"First Person Plura"/ “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self”

I imagine Alice Walker and Paul Bloom, if they were to sit down and have dinner with one another, would find something to share in common in regards to one's Self. Paul Bloom acknowledges the existence of a multitude of personalities within each person. While Alice Walker in her essay highlights the fragility of our temperament. Alice remembers vividly being the confident, dauntless child she was. She flourished in social situations, giving formal speeches without hesitation and promptly declaring herself "the prettiest" to her father in an assertion that was reason enough to choose her over her siblings (and he did). Then preceding retelling of an accident that left her eye blinded and visibly scarred she points out the twist of fate abruptly stating, "It was great fun being cute. But then, one day, it ended." This is followed by a dramatic withdraw socially and academically for her. She recollects this time negatively. At age 14 she has the mass left in her eye removed and minimizes the appearance of the damage. Although, as drastically as her personality seemed to 180 at the occurrence of the injury, she claims that, "Almost immediately I become a different person from the girl who does not raise her head." Paul Bloom would consider this an illustration of his point, "The idea is that instead, within each brain, different selves are continually popping in and out of existence." Paul Bloom believes our personalities can be conditional and dominate depending on circumstance. Alice Walker’s essay gives a seamless account of how delicate our dispositions may be and how rapidly they can polarize.

First Personal Plural

If I had the opportunity to have dinner with the four authors, I would definitely be on Paul Blooms side. I really liked his article and I agree with most of his ideas about the self-sense.  After reading “First Person Plural”, I realize that I found the answer to the pursuit of happiness. I believe, like the author said, that each of us has multiple selves, with different desires, and they are constantly fighting for control. One self is competing with the other, making ones happiness the misery of the other. The way we make decisions depends on which of the selves “win”.  In the article it is stated that one self doesn’t have access to the other selves.  But I believe they do, and that is how we can make the decision we think it is the best considering all the self-senses memories. The idea of having a short-term self and a long-term self helps explain why sometimes we decide one thing over the other. The long-term self tends to be more cautious and more experienced than the short-term self.  Although the long-term self is not always right, it tends to be.  Having multiple selves doesn’t mean you have multiple-personality disorder. It just means that there are different “you’s” trying to decide what is best for you in that very same moment.  Which of the selves wins depends on the time, moment, place and state of mind we are in at that very specific occasion. On the other hand, as the philosopher Jerry Fodor said, “If, in short, there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me”. This means to me that even though there are several selves, I am in charge of each one them and I decide which one I listen to and which one I don’t. My favorite part of the article was when Paul Bloom wrote, “The community of selves shouldn’t be a democracy, but it shouldn’t be a dictatorship, either”.  Listen to all your selves, because in the end, they all are part of you, but don’t forget you decide which one to listen to. In the same context, Alice Walker explained on her essay, “Beauty: When the other Dancer is the self”, how she became aware of her self sense when her daughter asked her where she got that world in her eye.  All her world was in her eye, and she loved it. After all that time, she finally could be happy with herself and faced the old self. This is explained when she said, “We dance and kiss each other and hold each other through the night. The other dancer has obviously come through all right, as I have done. She is beautiful, whole and free. And she is also me”.

Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self

I feel as though all the authors from our short readings would agree on the fact that we have multiple inner beings of ourselves. With each story we were able to identify the changes of the author throughout the story. When I listened to Jill Bolte Taylor, she portrays a sense of nirvana and reaching a peaceful state internally. Here we are able to see the right side and left side brain of Jill Bolte Taylor. With the short story, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”, we are able to see the quick change in self-confidence the author has. Alice Walker, starts out as a confident beautiful girl until her accident, she then becomes increasingly aware that she no longer lifts her head or feels herself anymore. While growing up she is made fun of and her self-esteem lowers throughout the year. She begins to question her self-image and how people see her, she frequently asks her family if they think she has changed to. Her family sees her no different though, but her view of herself is no longer then beautiful girl she once felt. When the author questions her changing self it tied in with the reading “First Person Plural”, the author, Paul Bloom, says that “many researchers now believe, to varying degrees, that each of us is a community of competing selves with the happiness of one often causing the misery of another”. The way I perceived this, was that sometimes the misery we have in our lives are usually caused by our inner being thoughts we create for ourselves. It shows how the way we see ourselves can be much different from the way others around us may see us. At the end of the story “Beauty: When the Other Dance Is the Self”, Alice Walker, has a daughter and her view of herself quickly begins to change again. She worries that her daughter will look at her and question what is wrong with her eye. This continually pops into the authors mind until one day while she is standing over her baby’s crib her daughter looks up and says, “Mommy, there’s a world in your eye”, hearing those words gives the author a sense of comfort. She is relieved that her eye is seen as beauty to her child, when she saw her eye as a worthless part of her. Her perception on herself begins to change once again.

