I've
been working on a concept recently which, for lack of a more reader-friendly
term, Ive labeled "the extrasomatory extensions of self."
The basic idea runs something like this. When we get wonked, bonked,
roiled, and boiled by powerful feelings--whether they are delightful
or nightmarish--a strange thing happens. We often don't know what to
make of them. Our logical mind has a hard time seeing into the swirl
of our visceral passions and making sense of them. When we probe the
whirl within us we can posit numerous possibilities. But this guessing
is often the best that we can do. What's more, our internal monsoons
often pelt us with unbearable gales of emotionality. So how do we solve
our confusion? We look for someone to talk to. We babble out our situation
to a friend, a relative, a mentor, a bartender, or a shrink and beg
him or her to tell us what s/he makes of it. Then, through the words
of someone outside our self, what's going on inside of us gains a little
clarity.
Now this is very peculiar. Very peculiar indeed. The talking self in
the left cerebral cortex may be mere inches from the "seat of feeling"--the
limbic system--the place (or upper traces of a far-flung hurricane)
where the basic emotions are doing their thing. Why can't our thinking
self see what's happening right under its nose--or mere millimeters
from its dendritic threads?
The answer may lie in the evolution of emotion and the self--or so the
theory of the extrasomatory extensions of the self says. We evolved
not just as individuals, but as members of groups whose competition
was often a matter of life and death. Those of us who acted as productive
plug-ins to a group's machinery were likely to survive--and to produce
lots of offspring. Rugged individualists who refused to become components
in a group's IQ would have had it rough when pitted against a horde
of the well-organized. Some of them would have literally been eaten
(given the recent evidence on early hominid cannibalism). At the very
least, they would have lost their wives. No mating, no procreating.
So the line of loners would have soon ceased to be.
In ants, a worker's nervous system is wired as a strand in a hive-wide
circuitry. The need to connect shows up in the worker's equivalents
of gregariousness and uncertainty. She wanders a small distance from
the pack, then grows uneasy and feels the need to hurry back. Once she's
gotten reassurance from her "friends" she wanders off and
explores a bit of far-flung territory again. Each time she does a bit
of sightseeing she spreads the group's search webthe net of eyes
and antennae the hive sends out to hunt for food. Each time the wandering
worker returns for the hymenopteran equivalent of tea and sympathy she
inadvertently brings back a report on a bit of previously uncharted
territory.
We humans seem to be rigged in similar waysour psyche drives us
to be neurons of a collective brain. To the group it's often less important
that we understand our innards than that our innards drive us to synapse
with others, and to make our contribution to the data pool of society.
So when we encounter something that troubles or uplifts us, we are driven
both to introspection and to the comfort we can find in sharing our
fears, our furies, and our joys with the company of friends. To them
we give reports on the strange territories we've explored--realms that
range from romance to finance, from madness to meaning, from pathos
to punch lines, and a good deal in between. In return our friends give
us the words and concepts with which to interpret our moods.
Every time we're driven back to others for a "reality check,"
we're tuned to interpret our experience using the acceptable forms of
expression of the moment. We're plugged into our group's zeitgeist.
And every time we return to babble our half-digested angsts or triumphs,
we expand, even if by only the slightest bit, the ambit of the group's
understanding of its circumstance--its view of its internal and external
realities.
Self didn't, in all probability evolve as just a way of navigating the
private paths of solitary life. It seems to be a social billboard and
a social interface. E.E. Coons, the discoverer of the role of the hypothalamus,
pictures self as a model human inside of us standing in an arena where
his or her every actions are observed by an audience of significant
others, the inner representations of our friends and family. The self
is also judged by an observer of even greater importance, ourselves,
our basic "me." With this model human, this puppet "us"
homunculus, we try out the various ways in which we should dress in
the morning, or the speeches we should use to present an idea, a feeling,
a demand, or a request. We see how the model audience would react to
each form of presentation, and most of all how we'd respond to it. If
it seems witty, delicious, or appropriate to circumstance it's sent
out for implementation by the body and the tongue. If it seems obnoxious
it simply disappears back into the oblivion from which its come.
Which means the self may not have evolved as a bridge to our interior.
It probably evolved as a causeway to the folks with whom we live. A
pathway which connects us even to those with whom we interact but whom
we'll never see--the bosses far above our head, the farmers who produce
our food, the construction crews who built our home and the carpenters
who built our bed.
These ruminations spring from a bit of reading in George Stephanopoulos'
All Too Human: A Political Education. I've reached that part of the
book in which Stephanopoulos gets the job of key political adviser to
Bill Clinton. Clinton, at this point, is governor of Arkansas and one
of many candidates about to run the gauntlet of the primary elections
for president. Bill walks through his bedroom and his hallways, taking
off his pants, changing into others, picking up papers from his night
table, constantly spurting ideas, and looking insistently for new solutions
and for new ways to bathe in the feedback of those around him. Stephanopoulos
follows him through his soliloquies in mid-pants-change and the moment
a bit later when Hilary enters the room and both Bill and Hil are dialoging
at full speed, bouncing Bills concepts and Hilary's analyses off
of Stephanopoulos, looking for his feedback. But Stephanopoulos is not
Bill and Hilary's only extracranial extension of self. Bill frequently
asks, "What ideas do our friends in New York have on this? Are
there any new ways of handling this coming in from that group in California
we've been talking to? What do the polls say the public mood thinks
about this issue right now?"
From the mix of incoming signals, Bill Clinton arrives at a conclusion
which he can say with full conviction is his. In fact, his self-confidence
and the passion with which he conveys his beliefs, says Stephanopoulos,
puts him head and shoulders above any other candidates whom this well-placed
political operative has ever met. Equally important, Clinton absorbs
each audience to which he speaks and adjusts the way he puts things
to make his stump speech intimately personal. He is compelling because
he believes in what he says but says it in a way that shows how quickly
he's plugged into his listeners.
So the number of contributors to Clinton's "self" is immense.
Stephanopoulos is just one of many advisors. He and those like him are
considered staff--and that staff is large. Then there are the old and
trusted friends, the ones with whom the bonds go back in time. These
are the FOB, the Friends of Bill. Clinton grills these people constantly,
not only for their opinions, but for input they've gleaned from sources
spread in nearly every state. If a key FOB like Webster Hubble nixes
an idea, then it's understood the idea is kaput.
This form of reliance on others is occasionally derided as an overdependence
on polls. And it can clearly get that way when the candidate is a pale
puppet who parrots the popular thoughts of the day. But in a representative
government, the self of a candidate is SUPPOSED to represent that of
the populace he is elected to serve. In that sense, there is a justification
to Louis XIV's pronouncement that "Létat c'est moi."
"The state is me." Or, to put it in democratic terms, "I,
the candidate, am my constituency."
Who in this case, is an extrasomatory extension of whom? Bill Clinton
is a walking summation of those around him--much more so than the average
man in the street who doesn't have the team of social input purveyors
available to a politician. He is an extrasomatory extension of the public
personality. Those from whom he sucks opinions are, in turn, extrasomatory
extensions of him--vital feelers feeding his identity. What, under these
circumstances, gives a public figure the appearance of having a strong
sense of self--the kind of thing John McCain had in spades? Is it sheer
self-confidence, despite the contributions from others of which the
self is made? Is charisma a matter of postural and facial cues--those
of an alpha leader, of a silverbackthe cues of an upright walk
and a masterful talk? Is a sense of self the flimsiest of masks, but
one of great persuasive strength?
Where do others stop and we begin? Why is the self so calmed by others
and so often jolted by incoherent feelings from within?
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