The Social Self

Today's blog features "the Self". Postmodern thinking posits that there is no such thing as a "self". I hope that got your attention. It is an amazing proposition. It goes straight to the core of what it means to be a person. Another way to say this: How does a person get to be (called) a person? By the use of language. Words describe what a person is.


Illustrations. Psychology and before that philosophy and religion have had and do have many definitions of what a person is. Each field of study reduces humanness to its essential being. Christianity, for one says, we are created in the image of God and that we are sinful beings made just a little lower than angels. Psychology may say we are psycho-social-sexual beings (Freud). Philosophy may say we are in our essence a "superman" whose primary claim to person hood is in our "will to power" (Nietzsche). Science also provides many descriptions of humans.


The people of the land (us and others) use words to define the Self. We grow up seeing ourselves through words. There are countless examples: complimentary and negative. Transactional Analysis ("I'm OK-You're OK") calls such defining words "Warm fuzzies" and "Cold pricklies".


"You are lovable." "You are a good person." "You are smart." "You are stupid." " You are just like your good for nothing cousin." "You'll never amount to anything." Boarden these parental words attributed to us to include, teachers, other authority figures, gender statements, age,race, weight, height, looks, etc. and you have a multitude of words to "create" a person. In the Western world, we even says a person is a person because they have the choice to choose who they are from among innumberable descipters. Sociology is the field that defines person hood by describing "roles". We become our roles. Our roles are us.


Summary. Society creates many realities of what each person is. Society says who we are. In literature and movies there are examples of society shaping our essence. "Tarzan and the Apes" defined each other. In the movie "Cast Away", Tom Hanks and Wilson (the volley ball) shows Hanks identifying with a ball that floated away from him in the ocean. It almost cost him his life to see himself though Wilson and to "need" Wilson for his very being.


The Self (our self) is socially constructed. There is no self outside society. There is only a social self! We are as busy defining ourselves and others as they are defining us. There is no essential self except in so far as we say it is essential.


We "make up" who we are by what others think we are. It is impossible to have or be a self without society's input. Thus say the postmodernists. The implications of this is food for another social constructionist* meal.

*another word for postmodern