It's hard to take a step back from your own thoughts and trifles in a social setting and just observe. (A prescription: TRY IT!) When I accomplish this, I get this weird vibe that everyone is just acting. Acting for themselves? Acting in accordance with what they deem themselves to be, i.e. their identity? Probably. But, as the observer, it comes out weird and twisted, like they're all acting for me.
For instance, when I'm in the library, working on a paper or just passing time on the internet, I drift from the task at hand and catch myself observing how everyone is like a little busy ant doing their own thing. But if you watch them, and I don't mean with a creepy, sketch-ball-kind-of-stare, (although that's fun, too) but watch them from a standpoint of humble curiosity, (like the standpoint that Jane Goodall's observations of chimpanzees must have come from,) there comes a point to where they know someone is watching and their eyes meet yours for the shortest moment.
This moment of meeting and fleeting eyes is almost of a transcendent quality. If the stare holds, it is of a transcendent quality. Nearly every time I experience it I feel as though I am akin to Jim Carrey's character in The Truman Show. This retrospective analysis of my experience of meeting and fleeting eyes seems somewhat of a jump from what is merely being observed, but I can't help but have this schizophrenic-like paranoia that everyone and everything around me is fake and not real.
This is a different kind of take on external world skepticism, and it's very similar to being just plain old crazy. But the truth is, the nature of the skeptical doubts that turn the wheels of any skepticism are the same kind of skeptical doubts that would promote this narcissistic skepticism that I am describing. For instance, if to have knowledge of the external world requires me to prove that I, in fact, am not dreaming, then I really can't have knowledge of the external world, if knowledge is to be understood as that which is indubitable. For if I cannot prove that I am not dreaming, then all that I am experiencing could be a dream. Any test that I conjure could itself be a part of this dream. (Ahh, this skepticism is dense and smells like burnt hair.) That is the Dream Argument originally proposed by Descartes.
Now, I am going to propose another version of this skepticism, which claims that I cannot prove whether or not this social construct, along with all of you mofos out there, is a sham, a fake, an act....
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
-Shakespeare
Now, what I am invoking this quote to emphasize is probably not what Shakespeare had in mind when writing it. (But, maybe it is what he had in mind.) That is besides the point.
The point is that I cannot prove whether or not the world is just a stage. Everyone could be really good actors, and my life could be an experiment, and I have no way of proving otherwise. If B.F. Skinner were God, then narcissistic skepticism would not be too farfetched of an idea.
It's like I'm waiting for Morpheus to present me with the choice of a red or blue pill.
Red pill: you keep living your life as you know it; A mundane, fake existence. (Well, really, what is a real existence? I don't think there is a definition.)
Blue pill: prepare to watch your reality get torn to shreds, wherein a new reality will replace it. Ideally, the new reality will be one that you construct, so you don't have to keep taking these blue pills.
Eh, I don't like taking pills anyway.
In the end, I think this narcissistic skepticism is kind of fun. If the world is a stage, a stage for acting, a stage that has been set up, then use it to its fullest capacity. The self-awareness that is evoked from this view of the world is of the upmost existential kind. It reminds me that I create the way in which I see the world.
People-watching is a fantastic pastime.
ResponderEliminarTo address your first two questions: people are most certainly acting for themselves and, as you put it, “in accordance with what they deem themselves to be.” This might be what is called self-referential encoding in psychology. What I wonder is does it ever stop being acting? Do the traits we encode ourselves with ever shift from being dynamic to static? This “acting” might be pejoratively denoted, but I think that it is just what it means to be human—to adopt what we perceive as desirable traits and employ them until they become part of our nature.
I find the “transcendental eye contact” you mentioned interesting because while people are normally acting for themselves and, generally, for everyone around them—when they are not completely distracted from their social situation—, once you make eye contact with them they begin acting solely for you. You are the salient observer to them, and once you’ve shown them that you are observing them, their behavior reflects consciousness of this factor. I find that how they behave once a specific person has become the “salient observer” indicates a lot about them, what they think about their observer, and their perceived relationship with the observer. Take a man who gets “caught” looking at a woman. Whether or not she is flattered by his attraction—supposing that is what is going on—determines how she behaves while he has the opportunity to observe her. The dynamics of this common example apply to any instance.
Your idea of the world being a stage as part of an experiment has occurred to me as well. More recently, a particularly solipsistic skepticism that occurs to me is that my mind is “generating” the events around me. Strange coincidences, predictions, and the like occur often, and the more tired I am the more the coincidences seem to happen to me, as if the seeding function of my “world-generator” was tired as well, and becoming less functional at making the world appear sufficiently random. Crazy? Yeah. It’s probably a case of apophenia, but I like to think I’m just becoming smarter, more observant, and thus make more connections =) Sorry for the lengthy comment.
If I told you how many of these thoughts and experiences I share with you, you'd think I am lying. So, I'm not gonna say anything.
ResponderEliminarI should have added: ... or you'd think I'm subconsciously deceiving myself :-).
ResponderEliminar