How does the encounter with the “Other” shape the “self”?
Memories, traumas, desires, superegos and many more are the dominants that shape, what we call “self”. Self is a constantly changing description of ego that is full of obscurities. We do not understand most of it and we call al the tiny bit that we understand our consciousness. We get to know our consciousness trough time without realizing but How do we do it is a rough question.
We only learn we exist, when we learn the existence of others. As babies we do not know what we are like. Once we start to communicate with mama, papa, or a mother being, we realize our roles and capabilities. We assume we are tall when we acknowledge another who is shorter than us. We assume we are clever when we outsmart someone else. We think we are not good enough when we see others better than us. We learn our features only by comparing ourself with others. Without the other we wouldn’t know about ourselves.
Only knowing how we are is never enough. We need others to acknowledge and react to our features to be sure. We post pictures on Instagram to show how beautiful or talented we are. With each like we feel better about our talent, beauty. We share our opinions about news, politics and arts on Facebook so that others can see it. The more the other approves, the more intellectual we feel.
Without any social interaction we wouldn’t be able to know or portray ourselves. Encounter with the other doesn’t only shape the self but it creates the self!
How does memory shape self?
From the moment we were born we have been shaping ourselves and building personalities but what would be left from us if all of our memories disappeared? How would we know who we are? How would we know our characteristics?
Every single thing we experience effects our personality, some on conscious level some on unconscious level. Who we are today wouldn’t be the same without that one toy we had or that one sentence our mama told us, that we don’t even remember anymore. Every single memory we have sculpts us. In this process, we get to know ourselves while we get to know others. We compare others with ourselves and come to the conclusion of “I”. Our families have significant effects on us and how we define ourselves since they were the ones who we started socializing with. They were the ones we first compared ourselves to, they were the ones who were with us in our first traumas and accomplishments. Only the disappearance of family memories would be enough to chance ones identity; but there is more! Throughout life we learn customs, laws, sins, traditions. We learn goods and bads. Some spend hours praying to god while some spend hours online. Some get told to wear a turban while some are walking around in nude beaches.
Some work all day for years and some travel the world. Even though we can not control how we are raised and where we end up, everything we go through touches our identities. Every thing we learn, everyone that we know, everything that we did shapes the memory and memory shapes us. Our “self” gets defined by everything we live. It is impossible to have a self without the memories.
