Self-awareness, the Ego, and Their Relation to Holism
By: Shawn Rowland
In current �western� society, culture has become something of a novelty. It has become some intangible idea of which there is no clear picture. This is because our society�s cultures, instead of being based on a combination of shared experience, a weltanschaung, and a number of varying relationships, it is based on consumerism, atomization and popular trends. I am an advocate of what I call a holistic culturalization. However, in order to approach this subject, I need first to approach a much more delicate subject. That of individual self-awareness.
Why individual self-awareness? Well, culture of all kinds has arisen due to the conscious meaning we have applied to certain stimuli over the ages. Biologically speaking, there is plenty of proof to render us as only flesh creatures with carnal desires only. There however is the rub. We don�t have just carnal desires, and we certainly don�t limit our cares to just that of the here and now. There is a unique level of awareness and self-consciousness beyond that of a mere thinking-feeling machine. A level of mindfulness which can be used to great extents in isolating oneself from experience, examining that experience, developing a meaning for that experience, expressing that meaning, and hundreds of years with thousands and millions of people doing this and combining those end results, you will have a culture. Here are my postulates for the theory: (S=self, P=postulate)
S1: This is the proposed and personally experienced self-awareness.
S2: This is the sum of all stimuli, the ego or expressed self.
S3: This is the end resultant �folk consciousness� or �folk-soul�.
P1: S1 and S2 make a whole being constantly feeding off of each other(consider the image of the Jera rune).
P2: S1 has an expression in our ability to quiet our minds and detach ourselves from experience.
P3: S2 has an expression in the combined and interrelated subjects of physical appearance, ancestry, natural environment, culture, relationships, religion, etc.
P4: The interrelations is as follows: ancestry and natural environment create an attitude towards the body and the body itself, ancestry, natural environment, and relationships create the culture through the development of meaning towards stimuli. All facets working together with unexplained phenomenon and the focused apprehension of S1 creates a theology/religion.
P5: Therefore, either S1 solely creates S2 through establishment of isolated meaning.
P6: Or, the combined properties of S2 create S1, or a delusion of its existence.
P7: Or, S1 and S2 work holistically to provide personal individuality, inner-meanings, and the larger issue of culture and religion that further feeds S2�s ever changing individuality.
P8: Due to the unexplainable nature of perceived self-awareness, the absence of S1 cannot fully explain the meanings applied to the experience of S2 due to the inherently simplistic nature of carnal experience.
P9: Also, the absence of S2, leaves no meaning for the existence of S1 or a medium for such a faculty to express itself with.
P10: Therefore, a high level of conscious self-awareness is paramount to providing a deeper meaning of experience and life in order for such human constructs as culture and religion to even exist.
P11: Then by necessity, P5, the first part of P6, and P7 work in flux to provide a logically sound explanation of deep experience given the reality of a self-awareness. Neither postulate is wholly true, and must work in tandem and can only be proven more right or wrong based on specific occurrences.
P12: This however still may not successfully explain the nature of common end results and of shared culture and values.
P13: Therefore, in order for such entities and expressions to exist, there must be a common experience of being and becoming. Furthermore, there needs to be a reason for such commonalities.
P14: Individual humans, not being too drastically different by nature, will be attracted to similar folks, and thus their resultant entities.
P15: In the process of this co-creation, a �folk-consciousness�(S3), or deeply ingrained shared experience is created on several levels. To further expound on this idea, one might wish to look into Hegel�s philosophical premise of the �geist�.
P16: Therefore; S1 conceives of S2, S1 and S2 work in tandem to co-create an ever-changing entity(the individual), several ever-changing entities work in tandem based on shared experiences to co-create culture and philosophy, over the course of their shared history S3 is created as a �volkgeist� which ultimately proves the basis for needing a lifestyle based on a holistic co-creation which denies neither the individual or the folk.
