Self-Awareness

To know oneself it to employ a bit of doublethink. Knowing thyself is awareness of one’s strengths, flaws, characteristics, and likely behavioral trends. Self awareness is a lot like metacognition; being self aware involves the ability to observe and understand oneself as if one were looking down upon or had direct insight into the workings of one’s mind. A popular visual, and one that is intuitive in most humans at an early age, is ultimately dualistic. We imagine an entity, another being of some sort, being able to watch our minds work like a giant television screen. Our minds can even seem like they have a mind of their own and can be treated separately from the body. In any case, one who is perfectly self-aware can objectively analyze his or her own behavior and thoughts, and at the same time, go through with them. This is what I mean by doublethink. I can’t really imagine a person, who, being aware of all their flaws, makes a conscious effort to correct them all. Most of the time, we are vaguely aware of things about ourselves that aren’t always pleasant, yet don’t feel any particular motivation to change negative characteristics. In fact, I often preface actions that I know will irritate my mom to no end by citing my flawed characteristic and then proceeding to demonstrate, once again, why such behavior is counted among my negative characteristics. That could be just pure laziness rather than doublethink. However, a self-aware individual can understand beyond what he or she sees and comprehends. They understand that their subjective interpretations are probably not the only understanding existing and that their viewpoint is almost certainly skewed. This is very difficult. It is comparable to looking at a visual illusion, which capitalizes on your brain’s natural predispositions to interpret images in certain ways, while telling yourself that what you see isn’t actually what’s there. No matter how much you know that your brain is tricking you, it is near impossible to see past what is easiest to see. 

The value in self-awareness was recognized very early on by Greek philosophers, such as Plato. If we all “knew ourselves” we wouldn’t suffer from our own caprices or the limits of our subjective understandings. If objective understanding isn’t possible, at least we can understand that things exist beyond our own minds. And once we understand our own limits, we can begin to search for absolute truths and greater understanding, instead of being confined to our own minds. 

I think I’m pretty self-aware, but then again, that is one of my weaknesses. I like to think that I am a reasonable confident person, but it is possible that I am just terrible unaware of myself. I hold the firm belief that success often depends on the attitude you take; in fact, I spent most of last year doing a science experiment testing this idea. However, perhaps my overweening confidence in my own abilities and my own self-awareness demonstrate the exact opposite. It could just be that my own belief in myself shows how far I have to go in my path to self-awareness. Of course I don’t think that I am wrong, and really, I cannot see where I can be wrong most of the time, but the more self-aware side of me tells me that there is no way I cannot be faultless in my judgements and perceptions. I guess the only thing I can do is the keep my mind open to the opinions of other people, which I have tried to do. However, this gets tiring and is extremely inefficient when making certain decisions, and some people are really stupid anyways. I’m not being elitist; I speak the truth. I’m self-aware, dammit! Obviously, I’m just joking, but achieving self-awareness is like trying to measure the position and velocity of a particle; the harder one tries to measure the particle, the more one disrupts the actual velocity/position of the particle. The more I  try to achieve self-awareness, the farther it slips away from my grasp. Instead, I should “strive for nonstriving.” 

My best quality? Only one? But there are so many to choose from! Let’s see...I think that I am a pretty objective person. I think that I am able to let go of my personal biases to a certain extent. Oftentimes, I don’t have an opinion on certain things simply because either side is logically sound and to make an opinion, I would have to base my decision on emotion rather than solid information. Similarly, my objectivity allows me to see things in a way that others don’t; I don’t like people very much when I think that way and most actions begin to look silly and conformist as well. Fortunately I can snap out of this if I want and change into my normal persona where I am motivated by strange emotional urges and feel the need to fit in. 

The problem with achieving self-awareness is, as explained above already, that one cannot ascertain whether one has achieved self-awareness. An individual who does so is usually still hopelessly deluded or obnoxiously overconfident. The second problem is our own hubris. We (or I at least) like to think that I’m right in my opinions. Why else would I have them if I knew that they were wrong? Self-awareness teaches us, however, that what we believe may be, in reality, limited and short-sighted. Perhaps a self-aware individual even realizes that he or she may never achieve an objectiveness in thought, which is an incredibly depressing thought. It’s a bit like the story of Job, where good actions don’t necessarily merit prosperity. Why be good if there is no guarantee of reward? Similarly, why pursue any kind of independent thought if you know that achieving objectivity is a futile and wasted effort? For further discussion, you can look at one of my two college essays, but the point is that I feel tiny, insignificant and useless when it comes to self-awareness. I was watching a movie in Philosophy in which one character, his afro pulsating in beat to his frenetic, psychedelic surroundings (the images alone were enough to bother me), stated that the ultimate self-awareness was acceptance that one could just be a character in someone else’s dream. What I think and perceive could be, and probably is, entirely wrong, but now even my convictions on my own identity and/or existence can be completely incorrect. The terrible thought has just gripped me that I could be a figment of someone else’s imagination, and I cannot think of a way to disprove the notion. It’ll just have to keep it in mind.