 

Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self 

Samantha Wiktor Team Sphinx

I found this story extremely frustrating.  I think it was hard for me to read this tale and picture the way Alice saw herself after the “accident.”  She says she doesn’t raise her head for six years and will no longer stare at anyone.  I don’t see how someone could waste six plus years of their life feeling sorry for themselves.  yes, it was an accident.  It did not happen on purpose.  Why would you feel sorry for yourself, when you have the choice to live.  At least she still had one good, perfectly healthy eye to use.  She could never see herself in the same way she did before the accident.  She was no longer pretty or worthy.  She had lost all self confidence as a result of one incident.  Then, at the end of the story she undergoes a procedure to remove the scar tissue in her eye.  Then and only then is she finally happy and living life to the fullest again.  Once the scar is taken away, then she has her dream boyfriend and becomes valedictorian, is the most popular student, and “queen.”  Why did she allow herself to be held back so much?  It seemed as if the moral of her personal story was that she was not good enough or deserving of any of the wonderful things life has to offer until she had her scar taken away.  And what kind of way is that to live?  We can be “beautiful, whole, and free..” even with something we see as a blemish.  Not everything has to be perfect in order to enjoy our life.

FIRST PERSON PLURAL-TEAM UNICORN/BRANDY

Honestly if the four authors from this unit were to get together it would be a very interesting conversation. Jill Bolte Taylor is very focused on the differences in mannerism when it comes to technicalities of our brains, while Joan Didion is a person who just lives life to her own understanding. I believe that each would agree that the idea of ourselves stems from those inner thoughts and conversations. There is no ‘singular self’ but a melting pot of our own experience that creates who we are and our different personalities. These are what able us to know ourselves and who we truly are as individuals. In ‘First Person Plural’ Paul Bloom says, “They have different desires, and they fight for control—bargaining with, deceiving, and plotting against one another.” I agree with what he is saying but at the same time I disagree, because for the most part each part of ourselves is working in sync with the other, essentially balancing themselves out. Alice Walker on the other hand is someone I can relate to more, she changed as time progressed and came to realize her different sides. She had an injury to her eye at a very young age and that totally changed her perception of herself. Though she seemed different on the inside, throughout the story she would say how everyone told her that “You did not change.” When she got her eye corrected it was like something clicked inside of her and, “Almost immediately I become a different person from the girl who does not raise her head.” That is when I understood why everyone felt the way they did about her and I can relate on that level. I used to look completely different when I was younger and I feel like I am trapped within myself just trying to be released. So, I supposed I would lean more towards the ideas that Paul Bloom and Alice Walker were portraying in their stories, stories that were relatable to my own ideas of self.

School allegedly tried to ban students from speaking Spanish

HEMPSTEAD, Texas —

A Texas middle school has found itself in the middle of a heated controversy over student rights, educational practices and multiculturalism.

According to KHOU-TV, the principal at Hempstead Middle School is on paid administrative leave after trying to ban students from speaking Spanish in class.

Students say on Nov. 12 Principal Amy Lacey announced over the school intercom that students could no longer speak the language in the school's classrooms.


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Stroke of Insight-On Keeping a Notebook by Gaby O'Connor-Team Pegasus

“Jill Bolte Taylors Stroke of Insight” , “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion

I believe that the internal sense of self comes from different places depending the person and time. Each person has his or her own, very personal sense of self and it may change as time passes by.  It changes as we grow up.  It comes partly from how we were raised and partly from the people around us growing up.  It continually changes with life experience.  Probably at some point in our lives we might feel that we are a completely different person than we were when kids for example.  We realize that the person we were somewhere in the past is completely different from the person we are at the moment.  That is why in the beginning of the reading “On Keeping a Notebook” she tries to remember why she wrote all those notes in the past. She ask herself  “Why did I write it down?” , “What was it I wanted to remember?”,  “How much of it actually happened?”.   Something that seemed very important at the time doesn’t make sense anymore. I believe this happens because we are completely tied to the moment and the world around us.  That is why Didion repeats several times “That’s how I felt it”. That is how she felt in the moment. That is how she perceived her reality.  It was her reality, nobody else could possibly understand what her thoughts were, not even herself several years after that.  I believe that if we really want to understand our sense of self from the past, we should write complete thoughts using a diary, instead of only notes.

