Being Alone

[001001sith]

you are full of shit...seriously. you sound like a communist.

[TriviumCrusader17]

You got another sub..... In a world bursting at the seams with dummies who have a tv show, it is very refreshing to run into an intellectual who actually cares about sharing opinions and ideas. Great videos

[TheLordJesusChrist]

I like your man ponytail.

[tweekin001]

What does 'otherize' mean?

[Mezocosm]

Intelligence and understanding of what is happening doesn't require talk. Isn't it weird that you can have something happen between people... and you know everyone understands but somehow it is really important that it be put to words. Then describing the situation becomes prey to attitudes and how we wish to apply "meaning". Create a box for the phenomena and label it, then it can be understood against the grid. Talking about being as an object that can be boxed, as a symbol in a relative grid

[fhumayun]

My reaction mirrors Von Humboldt as he aptly states: Man lives with his objects chiefly — in fact, since his feeling and acting depends on his perceptions. . . as language presents them to him. By the same process whereby he spins language out of his own being, he ensnares himself in it; and each language draws a magic circle round the people to which it belongs, a circle from which there is no escape save by stepping out of it into another

[Viorela72]

is that what you mean, we are not alone just because we are self-reflecting and we can talk to ourselves? But we wouldn't never miss any language to say anything to others, too. Telepathy for instance. We could even may not need any language to express ourself to others, if we (speaker and listener...?) learned to feel our thoughts - as a image, sound or whatever.

But I don't think that's the point of feeling alone. We feel alone when we see no mirror of same nature around us...

[BearWindAppleyard]

I would like to try to think without it being language related, and without being aware of oneself, without having this inner monologue all the time. I guess that's more or less imposible ..

[andrewzot]

(from previous) From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word." -William S. Burroughs

[andrewzot]

"The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle...yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. (cont)

[shakeyourdimsims]

genuinely interesting

[scottym84]

Great video. Very interesting.

I was first introduced to this way of thinking by Terence McKenna. He famously stated "culture is your operating system."

His view points on language really opened my mind. Our language and way of speaking affects our views on everything and the way we react to anything. We are only as intelligent as we can express through our "installed" (given) language.

An example in American culture is drugs, the subject is taboo although we rely heavily on compounds.

[Professoranton]

Thanks.

[LimpLoser]

wtf are u talking about

[lifexisxaxstage]

I wonder if the voices that prevent us from being alone are at all connected to the idea of multiple personality disorder

[Professoranton]

Great stuff on that; See Mary Watkin's Invisible Guests.

[lifexisxaxstage]

@Professoranton I showed my students this video today. They seemed to really like it.

I'll look up Invisible Guests. Thanks Professor Anton!

[ncs901]

You rock lol..Very cool videos.

[Professoranton]

Thank you

[natedaug1]

@ncs901 Jesus, that is deep. Seriously, that is profound.

[Ipluckithard]

alone means to be "all one" that is the origins of this word. Not separate but "all one". Somehow over time we have morphed this word into a different meaning.

[StevenErnest]

You make some wonderful points here.

That's the irony and difficulty of life: we live in a society of others, but we are all ultimately alone. The closest friend/lover/"soulmate" can never truly see exactly from our point of view.

Art, poetry, writing, can give us a virtual experience of almost forgetting ourselves -- to see through another's eyes.

On a basic level, words do not mean the same thing for every person; we all bring our own definitions and connotations, so see through a filter.

[Eldel15]

Great video

[Professoranton]

Thanks

[LokahSamasta]

Prof. Anton, I'm really glad you stuck with YouTubing and you are now getting such a large number of views for a video presenting an intellectual argument and not just a sparring match with another video maker. Just to see if I understand: we are alone in that our thoughts are for us only but we are not alone because we cannot turn off our thoughts. Is that right or am I missing a much bigger piece of the argument. Thanks again for continuing to make videos!

[Professoranton]

I think so. But I don't think we can be even alone with ourselves until we have been otherized by language. Language gives us the distance to first come to ourselves, and without that distance we are neither already alone nor not yet alone.

[LokahSamasta]

@Professoranton I think I do follow and agree with the idea that language gives us the power to separate ourselves and things from what would otherwise just be a continuous present-tense happening. However, I feel that I am still lost on how language makes aloneness impossible. Is that half tied to the fact that we share language, that if there was only one person in existence language would be unnecessary?

[LokahSamasta]

@LokahSamasta I am also wondering if you are making the case that because language is a social construct when we are thinking alone we are actually recalling memories of others even when we think we are just reflecting on ourselves? For example, if I am thinking something as simple as "I'm bored"; since I have a shared understanding with others of what the utterance "bored" represents, I am tied to all others who I share that word with every time I use it.

