I started writing a short article on Women in Philosophy for work, and I stumbled upon some ideas from Hannah Arendt that really struck a chord. (sorry im starting to use really cliche idioms, but its kind of an inevitable drawback of working for an ESL magazine... we're training all the non-english speakers of the world to sound like Mr Dress-Up... by golly)
Arendt's known for her political philosophy, her most famous piece of writing is probably Origins of Totalitarianism, but the ideas that really resonated with me were from The Human Condition. Mostly because some of her ideas were things that I thought I'd thunked up on my own... [I don't want to sound like a pompous ass, but that happens to me a lot. Like, I philosophize, I practice the rant, and then I realize that it was actually Someone Famous' rant that I've accidentally plagerized, and Someone Famous has not only said it first, but better. But then I think, hey, Someone Famous agrees with me. And I feel really cool, and better about it all. and so forth.]
Arendt theorizes that every action mimicks the act of being born. That is, in every action we have a chance to break out and do something completely new and unexpected. She gives these actions a kind of reverence, like in action lies freedom; you are never more free than when you do something unexpected. And because you are you, and only you can be you, the actions that you bring into the world are a unique and special miracle.
Ok, here's where it starts to get eerily similar. Arendt also says that your actions are a reflection of your self, but that they only matter in the context of the whole; the community. Because we are human, we use the same apparatus to understand each other, and we want to understand each other. But because we are individual, we each act and relate to each other in unique ways. And with our unique wells of experience, we can forge new networks of understanding, new ways of relating, infinitely complex and unpredictable. Our individuality, our sense of self is the driving force behind all this possibility.
She talks about the importance of speech, that it's the story that makes the person; that seals the identity. Stories live and actions die, so to preserve it, we perform an action, then we tell a story to describe the significance of that action. This happens in history all the time, and there's something really cynical about it.. but we won't get into that.
All this got me thinking about how I use speech in relation to action and identity, and I realize that it's massively important. I have a ridiculous capacity to talk shit. I talk too much. I say more than anyone EVER needs to hear. About everything. Anyone whose ever dated me can readily vouch for that.
Ok, actually, that was a tangent. i really wanted to to talk about narrative. The story is incredibly important to me. Before and after my actions, but especially before. It took 10 years of talking about travelling before I was ever able to leave. When I wanted certain jobs, or career paths, I had to talk myself through it; I had to speak to make it happen. I had to articulate what I wanted to myself, over and over again. Same thing with bad habits, old ghosts of me. I have to tell myself to change, I have to isolate the infection with my words.
The story enables the action, hell, sometimes the story IS the action. In my early 20s, I used to think that I could substitute one for the other. Whenever I was angry with people, I would just tell myself a story- resolve conflicts in neat packets of inner dialogue, without the fuss of confrontation, and declare the matter settled. Which is fine... if everyone in the world was just a figment of my imagination. But ho, looky here, people exist.
Narrative after the fact is also important, but less so. i have a shitty memory, and only a partial understanding of the "now", so most of my cards are stacked for the future, which is why speaking things into action is so effective for me. Usually, memory comes down to binary experiences- I file things in the memory bank as either "good" or "bad". Details don't stick unless I've made a point of crafting them into a story, then it becomes a mixture of memory and narrative, which is arguably all we have access to anyway. We immortalize ourselves. In every living moment, I'm a story waiting to be told later. And Im not the only storyteller. Every time any of us tell a story about a friend; about each other, we make ourselves all the more solid, we become more material. I whisper stories about you all the time, I carry you with me everywhere. You are material to people you haven't even met.
Ok, so speaking of Someone Famous paraphrasing me... i just watched My Blueberry Nights last night, Wong Kar Wai's latest. So in keeping with stories, me, you and me again, here's a line:
Sometimes, we depend on other people as a mirror
To define us and tell us who we are.
And each reflection makes me like myself a little more.
Arendt's known for her political philosophy, her most famous piece of writing is probably Origins of Totalitarianism, but the ideas that really resonated with me were from The Human Condition. Mostly because some of her ideas were things that I thought I'd thunked up on my own... [I don't want to sound like a pompous ass, but that happens to me a lot. Like, I philosophize, I practice the rant, and then I realize that it was actually Someone Famous' rant that I've accidentally plagerized, and Someone Famous has not only said it first, but better. But then I think, hey, Someone Famous agrees with me. And I feel really cool, and better about it all. and so forth.]
Arendt theorizes that every action mimicks the act of being born. That is, in every action we have a chance to break out and do something completely new and unexpected. She gives these actions a kind of reverence, like in action lies freedom; you are never more free than when you do something unexpected. And because you are you, and only you can be you, the actions that you bring into the world are a unique and special miracle.
Ok, here's where it starts to get eerily similar. Arendt also says that your actions are a reflection of your self, but that they only matter in the context of the whole; the community. Because we are human, we use the same apparatus to understand each other, and we want to understand each other. But because we are individual, we each act and relate to each other in unique ways. And with our unique wells of experience, we can forge new networks of understanding, new ways of relating, infinitely complex and unpredictable. Our individuality, our sense of self is the driving force behind all this possibility.
She talks about the importance of speech, that it's the story that makes the person; that seals the identity. Stories live and actions die, so to preserve it, we perform an action, then we tell a story to describe the significance of that action. This happens in history all the time, and there's something really cynical about it.. but we won't get into that.
All this got me thinking about how I use speech in relation to action and identity, and I realize that it's massively important. I have a ridiculous capacity to talk shit. I talk too much. I say more than anyone EVER needs to hear. About everything. Anyone whose ever dated me can readily vouch for that.
Ok, actually, that was a tangent. i really wanted to to talk about narrative. The story is incredibly important to me. Before and after my actions, but especially before. It took 10 years of talking about travelling before I was ever able to leave. When I wanted certain jobs, or career paths, I had to talk myself through it; I had to speak to make it happen. I had to articulate what I wanted to myself, over and over again. Same thing with bad habits, old ghosts of me. I have to tell myself to change, I have to isolate the infection with my words.
The story enables the action, hell, sometimes the story IS the action. In my early 20s, I used to think that I could substitute one for the other. Whenever I was angry with people, I would just tell myself a story- resolve conflicts in neat packets of inner dialogue, without the fuss of confrontation, and declare the matter settled. Which is fine... if everyone in the world was just a figment of my imagination. But ho, looky here, people exist.
Narrative after the fact is also important, but less so. i have a shitty memory, and only a partial understanding of the "now", so most of my cards are stacked for the future, which is why speaking things into action is so effective for me. Usually, memory comes down to binary experiences- I file things in the memory bank as either "good" or "bad". Details don't stick unless I've made a point of crafting them into a story, then it becomes a mixture of memory and narrative, which is arguably all we have access to anyway. We immortalize ourselves. In every living moment, I'm a story waiting to be told later. And Im not the only storyteller. Every time any of us tell a story about a friend; about each other, we make ourselves all the more solid, we become more material. I whisper stories about you all the time, I carry you with me everywhere. You are material to people you haven't even met.
Ok, so speaking of Someone Famous paraphrasing me... i just watched My Blueberry Nights last night, Wong Kar Wai's latest. So in keeping with stories, me, you and me again, here's a line:
Sometimes, we depend on other people as a mirror
To define us and tell us who we are.
And each reflection makes me like myself a little more.
