I have been reflecting on diane's actor/'reality comments.
It feels to me that the question at the core of all this concerns
motivation. Is it not in the nature of man as a social being to want to
belong, and therefore to figure out which parts of 'my own self' I am
prepared to make subservient to my need to belong? And then, as I move
between contexts the answer to that question alters. Do I thereby become an
'actor' in the true metaphorical sense of the theatre? Or is this just the
human (social) condition? It seems to me that diane's point is merely one
way of thinking about the nature of multivoicedness in AS's, and also a way
of understanding the nature of contradictions. surely whenever I go into any
social setting anywhere I take the time:
"To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet."
I am not at all convinced that this means that I am not being to my own self
true. I am making a valuation of what my own interest is. To be sure, I have
to confront the implications of my choices because, to return to Eliot:
"There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. "
As for social change - could we not understand social change as occurring
when the big contradictions in a system create such discomfort in the
members of the system with the majkss they are wearing that they come to
surface their 'real' inner selves and collectively develop a motive to
pursue greater congruity between their inner selves and their social selves?
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
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