[LokahSamasta]

@LokahSamasta I'm realising now that this comment was perhaps a little snarky. I guess that period of videos is ancient history but I am just catching up on all the videos now so it was fresh in my mind. Perhaps, it would have been better to just say that I am happy the view count is going up in general. Now, I will stop posting on this video.

[Somethingreallycool]

Is consciousness also a 'nothingness' because it's related to our ability to nihilate?

[isismelting]

firstly, i think that most of your work seems to have an impressive amount of potential.

at the end of any given month, i "deadlist" certain words, those whose use i've been abusing. this is no dogmatic practice for me; i think that the word "deadlist" might be out of bounds for me at the moment, but whatever is necessary to avoid the unnecessary creation of superfluous neologisms.

again, i enjoy your work, or at least the idea thereof, for the most part.

[threeofwands]

A good approximation (verbally) of a common kind of mental breakdown. The problem becomes at this stage: that one no longer has one's own voice, but the voices of multitudes passing through, and therefore, no companionship of someone looking for another who seems to have a self, or is self-possessed enough to play the game of life.

How to navigate at that point between suicide and despair - a question of strategy.

[jcsides]

alone = all one

[m0rtem]

beautiful stuff, man, I really enjoyed this. thanks for sharing.

[Professoranton]

Thank you

[RonCDeWeijze]

What you describe as "otherization" and the acquisition of basic loneliness, was described by GH Mead (husband of Margaret) as basic socialization. That is the opposite of loneliness. Isn't that what you call loneliness really the (call for) independence which can be but doesn't need to be isolation? Just like it can become, but not necessarily so, loss of self in the group, having to live up to standards possibly not one's own? Yet it is this call for independent judgment to keep you on track.

[Professoranton]

GH Mead related to Margaret Mead? M Mead was married to G. Bateson.

[KellyJones00]

Cory, I'd say the concept of self just means, something integral. Something unified, a whole. So 'self' can get applied to anything that seems to be a whole. This kind of cuts straight across the idea that one is "radically otherised", by showing every "self" has selfness in common. So there's no aloneness - cause there's no intrinsic self vs other.

Language both creates and destroys self.

[yupper99]

"the concept of self just means, something integral. Something unified, a whole."...the point of his argument is that this "self-contained", "non-leaky", "sovereign" self is, in fact, a fantasy.

[KellyJones00]

yupper99, well, if so, then all concepts are fantasies. But then.... "fantasy" is also a concept. So is "reality".

My conclusion is that concepts, wisely used, can point to the true nature of things - by showing how concepts and forms are projected onto reality.

So, concepts aren't really fantasies, unless one is taken in by them. They're useful mental abstractions.

[yupper99]

Concepts -are- fantasies. But that does not mean they only operate in the realm of fantasy (and I am talking about "fantasy" by way or Lacanian analysis, not laymen definitions). The concept of "a nation" is imaginary (Anderson), that doesn't meant there is no material effects or reality to nation-states. The first problem is that you are stuck in Cartesian binary thinking. The second problem is that you have a conception of social relations steep in liberal epistemology.

[yupper99]

There is no (unified, sovereign) self without the other. In fact, the self needs the other(s) more than the other needs the self (which is why it is never really unified, "self-contained", or sovereign).

[yupper99]

After re-reading your comment, I suspect that we may not be that far apart. But this lines troubles me: "concepts, wisely used, can point to the true nature of things" that recycles the positivist preoccupation with "true nature" of "things." This is also why I find the Atheist/Theist debate generally represented on Youtube to be completely pointless. I am more anxious about how certain "regimes of truths" comes to prevail as an outcome and process of power relations, a la Foucault.

[KellyJones00]

yupper99, I'm more interested in reasoning about what *is* true, rather than submitting to any regime of truth.

If an individual has no trust in reason, no will to truth, how will they determine what is false? They can't.

So I'm promoting rationality and individuality, in order to understand what is real.

[yupper99]

"'m more interested in reasoning what *is* true, rather than submitting to any regime of truth." Yes, apparently so. And in so doing, you've submitted yourself to a regime of truth. There is no such thing as "truth" that is not contaminated by relations of power. There are no individual "selves", but selves constituted through social relations. I think we are very far apart after all.

[AwaitingPulse]

seriously, you are my god. your videos are always such a pleasure to watch, i learn always something new.

[Anarch0tec]

Great video - its succinct, tight and well-spoken.

Do you have any thoughts on the socio-political consequences of this view?

[JNdigital]

allone

[begily]

If you are afraid to express yourself, you are alone

[josephgelb]

I suspect that language makes it harder to really think:) That is just my theory.

[2bsirius]

Sometimes I don't understand, i.e.,"To learn language is to be "other-ized" from the inside out"???

You're point that language creates an "otherization" implies that the self was something BEFORE it was "otherized"...Doesn't this just mean that there is no private language? That it is created THROUGH community? BUT my interior monologue, my subjective self, is mine alone. Those deprived of it are feral. They HAVE NO INTERIOR SELF, so I don't understand how your view isn't just romanticized.

