09: Self and Other

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Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother, Abel?”
“I don't know,” he replied, “Am I my brother's keeper?”
(Genesis 4:9, NIV)
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The long and short of it.... Humans are interactive and intense, synergistic and volatile, consuming and explosive. A person is not fully vested until exposed to other people. We are built for communion. You matter, but so do they.

Potential + Circumstance + Will + Other = Eternity
A new human is raw potential—given the circumstances this new person could become another Martin Luther King, another Ghandi, another Mother Teresa, another Hitler or Stalin or Mao. He could become a Lobsterman. A new born baby has everything needed except the chance. To take away that chance, to remove interaction with other humans, is to deny a person her potential. To deny potential is to stop grace. Jesus only uttered one curse—while standing with a child he told His disciples, “if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck” (Mark 9:42). We are not only responsible for our own destiny, we are responsible for the destinies of those around us, and so we are all bound together. In the same way that soul is both here and there, we are also simultaneously both self and other.

The Judgment will be about how we related to each other as much as it will be about how we related to God. Find a Bible and read Matthew 18:21-35, the parable of the unmerciful servant. Read all of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, chapters 5-7) and you will find that the major teachings of Jesus were about living with others, about how to get along, about how to show mercy and grace and forgiveness.

Self and Other
These are the principles of Self and Other

1. Self is universal.
2. Self is object oriented.
3. Self resists Other.
4. Self is actualized by Other.

Perhaps you noticed that the principles of Self and Other are all about what Self is? That's because self and other are the same thing—self is perfected by other, and every self is an other to some other self. In other words, self is only completed when it coexists with other selfs. Self can only be defined as other in the context of other. I exist because I exist, but I have dimension because of all of the other people whom I have known in my life. If I was magically transported to some strange, isolated parallel universe with no other people in it, I would be some kind of self, but no kind of other. When we talk about other we are really talking about self fulfilling the role of other to some other self. E I E I O

Let's look at each principle briefly.

• Self is Universal: I've been sitting here thinking about all the different arguments that are needed to demonstrate our homogeneity as a single race, even going on-line and looking into the % variance in DNA responsible for skin color deviation, the ability to breed across physical variation, etc etc, and it hit me—who cares? The whole discussion as to the nature and make-up or our humanity has become a scientific discussion, relegated to mind-bogglingly obtuse discourse on the global variant distribution of recombinant DNA related to colors and shapes. Do we really need to slice and dice a topic that is so obvious? Of course we are all one people. So why all the effort to prove that we are not? Why all the effort to avoid that we are? It is all a matter of perception, of identity, of the meaning of self. But the sad truth is, we are attracted to those whom we look like and repelled by those who look different than we do. This is because we are superficial in our estimation of other's worth and value. This “surface magnetism” is an odd and interesting force, it both attracts and repels. I am comfortable around those who look like me; I am afraid of those who look different.
  
• Self is object oriented: The Curse of Babel—our perceptions of each other are all too often driven by the belief that other people are objects, not people just like us. When I drive in traffic I am surrounded by moving cars, not people just like me driving cars. This makes it easy to operate in the world, never having to make any emotional, intellectual or physical investment in other people. It's not required. I don't need to feel any differently about some person in a car across an intersection than I do about any of the countless tress I drive by. Objects. If that person pulls into the intersection and is broadsided by a truck, is thrown into the street and crushed visibly, publicly, spectacularly, I am isolated, insulated, protected by my objectivity—that other person is only an object, a colorful and exciting drama that plays out in front of me before I go home and eat dinner. Tomorrow my neighbor will cut down a row of pine trees and I will stand aloof watching that drama with as much dispassion. This Object Oriented Perception (OOP) is the main driver for our sense of difference and indifference. It is so strong that we can stand in a room together and look only at the micro differences (skin color, eye shape, nose shape, hair texture) and completely miss the macro similarities that make us the same (Soul, Body, Mind, Emotion).

The next two principles are so tightly interrelated that they must be treated together.

• Self resists, but is actualized, by other: Human beings repel each other, they resist each other, while at the same time they are only complete, they are only actualized and optimized, when they are joined with other. I resist you. I require you. You cannot become fully human, you cannot reach your full potential, unless you interact with ohter people. We were made not for ourselves, but for each other. But at the same time, you resist others from getting too close to you so as to protect yourself. You are torn between needing and fearing.

Human relationships are one of the true wonders of the universe. You are Spirtit coming into Virtual Eternity through living flesh, communing with others, resolving with them so you can become a fully mature Soul rising up to Eternity from the dying flesh. It is not possible to do this by yourself. You need God, you need others. You matter, but so do they.