Before the coming of monotheism, and materialism, life was more holistic, albeit a bit more hostile given the then current circumstances. When the church was established, the first thing they attacked was the deep meaning applied to ancestry and shared cultural experience. With that gone, the meaning applied to the environment also failed, and alongside that, was birthed the perception of our bodies as evil(as in we are all sinful dirty creatures). After which, relationships, of which most were built from kin-ties and kith-ties also failed(because of a lack of positive shared experience) leading to a change in the meaning of said relationships.
All of this deeply affected the cultures and religious expression of my Heathen ancestors, and change came drastically. The only thing left to consciously cling to was the isolated self-awareness. With nothing holistically nourishing their expression of meaning, I am certain the following beliefs of �soul� being wholly good and the flesh being tainted and evil was quite easy to swallow.
Years pass, and the dualistic philosophies of soul and body have led to extremes like religious fundamentalism, materialistic atheism, and the problems that lie therein. Broken families, forgotten traditions, drug addictions, consumer globalism, etc., have come to pass from such a radical change in the weltanschaung of my people. I read, see on the news, and notice in conversation the stirring of people�s desires for a new holism. I hear constantly of sadness over estrangement from family, or over the lack of meaning for life in today�s world. In my meditations on this, the solution I believe which would be of benefit is what is currently being attempted at within the halls of Asatru. A return to what was supposed to have been before the invasion of religious intolerance and spiritual warfare.
I see hope in my theories. This hope is brought about, ironically enough, because of the dire straights of society. In order for all of humanity�s most ancient ancestors to have split off and individualize their own weltanschaungs, they had to start off with the basics of which we have right now. A sense of isolated awarness, primary physical needs, and a suitable environment in which to live in. All of which are nearly the only things people will seek to feed now-a-days.
Through the efforts of Christian conversion, and later secularism, they have in effect, signed their own demise by leaving us, with what is needed to start over again. If I am correct in this hypothesis, the longings of the past and holistic living will resurface at large and not just in small pockets of free-thinkers. The interrelationships of postulate # 4 will bring about the dawning of a new era. A reclamation of, and a re-joining with, what all of our ancestors held dear and what I propose to be the most healthy and correct manner of living and experience for humankind.
Some, might not understand the need for holism, that the individual self is all there is and all there needs to be. I will not argue against the meaning of such a statement, for I myself do place the importance of the Self, or psyche for the materialists, as primary, just not as the be all/end all of existence. To that statement I would also ask, how much of you is dependant of the isolated self, and how much on the experiences around you? How much is from the deeper consciousness, and how much from dialogues, cultural inundation, or symbolic language? Even when Self(S1) is distinguished from self(S2), is either of them really worth ignoring? Is your folk-soul(S3) deserving of the lack of nutrition it has been receiving these last thousand years?
For those who are able to really distinguish �Self� from �self�, and observe from within, you just might find that what you think of as �you�, are just expressions of the ego-self which have their true origin in the �Self�. For without the Self to witness, the experience gains no meaning, and without the self to express that meaning, the Self gets no nourishment for further experience and expression and the larger folk-consciousness suffers. This we have seen in the modern dualistic and monistic world-views. The dark ages which followed Europe�s conversion are the best evidence one can provide. After all the holiness to experience was gone, the beauty of poetic and artistic expression which was inherent in the Celtic and Germanic peoples, died out and horribly suffered under pitiful attempts at copying the style of culture from classical Greece and Rome.
These are my statements though, and this is my challenge. To prove or disprove this theory, lies in the future, and possibly long after I am dead and gone for such things do take time. It is a simply theory though. Ultimately I am saying that humanity desires and needs to reconnect with their inner faculty of creating deep meanings, with indulging in their ever-in flux ego-self, and with the entity that we feed and that feeds us, the folk-soul, in order to even begin living a balanced and truly fulfilling life. I can only hope that dear Carl Jung was right, that the collective unconscious will awaken the Wotan from within, and Europe and those of Euro-descent, will reclaim a new and more enlightened holistic life full of meaning, and culture, and brilliant expressions. If not, may we all be blessed with what meaning and deeper expression does arise in the times of the future. Heill Wotan!