If you are seeking the authentic you, the unadulterated authenticity of the unique self, it would only be revealed when you are by yourself, without the distractions or pressures of others.
Yet, who we really are might only come from the challenges of interacting with others, otherwise your conception of self is untested.
Tag: community
- Theme: Self
Finding yourself through others
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1–2 minutes - Theme: Self
Participating in our own erasure
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1–2 minutesIt seems a constant erasure of our past is buried under new scribblings.
If we are driftingly content to dismiss our own lived experience (that is to change our memories to fit the new lines or repress the dissident noise) then we are not only shaped by history and culture, but we fortify the very shape that writes us out of existence.
- Theme: Culture
“I”-dentity
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1–2 minutesWhat is my individuality good for?
If it’s only to help myself (the "I"-dentity feeding the "me"), and everyone else follows the same example, it seems we only quicken the solipsistic fracturing community, and hence the world.
- Theme: Self
The Crowd and You
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1–2 minutesYou can merge with society to fit in and gain solidarity and comfort. But only you can be you, and great innovation comes from the fringes, not the middle.
Vacillating between solitude (singularity) and solidarity (belonging) is a practice we must cultivate. - Theme: Systems
Helping Hand Systems
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1–2 minutesYou can do things alone and it is difficult. You can have help and perhaps it’s easier, but sometimes you’re still alone and you need a third hand.
Clever use of scaffolding clamps and tricks, bracing, can turn your environment into a second person.
The benefits are 1) you feel clever and 2) that system won’t chastise your silly pridefulness. - Theme: Growth
The point is never the point
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1–2 minutesWhen people say "The point is…" it isn’t.
To declare primacy, to center one idea, is to elevate and exalt one perspective, usually the speakers.
Now the conversation is social politics: the point is to support the person by supporting the idea. - Theme: Self
Empathy transforms individuals into us
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1–2 minutesComforting a hurting friend hurts, because we support (share and enable) their emotions to support them.
Empathy is taking on their hurt. We lose ourselves for solidarity, in order to pull them from solitude, transforming the distinct people into “us.”