Be yourself/ know yourself: split from WTF GIRLS

[BobG]

It seems to me that knowing oneself doesn't have as much to do with "what you would do in x situation" as why you would do that in the given situation.

I'd agree. I'd go further and offer two reasons why it's a good idea.

If you know why you're doing something, you probably won't have any later regrets. At the very least, you'll be able to promise yourself you'll avoid whatever specific boneheaded impulse made you do that in the first place.

"Probably" might be the key word.

Sometimes, you still have regrets even if you understand why you made the decisions you made. People don't like to have it pointed out to them that they just didn't have the strength or courage to make the best decisions. In fact, the person responsible for putting you in a situation you couldn't handle comes in for a lot of long term resentment (not wholly unlike Moonbear's response, although I wouldn't go so far as to call the person stupid). A whole new problem scenario to solve that could wreck a relationship if not resolved effectively.

 

[Astronuc]

Five is always greater than one... sometimes.

 

[Moonbear]

I can just imagine Moonbear accidentally driving through a school crosswalk, dodging the crossing guard, and running over some poor 10-year-old girl and having to take the witness stand during the ensuing lawsuit, "She deserved to die. She was chewing gum and gum-chewing 10-year-olds are notorious for spitting their gum out on the sidewalk. Why, even as she was dying as she hurtled through the air, she made one last act of defiance by spitting her gum 68 feet across the intersection. Here's a picture of her gum laying on the sidewalk and here's a copy of the DNA report proving the gum had her saliva on it ... Why didn't I choose to run over the crossing guard? She only had one leg! How was she supposed to get out of the way! That girl had two healthy legs and maybe she could have hustled her little butt across that intersection a little faster?"

(Okay, that's mean, but when I read your response I had to laugh. "Dang, not only would she kill those poor people, but then she calls them stupid afterward.")

Nope, entirely different situation. In that case, I'd be the one in the wrong place and acting stupidly. Though, I'd be screwed either way, huh?

As I was thinking about the scenario, and especially T_E's response to it, a more likely to be encountered scenario came to mind. If you're driving down the road, and some jaywalking pedestrian dashes out from between parked cars (wait, make that SUVs...big ones...Escalades or Hummers...that you have no chance of seeing around). You don't have enough room to stop, and there's steady traffic in the opposing direction. You could hit the jaywalker, or you can swerve and hit a car coming in the opposing direction. If you hit the jaywalker, it's his fault, but you've just killed a person. If you hit an opposing vehicle, the collision becomes your fault, and in the split second you have to make your decision, you have no idea how many people are in the vehicle in the opposing direction. The only thing you know is that even if you slam on the brakes, it's going to be a bad collision and you and the occupant(s) of the other vehicle are likely to sustain major injuries.

Every defensive driving course will tell you to hit another vehicle over a pedestrian if you have no way to avoid a collision entirely, but the careless pedestrian who really caused it all gets out scott-free, while you're the one facing the charges for causing the accident. And, you don't know if you're hitting a vehicle full of little children whose lives will be changed forever by the injuries they sustain, or what if that vehicle has a pregnant woman in it who aborts as a consequence of the accident what would have otherwise turned out to be a healthy baby, or the person hit can't afford the time off work to recover from the injuries, etc. And you may be just as badly injured. And, then there are the lawsuits, etc.

My answer to the initial dilemma wasn't intended to appease what I think others expect, it's the closest I could describe how I'd react if the scenario really happened without having actually experienced such a scenario. In this latter scenario, I wouldn't have time or take time to reason anything out, and from observing a number of near misses in the real world, it seems others have the same reaction. No matter how much you know you should swerve into the other vehicle, because logically, the other vehicle will protect the people inside it from death, while hitting a pedestrian is very likely to kill him, at the moment you really face that scenario, you slam on the brakes, your heart leaps into your throat, and you hit the person who just ran in front of you. It's not about that person being stupid, or the other people being innocent, or whether you're at fault or not, it's about the complete and utter disbelief that this has just happened and the fervent hope you'll manage to brake just in time, or that person will somehow miraculously leap out of the way in the nick of time, even if that would require jumping ability beyond that of even the best NBA player. When someone dashes out in front of another vehicle in heavy traffic, even when the vehicle next to them is going the same direction, so they'd just sideswipe the vehicle and there'd probably be little more than a few bruises, nobody ever has swerved that I've observed...and the pedestrians missed were missed by a hair. From my perspective, in the few cases when I've seen such things, I was holding my breath and getting ready to dial 911, expecting a collision with someone to be inevitable.

