Melanyouth, in reference to the self-exploratory work of Anselm Kiefer, asks if I am interested in “discussing the mechanism by which one searches one’s soul for the truth of his person(ality).” I appreciate the request, so here is my overlong response:
The mechanism of introspection is an imperfect one. Perhaps due to nature of emergence, it seems almost to be a property of our universe that upon close enough examination all phenomena break down, degenerate into clouds of probability and vanishing particulate elements, neurotic tics and untraceable quarks. We cannot know that which we look at too closely, and we are closer to nothing than to ourselves.
Varus, 1976.
There are further problems of reflexivity, expressed variously. The semiotician says that triadic language cannot triangulate meaning when the symbol is the seeing self. The mystic asks if the eye can see itself, if the knife can cut itself. The analyst notes that reflection tends to produce less insight than projection. We construct our rationalizations, and that often we don’t reflect on who we are but on incidents from our lives or things we want, both of which are immaterial.
Margarethe, 1981.
That we search ourselves poorly and reach prideful, self-justifying conclusions, however, is merely something to note, not an excuse to live automatically. The impetus for self-examination is simple: unhappiness exists solely within the self, not in the world, and as we can attempt to control the self through awareness of its dynamics we have the capacity to try and be happy and good. You cannot control the world, but you can observe and corral the self.
Alaric’s Tomb, 1975.
The “truth of one’s soul” or self is precisely what one wishes never to learn, of course. Earnest Becker made the claim that one’s personality is indeed an entire mechanism which exists purely to mask and deny what one truly is. Kiefer’s pondered whether he was a fascist:
[He] explained that the photographs were a way of asking himself the question ‘Am I a Fascist?’ Anyone, he argued, might recognise themselves as authoritarian, competitive, with a sense of superiority – including himself.
Whatever Kiefer’s conclusions, mine are unavoidable: we are all fascists; we could all watch our neighbors lined up and executed, were the right parts of our minds tapped by circumstance and manipulation. Those of us most certain of our goodness are the ones easiest to enlist: we are the one’s who know about the world and know what is right and wrong and are given to think oppositionally. The anger I see in writing about politics always amazes me for this reason: the intoxication of moral certainty, the euphoria of indignation, the bliss of describing how evil others are!
Parsifal I, II and III, 1973
Still: the real self remains a mystery. I am twenty-eight years old and have no real sense of who I am. I wonder what pitiful emotional narratives I enact with the innocent people in my life; I search for which of my feelings are genuine and which reflect fears and insecurities -not even sure that such a division can be made. Am I manipulated or manipulating? Ruthless or compassionate? It is hard to know.
But this is the task of life: to try and clear the self-pitying, self-aggrandizing overgrowth of the rampant mind and honestly observe who one is, how one has falsified one’s identity with tastes and habits and causes, what relation exists between one’s actions and one’s fears, and to the best of one’s ability to liberate oneself from one’s self. However inadequate language is to describe it, I think we all know how it feels: it feels like growing up.
