On being a question.
Having the world ask the question of you, or you asking the world the question, doesn't matter..
Friend of the electronic ether, it’s good to write to you again.. I have been in transition this past month, changing apartments, running government work between two countries, and attempting to get acclimated to a new space I’m starting to get familiar with, and starting to enjoy.. I hope and pray that you’ve been granted good times, and moments of happiness..
Alberto Manguel writes about interesting stuff. His interest in ideas goes into why we are interested in the things we are interested in. He wrote about the history of writing, history of libraries, and how Dante’s inferno interacts with history, before it and after.
The book I’m currently reading for him is “Curiosity”1. He quotes Carl Jung in one of the chapters called “Who Am I?” with a very interesting reflection.
“The more uncertain I have felt about myself,” he writes, “the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.”
“The meaning of my existence,” Jung wrote, “is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.” The quest to find out who we are, as whole and singular human beings, the attempt to answer life’s question is responsible, in some measure, for our delight in the stories of others. Literature is not “the world’s answer” but rather a trove of more and better questions. Like the tales told to Dante by the souls he meets, our literatures provide more or less efficient mirrors for discovering our own secret features. Our mental libraries are composite maps of who we are (or believe we are) and who we are not (or believe we are not).
My question is, how many of us are attempting to answer that question the world asks of them, in comparison to some of us who are gleefully letting the world provide them with an answer..
I wrote the first paragraph, and then went to see some friends and our discussions ranged from video games, how Laos felt like when we both visited, how faiths interact with communities, and how a single faith or an ideology can look completely different in different parts of the world. Coming back to get to this, I heard
’s note about the ‘privilege of self expression’ and the ability to put a voice to your thoughts.This question was pulled out of me when I was talking to a friend about having to go through life with a lot of people you know, not having a clear idea about who you really are. That ignorance stems out of fear, lack of awareness, or even lack of interest.
And similarly, the question is a trove of questions, as Manguel describes it, with inefficient mirrors. And the inefficiency of mirrors is what makes the quest much more interesting.
But can the question be asked of people?
Can we ask people around us who do they think we are? I say this because in my personal life, I am having to prove to people around me that their idea of me is inaccurate, and that their attempt to ‘wishful think’ that I am who they think is misplaced.
When we ask this question, we tend to present ourselves with an attempt to clarify to ourselves what our priorities are, before attempting to clarify it to the world outside. In the world of teaching, they say: “You can’t explain something you can’t understand yourselves”, and I believe the same applies to ourselves. When we start the quest of answering our own question in front of the world, we are generally faced with two categories of responses:
The uncertainty of the unknown.
The uncertainty of the individual.
Finding Kinship in uncertainty
Carl Jung asked this, and noted that this uncertainty has transferred inwards, yet it has created a ‘kinship’ with all things. The one who defer their own questioning of the familiarity with oneself will probably not find this kinship of the human existence within themselves, mainly because the constant examination of oneself is such an arduous process, that one without the ability to be gentle in such an endeavor will find themselves estranged not only from their ownselves, but from humanity.
I say this, and I’m thinking of the introspection one gains towards others. Somehow our feet will be able to fit all these shoes of the people we see around us, or most of these shoes when we say: “Put yourself in someone’s shoes”.
Al-Mutanabbi, the Arabic language’s greatest poet, said:
"Do not blame the longing one for their yearning, until your own heart resides within their innermost being."
I guess Arabic parable makers chose love and yearning, instead of feet and shoes to present us with the lesson.
The building bricks of the individual
On choosing to answer our own question of the world, we present ourselves with the uncertainty of the individual dilemma. while we delight in the stories of others as Manguel says, our reservation towards our own uncertainties and the immediacy of the ‘dangers of self examination’ overpower our desire and need to endeavor.
We tend to discuss our experience as ‘humans’ and not as ‘individuals’, with which we create molds and archetypes to navigate our shared existence. This level of generalization allows us to see patterns, navigate larger groups, and equips us with the ability to understand societies as singular units.
On the other hand, through this lens of generalization and unification of our individual experiences, we tend to melt the individual existence into a mold that absorbs the individuality of the individual itself. This renders our existence to being a “part of” rather than its own experience that needs to recognize itself, and be recognized.