 

[slider142]

No offense, but you pretty much have to be an idiot not to know yourself. (if that's even possible )

The mind is more complicated than you give it credit for. See experiments by Gazzaniga (1995, 1998) on split-brain patients where patients would give rationalizations for otherwise irrational behavior initialized in a sector of the brain that no longer communicated properly with the sector that produced the rationalization.

 

[Cyrus]

I can understand people with medical problems. I'll give you that.

But for a normal person, its just a lame excuse for not knowing what you want to do with your life.

"oh, he doesn't really know himself, its not his fault he can't pick a major, or a job, or a hobby, etc, etc, etc" -bla-de-bla-bla-bla-bla, not buying it.

 

[Moonbear]

The mind is more complicated than you give it credit for. See experiments by Gazzaniga (1995, 1998) on split-brain patients where patients would give rationalizations for otherwise irrational behavior initialized in a sector of the brain that no longer communicated properly with the sector that produced the rationalization.

Note that the discussion began with me making the point that if you don't know yourself, you should seek pscyhological/psychiatric help. Such patients as described would need such help. The debate is whether there is any reason why a healthy person would not know themselves. But, we're still waiting for someone who thinks this is possible to give an example or clear-cut definition of just what they mean by not knowing oneself. Everytime we say something, we've gotten the answer "but it's not about that" (paraphrasing). So, we're trying to find out what it IS about if someone wants to argue it is possible.

 

[slider142]

Note that the discussion began with me making the point that if you don't know yourself, you should seek pscyhological/psychiatric help. Such patients as described would need such help. The debate is whether there is any reason why a healthy person would not know themselves. But, we're still waiting for someone who thinks this is possible to give an example or clear-cut definition of just what they mean by not knowing oneself. Everytime we say something, we've gotten the answer "but it's not about that" (paraphrasing). So, we're trying to find out what it IS about if someone wants to argue it is possible.

The patients described have a well-defined neurological disconnect; as such their behavior reveals the functioning of a brain without the physical disconnect; ie., it's like removing a part of a machine to see what that part does. As such, the experiment's result begs the question of how much rationalization is given to our "selves" by our brains on behavior that may or may not benefit long-term goals or personal ideals, whereas the action was taken for some short-term goal whose origins are questionable (see mathwonk's post earlier in this thread). The appeal of introspection is to better serve long-term ideals that we can internalize as being "personal", as opposed to those actions that can be rationalized, but do not actually serve "our" purposes. We tend to appreciate those types of actions better., ie, you get a great feeling after working hard and earning a degree and you probably always will vs. you feel like you wasted time last night going to that bar and that action will diminish in memory such that you really did waste that time for an action that will never be remembered for any reason. A silly extreme example of a non-introspective would be someone who never questions any impulse that enters their mind since "they are themselves", while at the other extreme we have an introspective who never does anything because they spend too much time rationalizing their impetus to action. I'm no good at explaining this stuff either. A psychologist or neurologist would be better suited to this thread. :D

The debate is whether there is any reason why a healthy person would not know themselves. But, we're still waiting for someone who thinks this is possible to give an example or clear-cut definition of just what they mean by not knowing oneself.

If a person ever gives the answer "I don't really know why I did that." to a question about a past action and means it (at least on the surface), I would define that person as not really knowing that aspect of themselves. While it's arguably impossible to know every single aspect, large holes like not knowing why you went to that party last night or why you stayed in and studied is definitely a noticeable measure.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

How can we possibly understand ourselves without understanding every psychological impulse, every hormonal reaction... every physiological and psychological influence that determines how we feel and react to situations, when it is a given that no expert could?

I don't think it is possible to fully know ourselves. And beyond that, we never stop changing. Part of a marriage is adjusting to who your mate becomes over time.

 

[verty]

How is looking back and thinking that you would act differently if you knew what you know now consistent with that you knew yourself back then? If it is your former self then it is still you, so either the present you or the past one is/must have been mistaken.

Now if the people here continue posturing about how it hasn't been explained, then no more response will be forthcoming.