Our Own Delusional Selves

That old phrase 'I'm beside myself' has never been more true than it is now, in this decade, and in this generation. Do we know ourselves? I mean - do we really know ourselves? Internet networking websites, digital cameras, glossy windows and shiny car panelling; we are bombarded by mirrored images of what we are, and we feed into it. This, however, just builds a gap between who we are and what we perceive ourselves to be. We don’t spend enough time within ourselves, within our own thoughts. We are now connected to the idea that is portrayed from us, not actually the idea within our heads. We don’t care how we progress as who we are, and we really don’t care what we see ourselves as, only others. We just move through the images and expectations that are held in some kind of model up above our heads, and we stretch an arm’s length out; disappointed that we cannot reach.

Well, of course not. Infinitely, we are unsatisfied beings; our food becomes dull, our routines must be managed and changed, our bodies transformed. When the song has been played enough, we change it, and when our lust becomes too much for our spouses, we find a fresher fancy. Then, one can understand how living against the image and the idea of oneself in a social performance can be not only completely ridiculous and naive, but regressive to any real potential growth. If we spent more time inside of ourselves looking out onto others, then how marvellous our social activity would truly be! We would no longer be beside our own delusional selves, trying to see what everyone else sees of us and just being happy that we can see those magnificent others that pace our company time after time. This is to me why the concept of individuality within the ethics of a social being must be trained, and must be disciplined. Otherwise, we place value only on what our clothing looks like to our companions, and not the real person who fits into those clothes. We only care about how our bags look against the bags of those around us, rather than caring that we can be one who owns a bag among many. Or even that we can be among many. This is the detriment of culture; this pursuit of values that exist only on our placement around objects and conceptual connotations of taste and class. I pity Baudrillard for spelling it out so clearly, and pity more that not everyone wants to challenge his ugly but honest words. We attempt to allow external arguments and material things to sculpt our ‘persons’, and then patch the label with that word, ‘individual’, or those other hypocritical two, ‘free-thinker’; rather, we are individually letting things and people think for us freely.

So here we sit; beside ourselves, attempting to catch a glimpse of how we look next to our name-brand and lifeless things. Our soon-becoming a godless people puts us closer to these inanimate objects; or rather, just the omnipotent visions we place upon these objects to replace the necessity of our yearning for that being beyond that we have just ignored. “I don’t have ‘god’, so just give me some things to make up for it.” Even worse are the ones who claim the deity without providing a reason for one to believe their belief. What a mess.

We don’t see ourselves. We see what it is that is near to ourselves, and juxtapose our satisfaction around that vision of being beside who we are. We need to come back down, and back around to seeing what we really see. I really see this screen, and this keyboard, and I am really hearing this music, and it really is almost midnight, and this is really being written. There is no one to see this for me, but me myself. And I see it, and I know it, and that is where the value lies.