Yet, there is the inseparability of the individual in relation to the group. Our individual existence is strongly tied to the group, in that tension of being able to and wanting to individualize our experience, and in some cases, wanting to immerse ourselves in the collective experience. Whether we are able to individualize our question to the world, apart from the group, that does not negate that our answer is still in relation to the group’s answer - or lack thereof. I was having a dinner with a friend recently, and he said something along the lines of “I felt too different from where I am”, and something along the order of being unique from in a way that separates him from his environment. During that I was thinking: “oh boy, you just need to wait to realize how uniquely mundane what you are thinking now..” 🙃
That inseparable relationship between ourselves and others, and that uncertainty extends itself to this very medium; the digital individualism perspective that we present ourselves through. We aim to present our own ideas in ways that ‘differentiate’ us. This whole Substack experience is another manifestation of us, answering our “self-question” although to a smaller audience, and in a much more intentional way.
In another chapter of the book, I came across this attempt from Manguel to answer this:
"Our identity seems to depend on the belief of others. We gaze into the screens of our electronic gadgets with the intensity and constancy of Narcissus gazing into the pool of water, expecting to be restored or affirmed in our identity not by the world around us, not in the workings of our interior life, but through the often inane messaging of others who virtually acknowledge our existence and whose existence we virtually acknowledge."
As we weigh up ourselves in relation to our surroundings, we tend to bring in a historical context of who we are. This is especially true for immigrants and ‘foreigners’.2 I am not talking about people who are non-native to the lands they’re moving to either. A white New Yorker in Montana brings with them a culture that can be different than the host culture, regardless of their skin color. The layers of that cultural difference can be attributed to many factors beyond the skin color, but it also is important to recognize that immigrants can be European too. Immigrants are not only Asians, Africans, or Arabs. Our perception of skin colors and immigration status is clearly signaled in our use of the words “expats” and “migrants” in our discourse.
Here’s a tangent: I was speaking with a South Korean friend yesterday who’s visiting from Peru, and she was asking me: “Why are Americans so obsessed about race?” and I think the question is an inquiry in the reasons why the racial differences are so magnified in the US beyond other cultures. And this is a question I find it hard to answer because race is emphasized in the US to an uncomfortable degree that makes people in some ways avoid mixing with people from different races, mainly due to the ‘avoidance’ I referred to earlier. This schism is something I’ve always wondered about, even in a ‘very liberal’ place like New York, my friend was able to see it clearly. I believe it also is an attempt to present a way for people here to attempt to answer their own questions towards the world. Yet, this is presented not only from an individual experience perspective, but our collective discourse has yielded us to answer this identity question, and apply it to millions of people, in this case of race relations of the US.
Our human history has been an attempt to write a collective narrative for our own histories, with dots of individual contributions in between the narrative. The significance “or insignificance” of our own individual experiences lies in how much attention to us being a question to the world we become. The attempt in answering our own questions not only shapes who we become, but it shapes our view of the world, and the world’s view of us. Both as individuals, and as collective beings.
For that reason alone, I am filled with amazement by the Palestinian people, and their struggle to freedom. It springs from a clear sense of ‘self’ as a collective, and they are not only answering this question to themselves, but they are putting the world in question, and asking the world if it knows itself, with respect to what they are being subjected to. The right to self-determination, and the determination for self & collective liberation has never been stronger. This resolve does not come from people who do not know who they are. It is us who don’t know ourselves and what we believe in.
10 months into genocide, and we still argue about semantics.
When Mandela said: “None of us is free until Palestine is free.” He was not wrong.
Talk soon.. Free Palestine.. 🇵🇸✌🏼
- Alberto Manguel has a great article about “the inexplainable joy of summertime reading”
- Arthur Brooks wrote about Dostoevsky’s principals of personal freedom, gleaned from his writings. It’s a wonderful read.
- Why the olympics are a broken economic model. I’ve been interested in the economics of the Olympics this time, and it’s fascinating for sure. Plus points for this fantastic video not being from a mega YT channel.
Here’s a Guardian review of the book.: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/25/curiosity-alberto-manguel-review-philosophy
I don’t like the word foreigner in general, it “otherizes” people, and symbolizes a form of disconnect between our shared experiences.
We in the world whose governments support genocide don't know ourselves, and are perhaps afraid to know, especially if we're not doing anything to stop it.
Have to say you are right on about a white New Yorker in Montana. It gives me a minor headache on a regular basis, often down to sheer paternalism (an assumption that we're all ignorant hicks who would do X, Y, or Z differently if we only knew better).
Strange coincidence--synchronicity?--I've been a little obsessed with Carl Jung over the last year. I haven't fully dived into his own writings, but have been watching, reading, and listening to a lot of explainers and writings about his ideas. "Individuation" in particular, and the processes that help a person build it, is something I keep looking for more of.