just by recognizing the self", when all this article suggest is there is no need to glorify and give importance to it.

"Self" is broadly a coherent unit of things that have a common thought and goal. e.g., how your immune system recognizes self and non-self is by the different goals of pathogens and your body cells. That's why the 20-years-ago you seem like a stranger - because you have different thoughts and goals.

I think you have also confused the image of self (that is now owning your goals/thoughts/monologue) as your consciousness and that's why you think intelligence or responsible behavior must be born from that certain idea of self (e.g., believing that I am a moral person), when you can go the pragmatic way and be conscious with the consequence of your actions directly. That you are conscious about actions is more powerful than you are conscious about a certain idea of who you are.

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Nazis Are absolutely about caring for others, acting in service of your volk is the most honorable ways to act. They weren’t interested in American b style individualism, but rather a particular group identity

You also only address the most shape conception of the self, but the existentialists (especially Kierkegaard) remind us that the essence of the self is found in your relationships and love for others. The development of the self comes first, they say, but who are you if not someone who does good for the people they love? In this conception of the self, selfishness results in the loss of the very self it aimed to improve