Jill Taylor’s self of sense is entirely biological and possibly a matter of choice. According to her, we have two opposing senses of self in the left and right hemispheres of our brains and in a healthy person they become one by communicating with each other. She describes the right hemisphere as having a sense of self tied to our relationship with the world around us and always in the present moment. Whereas, the left hemisphere is described as completely independent from the world around us and always thinking about the past and the future, but never the present.  In contrast to the language Didion uses about the past and present with regards to her sense of self, Taylor never once mentions her childhood or family members as contributing to her identity. Instead, as one might expect from a neuroanatomist, she only talks about our sense of self as a product of our biology.  I like the way she describes the consciousness of the right hemisphere as being the perfect moment.  How the right hemisphere forms all this pictures to create a whole. Meanwhile the left hemisphere takes all these pictures and organizes the details of each of our thoughts.  I agree with her opinion that we will live in a happier world if we were more conscious of our right brain.

Jill Bolte Taylor,  My Stroke of Insight

I think, after watching this recollection Taylor has of her stroke I can safely say the answer to the question, "are there multiple versions of us at various times and places," is yes, there are.  Taylor describes in immaculate detail the morning of her stroke.  The pain she felt in her head, seeing herself in a completely different way, almost as if she was looking down on herself from above.  She talked about no longer being able to distinguish her arm and how it blended in with everything around her.  She said, "I was an infant in a woman's body."  
How amazing it would be to have such an out of body experience such as this one.  To lose even the most basic information and still be able to step beyond it and realize how incredible it is.  
To answer the question, an example that comes to mind is when Taylor talks about each hemisphere of the brain and the specific function of each.  She says "Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment."  This is the part of the brain we use to understand, appreciate, and enjoy where we are right now.  We aren't thinking about the past or the future, just being where we are.  The left hemisphere takes the past and the future and dissects the details of details of events that have occurred or will occur.  When you are at a party with friends, you generally won't sit in a corner and mull over every single thing that happened that day; you'll want to be up and enjoying where you are and who you're with.  That is one version of you.  After the party, you go home.  Things are much calmer and the scene isn't so intoxicating.  Here is another you.  The reflective side of your brain has been switched on and you begin to relive the events of the day.  You appreciate the little things that made you smile.  Yes, there are multiple versions of ourselves but ultimately, as Taylor says "Right here, right now, we are brothers and sisters on this planes, here to make the world a better place."    

Internal state of mind "hippie thoughts"

The way we portray ourselves to the world is all controlled by our beings. We have modified the way we talk, the way we act, even the way we dress. Jill Bolte Taylor said, “ we have the power to choose moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world” We have full control, but our world has modified us, but in for some instances, a positive way. We all have a tendency to have multiple versions of ourselves. Although we are not changing as a person or in our personality, we still alter the way we talk. For example, I have realized that with certain people like, my bosses, I will speak in a more proper way. My personality has not changed, but it is out of politeness to speak to authority in a respectful manner. Also, with friends, most people tend to have a more laid back personality. I have realized many times that I do feel like I have multiple personalities because of all the different types of people I have talked to. With some people, there are sometimes certain things that you have to alter when you are speaking to them. It is just a sense of comfort for myself.

                         I do think that our internal state of mind changes as we get older, our thoughts are completely different from the way we use to think, when we were just toddlers. There’s scientific facts about how the mind of a child compared to an adolescent or adult is like two minds from a completely different planet. Children don’t perceive things the way we do. Their logic is not correct and they are very unaware of the theory of mind. Children don’t know that not everyone is thinking the same thing as they are, and they can’t perceive things from another person’s point of view. As we get older we do learn these things and are able to have a more complex state of mind. I don’t know where our internal state of mind came from, and I don’t think anyone really knows. We were born with it and are not able to understand the feeling of not having one, so there’s no exact reason to why we have one, but I do think our internal state of mind allows us to have our own full personality. I am the only person in this entire world who knows me better than anyone. Our mind allows us to have our own thoughts and worries, which can give one a sense of individuality and it’s a more private relationship that I cherish. If I were to not have my own internal mind and have none of my own thoughts, there would never be a sense of yourself and aloneness.

                                As Joan Didion said, “we are talking about something private, about bits of the minds string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its making. And sometimes even the maker has difficulty with the meaning”. The way she describes our minds is as being private and something only ourselves can experience, we will never be able to fully describe to someone the way we are feeling or the thoughts we produce. And sometimes we are not even able to decipher our own thoughts. For our minds are so complex the explanation to things are unseen. Leaving ourselves with confusion about why we are who we are, and the realization to what makes each other different. I believe that we can reach a sense of separateness from the world, a lot of the time this destination can be reached by meditation or just the simple process of “zoning out”. But you can also think of this in a sense of individuality and being separate from others in the world.