Self Awareness gets you nothing in society, you will get no benefits no victim status no help, no sympathy, no charity.
What you will get is an internal struggle, questioning your reality. You will get the painful truth that when you put all your excuses aside, 100% percent of your problems are your own fault, that's right, only you are to blame. You will get ridiculed by proponents of society, you will get no support, you will get nothing. However, if you are quick enough to see it, you might get a glimpse of happiness and perhaps the closest thing to freedom that can be experienced prior to death. It may get an individual through their own observation of themselves to perhaps experience lasting happiness.
So maybe self awareness could (I don't know conclusively) lead to a state of happiness, understanding and freedom of thought. That is why I am concerned that identity politics blocks the possibility for objective introspection...
...So maybe I can't say that self awareness would bring you happiness, because hell I don't know. Perhaps I could say that it could stop unhappiness. You might become happy via negativa, or by way of negation. I say this because to me it is apparent (that is, I can see it) my ideas or thoughts (my mental activity) and especially my expectations become things that I identify with. So yeah, not only do I identify with a social group that I have been provided with but, I identify with my imaginary expectations of the outside world. That's right, they are imaginary. I have imagined what would make me happy, it didn't come true and now I am unhappy, voila.
Unhappiness, struggle, despair only occur when your imaginary expectations of existence collides with reality.
Above, what I am essentially saying is that you create your own unhappiness, by identifying with a label and its associated expectations. I am not saying this is good or bad, you guys can do what you like, I m just saying that it is apparent for me, if I take the time to honestly look at myself that is. Now, I am also excluding identification of humans, as defined by their physical properties, this is, what it is, no less no more. However to create a social identity on the basis of physical properties, is convenient for the obvious reasons associated with visual differences. This represents a cheap and disingenuous attempt to get people to do what you want, because they are the same colour, sex or whatever. Stop doing it, and stop calling me a person of colour, I don't belong to your imaginary view of what you think the world should be.
How Identity Politics Destroys Happiness
Identity politics takes your average unhappy human being, struggling with life, continually bumping into reality with their fantasy world ideas and says,
"here, have another identity, we will support you with this one, it will be great. There will be nothing to bump into when we control reality. You wont need to do a thing, no painful introspection required, you're morally right, ...and yes we do have funding!"
...Now that unhappy human, who didn't have a hope in hell in the first place, will never need to experience the journey of objective self observation, that avenue of self learning will be closed. At least until, they run hard into reality again. I learnt a lot from myself, so much. In fact I learnt a lot about you all, because from a birds eye view we all look and behave somewhat the same. Sure there are nuances, but generally speaking, everyone experiences similar types of emotions, maybe different responses to those emotions but that's another story.
One of the things I did learn, about happiness, is that nobody wants it. They have no time for it because they are too busy. I can say this is true by testing it, genearlly. This can be tested, by first thinking about someone close to you, a family member or someone you love. Now ask yourself would you choose happiness over that person? Would that person want you to be happy? If the answer is no then you don't want happiness, you want your conditions met. So there it is, people only want to be happy provided their imaginary expectations, their fantasy world is met.
Identity politics not only ineffective as illustrated in my previous post, but it is crippling for peoples growth as human beings, potentially preventing them from experiencing authentic happiness. More concerning is that it creates animosity between different groups and that leads to violence.
https://steemit.com/life/@louisbettong/identity-politics-why-activism-no-longer-works-here-s-why
I was reminded of the above, when my own imaginary world ended recently and I wanted to take my life (what an idiot), I didn't feel depressed, I just wanted reality to stop messing with my fantasy. I realise now that I didn't want to take my life, I wanted to kill myself, my identity. To free myself from my own conditioning, is for my attachment to identities to die, for me to be in control again, this can only occur by honest self observation, for me to see my fantasy world for what it is. I am concerned that people are mistaking their physical lives for their identity and killing the wrong one. Who knows maybe it is only me living in a fantasy world.
LB
Being self aware, I have no problems, everything is perfect, and I'm free.
the idea of "a problem" is only relevant if others are involved, and being self aware, there are no "others" to consider or care about, being self aware, I am the only one that is real
I'm no philosopher, but here goes. We create society, society creates problems (through conflicting imagined expectations). The social problem is its own problem, the problem we try to escape from is of our own making. I'm still trying to sort this out in my own head. Good comment, Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
society is an imaginary concept, and not real
haha Yes, that is what I meant, we create in our minds, I was trying to save words, oops a bit slack. I almost wrote it too.
to reach conclusions much faster, always replace the word "we" with the word "I"
A thorough field of rational thought, thanks for this, it got me thinking :)
My first reaction is to defend the benefits of self-awareness, for I believe myself to have received some"thing" from pursuing awareness.
That is the game though, pursuing awareness. I think you could drop the "self" from it - we agree that there is nothing to become more aware of than what our own mind thinks. (Would welcome discussion on this ;) )
Stepping on that stone of "all is self," we can start to see our own interaction with social groups, status quos, communities, and pretty much anything as learning more about the self.
Where to go next? Well, if you agree that "engaging with the world" is a euphemism for "self-exploration" then, you've got to remember everyone else has got this function present within them. Is it parallel, do we intersect?
That's impossible to say, however the chance exists that we can't agree on what "happiness" is, or what "being free" really means.
Systems of thought might attempt to win over your imagination with certain values and ideals - in-sight comes from ordinary moments like these, sitting and breathing, maybe drinking apple juice and looking at a flower.
I propose identities are like flowers - silently beautiful - sometimes fragile - always undergoing change.
Thank you for the opportunity to have these thoughts <3
You mention to drop the self, this indicates that you have gone a lot further than I have. I got three points from your comment, a paragraph below for each.
I have heard it said that thought itself, is the origin of our delusion, after we have become aware of our thoughts. Not on the day to day, superficial thoughts of course, I think that goes without saying. But I am still trying to get my head around it.
"Systems of thought might attempt to win over your imagination with certain values and ideals - in-sight comes from ordinary moments like these, sitting and breathing, maybe drinking apple juice and looking at a flower."
Agree to this, and I'll add, who is the audacious being dictating things such as values, ideals, morals even, and worst of all virtues.
I think I understand the last part of your post to mean that, your identity is yours, it is not you. hopefully I am right :) (not that being right is important) haha
Also stop making me think, it takes time.
I think you picked up what I was putting down, in a cool and unique way might I add :)
I just want you to question what you're aware of. Is there you, and other? Where does the self begin and end?
I don't have the answers to these questions, but I encourage you to make up your own answers and test them with your reality.
You are correct, you own your identity if you want to, although some people like to be controlled o.o
I'm going to have to put some thought into that one, lets hope my thoughts don't lead me astray.
I'd like to think of others as being the same. There's nothing wrong about having a degree of association, people just do what they think is best for themselves at a time..
And thanks for writing this rather sobering piece
Suicide is not possible, only the story about somone else committing suicide is
Wow...this is really well written and thought out. It is really sad to see identity politics play out in a lot of our circle of friends. Obama is gone, but we still have people who are comparing him to Trump...even though the man has been put into office all of two seconds.
Then there are the Hilary supporters who still cannot get over the fact that...she lost...not to mention...her less than stellar track record.
The media has done such a number on the mind of the people...that they cannot tell their thoughts from those that have been artificially created inside of their minds.
Thanks mate, I see all this nonsense as a distraction, from issues that I think are important (like unemployment). I want to create posts that re-direct people's attention to the important issues. So that alternative media sites like this become the norm.
Self-awareness makes you much stronger to face the world and others, to deal with reality and a greater capacity to fight Power abuse. :)