"I'm tired of being controlled by other people. It's time for me to honor my true self."
The idea of getting in touch with one's true self has become a joke, mostly because people who pledged to do so back in the 1980s were too earnest, and, well, out of touch.
Still, the joke runs deeper than laughing at old fads. There's something fundamentally slapstick about even the most thoughtful search for a true self. No sooner do you pounce on the place where you think your true self's buck stops than you realize the buck must stop somewhere else.
What would you find if you burrowed around inside your mind, looking for your true self? A soul? A little equipment operator who runs your body, perhaps? Does this equipment operator have a body, too? If not, how does it work? If so, what runs it? Does it have an operator's operator inside it? And, then, what runs the operator's operator? Where do the nested Russian dolls of your self end? And who wants to know? Who's the true self behind the part of you searching for your true self? Trying to get to the end of the queue is like trying to eat your mouth.
So, maybe your true self isn't inside at all. Scramble all the way back out and look up in the sky for your true self, a god controlling you like a marionette. But, then, who controls the god? Whether you look inside or out, the true self isn't there. The search is a great, mysterious shell game.
There's a new way of looking at the self that conforms more to what the scientific evidence suggests. We know we evolved, and that our fellow creatures, which also evolved, nevertheless don't seem to engage in searches for their true selves. Flies fly without every wondering why, without ever looking inside for the true source of their flight. Introspection, the ability to picture a true self, seems pretty much new with humans. Even with us, though, it doesn't consume our day. Watching TV, maintaining liver function, or simply breathing -- we have plenty of self-perpetuating habits that don't depend on self-awareness. Still, there's no family of words that roll off our tongues as readily as first-person singulars. "I," "me," "my" -- we speak of these things with great authority. In light of evolution, however, what do these words mean?
To answer this question, it's worth noticing that we humans evolved into word users, creatures with vocabularies so large that we can weave words into intricate mind's-eye pictures of our world, and even worlds beyond. On the slightest verbal suggestion, you can picture a pink rhino with a candy-cane horn even though you've never seen one. You can visit your childhood home, your current house, or a future abode; you can picture your past, present, and future. You can mix the real and the make-believe, picturing, for example, a pink rhino from your childhood, which means that what you envision can diverge more or less from what is real. You can combine pictures into stories -- mental movies, in effect. From what science can tell, this capacity is by far at its most developed in humans, and it's due to our symbolic, or language, capacity.
Moreover, you can picture and tell stories about yourself. The search for the self is less slapstick if regarded not as burrowing around for a master operator but as developing mind's-eye pictures of and stories about yourself from different vantage points. As such, there are four basic kinds of self-nesses -- four I's that make up a mind:
I0 (I to the zeroth power): This is life's basic state, behavior without self-examination, self-awareness, self-consciousness, or self-reflection. It's the closest we get to how the rest of life lives. We call it acting instinctively or intuitively, or putting behavior on autopilot. In humans, I0 behavior can be either innate or learned. Sleeping, wound healing, breathing, and blood circulating are innate examples of operating in an I0 state. Walking, driving, using a spoon, and watching TV are learned activities that typically become second nature. In these states, the self is simply assumed. We lose ourselves into the activity at hand. We act like input-output devices. It is in this state that we become one with all of life. (Anything to the zeroth power equals one.)
I0 is very efficient, though it's dangerous when something bad for us becomes second nature. I0 is a state wonderfully devoid of self-consciousness, but it's also a state troublingly bereft of self-awareness. We're glad gentlefolk have made their habits second nature. We regret that evildoers have done so.
I1 (I to the first power): This is basic introspection, the capacity to picture yourself behaving and to tell stories about that behavior: "I'm a plumber." "I'm a married woman." "I'm an up-and-coming author." "I'm a good Christian." “I meant to do that." The first-person pronoun emerges with this state. All sorts of descriptions and explanations of your self arise naturally and automatically with this capacity. I1 is, you could say, the uniquely human innate ability to construct unexamined narratives on demand about who we are, what we're for, and what we're against.
Why on demand? Most of the time, we just cruise along in an I0 state, our I1 narratives about who we are residing in the vague background, unconscious, simply assumed. They rise to our conscious attention only when we face demands -- when we are confused, challenged, doubtful, or wondering. Then the stories about who we are might arise to consciousness as reminders or guides in our decision making. Whenever we get a little disoriented, we access our I1 descriptions to help us remember what to do and what we're for, but also what we're against. We are defined both by what we do and don't do: "I don't eat onions." "I don't do windows." "I don't fool around." We say what we need to hear in order to keep ourselves on track.
I1 is beneficial when it helps us persist against resistance worth overcoming. ("Darn it, I'm a good person. I can try harder!") It's dangerous when it makes us persist against resistance worth surrendering to. ("Darn it, I am a good Nazi soldier. I can try harder to defeat the enemy!") I1 stories keep us on track, either in a groove or in a rut, depending on which track we're on. We're glad Martin Luther King was so strongly in an I1 state. We're sorry Hitler was.
I2 (I squared): We behave (I0). We can tell stories about our behavior (I1), and we can tell stories about the storyteller (I2). Whereas in an I1 state I might say, "I'm a people person," in an I2 state I might say, "I like to think that I'm a people person," as if talking about that storytelling guy I am that likes to think certain things. Whereas in an I1 state I might say, "I'm going to be a success," in an I2 state I might say, "I keep telling myself I'm going to be a success." At I1 we tell unexamined stories. At I2 we are aware that we are telling stories.
Seeing ourselves telling stories generally increases the distance between us and the stories, thereby reducing the stories' credibility enough that we face a choice about whether the stories are useful, or should be changed for other stories. Noticing the storyteller enables us to see that we are storytellers interpreting reality, not simply reporting it. From I2 I might say, "I have a tendency to be overoptimistic," which is as if to call into question my optimistic interpretations of reality.
I2 is the source of whatever flexibility we have to jump track when we decide we're on the wrong track. However, it's not always enough flexibility to actually succeed in jumping. There are times when we see ourselves telling counterproductive stories about ourselves but can't stop telling those stories anyway. But I2 raises the possibility of jumping. It raises doubt, which can be a great thing if you're telling bad stories ("I'm a good Nazi soldier") or a bad thing if you're telling good stories ("I'm responsible for these children"). We're glad Martin Luther King Jr. didn't spend more time in an I2 state. We wish Hitler had spent more time in one.