[2bsirius]

[Con't] I'm asking this in the hope that your points can be made easier for me to understand. I just can't make sense of "other-ized] language...BECAUSE, again, it is by it's very nature a product of community...It seems to me that Wittgenstein was right that there can be no private language.

What am I missing? Probably lots, but I don't know where to start to get a grip on the points you're making here.

HELP! THANKS!

[Professoranton]

Yes, your point about Wittgenstein seems quite right to me. As there is no private language, and if we had not encountered others, we would not even be able to be alone with ourselves.

[2bsirius]

Yes, exactly...If we weren't social creatures, there would be no 'self' to be alone WITH...Right?

[Professoranton]

Yes.

[Professoranton]

Although language is learned from others, this does not mean that the self was something "before it was otherized," It basically means that we are naturally social.

There is no "self" prior to the "other," I can have a self only by partly being other than myself. That is the paradox.

Said quite otherwise: The babbling period, if not responded to, comes and goes without the baby identifying itself as the source of the babbling and the language acquisition period is missed.

[almafarag]

/watch?v=JS1BSnVLJrA

[L1NK666XL1NK666]

you did what?

[BoundlessEyes]

Absolutely fascinating.

[NoAddedAnything]

Really interesting stuff, thanks prof!

[EZkill25l7]

this reminds me of lord byron. it is in solitude, where we are least alone.

[Professoranton]

Thanks so much.  This is beautiful. Solitude is refuge for those who already contain multitudes.

[Paramystical]

good one : ) ... which reminds me of this one:

"I was never less alone than when by myself."

- Edward Gibbon

[EZkill25l7]

ha, I was unaware of this literary quote borrowing dating back to cicero, I guess Epictetus

and a couple others get in on the act as well =)

[trifelgeputinage]

But being alone is a concept that can only be jnderstood if we have language already. In other words aloness is not a function of language, it's the other way round - language is a function of aloness - that's what all the babbling is about - don't let me be alone - answer me! The babbling is the basic function.

[Professoranton]

There is no instinct to language, though there is an instinct to babble. When the baby babbles, if no one responds to the babbling, the babbling period passes without the baby having identified itself as the source of the babbling. This means that although language is learned from others it is natural; we are naturally social.

[StevenErnest]

Well, Chomsky and some others say our brain seems to be "wired" for language. I know that is much debated.

Apparently no other creature (on Earth) has such a complex language system.

[Professoranton]

Agreed.

[tyrbolo]

The self arises from the need for cells to be

able to differentiate between their own inside

and the surround. Forming congeries of function

requires the same need. At each step the ability

becomes more capable. The consciousness

which thinks it is the self because it has learned

to chatter inside is suffering from an unnecessary illusion.

[UnhappyTestTubeBaby]

I hear what you're saying. This may well be the way it happens for most humans. But all I'm really hearing is that self realization occurs through interaction with one's environment. I don't see it necessarily taking the form of language.

[mnwalke]

The thing is, it HAS to take the form of some kind of language. Otherwise it can not be communicated, even to oneself. If you wanna get technical about it, "self-realization" is only made possible by the fact that a term exists for it.

So there.

[UnhappyTestTubeBaby]

If you mean internal concepts = internal language - then yes, I agree. The next step might be to form a communicable word for it but I don't see how the the communicable word could exist before the 'internal language'.

[amabodie]

First comes self awareness

Second comes language

Third comes self realisation.

Fourth comes the question, 'what the hell is all this about?'

Fifth comes 'Oh, I'm horny'

The End

[sweetelesue]

Shazzam!

[jogayot]

me, I and myself walked into a lone bar...

[AEchannel2009]

this videos is absolutely awesome!

[Tommerman89]

Hell yeah this is going into my favorites.

One thing though. The longer we spend with others the more we start to think like they do and they to think like we do. Are we really alone if we can express ourselves to others and they to express themselves to us?

[yeahwotevaman]

Isn't that like a kind of enthropy of consciousness? That people 'rub off' on one another.

[yeahwotevaman]

typo: should be 'entropy' LOL

[Paramystical]

not crazy at all. perhaps the loveliest of paradoxes... and at those times when in conflict (interesting in itself) with that "haunting other" it is still somehow a delicious 'dilemma'.

[Cashify]

I, or is it we, often hear 'others' declaring all that is to be the alpha and omega and everything in between.

In the next breath 'they' make a statement declaring themselves or 'someone else' eternally separate from the alpha and the omega. Our/my declaration of separation from all that exists is most peculiar.

It's almost like a poker tell of our maya aspect, when she declares herself separate from the formless.

There is no separation between the formless and imagined aspects.

[robinsoncrucify]

yep