Layers of Self-Consciousness, Irony and Unwitting Projection in Post-Modern Linguistic Consciousness and Identity

How do you like that long serious-sounding subtitle? I thought it was pretty neat. Speaking of you and I, who are we? I’ve been thinking about this a lot and wanted to offer a kind of language game (a la RD Laing) to explore who we really are or who we might be.

Most of the time, when we use the words “you” and “I” we have only a general non-technical sense of what we are referring to. We think of “you” as being out-there and we think of “I” as being somehow in-here. But is it really so simple as that? I don’t think so. I think that there are actually three (at least) different ways we use these words. And if we understood them more clearly in our lives, we might be more clear with ourselves and one another what we are actually saying and why.

Note: I have broken these out into three types of usages, strictly for the sake of starting conversation and getting people thinking, not because I think these are hard and fast rules. They are organized according to what I think is most common usage first.

I¹ & You¹

Most of the time when we say “you” what we really mean is “I.” Because what we are really interacting with is not actually the other person, but the other person as sort of a movie screen upon which we unconsciously project our personal psychic melodramas onto. Many of the problems we have with other people in our lives stem from that actual person’s (see You³) not living up to or accurately matching out projected image of ourselves onto them.

But it cuts both ways, I think. Because most of the time when we say “I,” what I think we really mean is: the me I imagine that you’re projecting onto me because of your own tendencies of projection (ie, You¹), and your inability to drop them and see me as who I really am. Hence, another big area of frustration in our lives comes from our having to try and live up to someone else’s image of us, which we know isn’t actually really us.

I² & You²

The second manner in which we use these words has to do with a slightly more conscious level of projection. We could call it wish-fulfillment, maybe.

In it, when we use the word “I”, we don’t mean the image that other people have of us (I¹), which we feel compelled to support. Instead, we mean the image we have of ourselves: that is the me I want to believe myself to be.

Likewise, when we use the word “you” in this sense, what we really mean is: the you that I need you to be in order to support my fantasy of who I am.

I³ & You³

And the third level, then, has to deal with removing projections altogether - or at least as much as possible.

“I” in the third sense would mean: the me I am in secret when I know noone is watching or could ever find out (very different from I¹ or I², no?).

“You” in the third sense would mean: the you I can sense you really are when I am able to cut through the layers of both my own bullshit and the image of yourself which you foist onto the world.

Admittedly, you³ is always a bit of a gamble, because it relies on intuitive understanding of others, a wisdom of the heart, if you will. And with such a thing, there’s no good way to make a technical definition that will really stick. Which is why I³ is so important of a place to be able to speak from: when you can speak from the true source of yourself, then you can begin to recognize in other people when they are doing the same thing as well, because the characteristics of communication tend to be rather different.

Huh?

What “I” mean by any of this is anybody’s guess. I thought of this very very late at night last weekend. If I had to analyze myself and this communication from this rather obscure perspective, then I would guess that it has to do with my I¹ and I² trying to communicate with your own personal I³ (that is, my best guess at what I perceive as your you³ - god this gets confusing!), so that you can begin to recognize your own I¹ and I² as well as your you¹ and you².

Does that make sense? Probably not, I reckon. I agree that this is a rather convoluted way of talking about who you and I are (and hence the long academic-sounding subtitle). But from my personal experience testing this model out, it becomes a very interesting way to deconstruct what it is that’s actually being said in a conversation - especially when I myself am the speaker. At any given moment, which I am I referring to? Which you am I talking to? You might find it useful (or then again maybe not) to sit down and mark up something you’ve written recently - maybe a blog post or email - and make notations about what you *really* meant when you used these pronouns. It takes a high degree of honesty to do though, and it may begin to reveal to you the ways in which you obscure and protect the you you are in secret (you³)…